Rob Carpenter

Rob Carpenter is an independent writer for FreightWaves, "The Playbook," TruckSafe Consulting, Motive, and other companies across the freight, supply chain, risk and highway accident litigation spaces. Rob Carpenter is a transportation risk and compliance expert and WHCA member covering White House policy, tariffs, and federal transportation regulation impacting the supply chain. He is an expert in accident analysis, fleet safety, risk and compliance. Rob spends most of his time as an expert witness and risk control consultant specializing in group and sole member captives. Rob is a CDL driver, former broker and fleet owner and spent over 2 decades behind the wheel of a truck across various modes of transport. He is an adviser to the Department of Transportation and a National Safety Council, and Smith System driving instructor.
Jul - 2026 -
21 July
Rob Carpenter

OpEd: The DEF Act is half relief bill, half noise

Congress is fast-tracking a bipartisan DEF relief bill. The half in the press release stops trucks from derating to 5 mph over a false sensor code. The half you have to read the text to find suspends the 2027 emissions rule for 10 years

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10 July
Rob Carpenter

EPA’s war on diesel is a national security issue

The pardons ended nine ordeals. The mandate that created them is still on the books, still in the field, and still pointed at the trucks that move America’s military freight.

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09 July
Rob Carpenter

3 of today’s 10 FMCSA-revoked ELDs had already been pulled once

One provider changed its name and lost a second device. Another lost two on the same afternoon. The registry doesn’t remember.

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Rob Carpenter

Trucking’s biggest insurance fraud and Jasbir Thandi’s guilty plea

A $66.7 million judgment, a $38.8 million restitution order, and a sentencing date. What the court record says about trucking’s biggest insurance collapse, and who never got paid.

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08 July
Rob Carpenter

Trucking Legislator Rankings. 79 Bills, 3 Laws.

We’re auditing the people who write the laws MCSAP dollars enforce. We pulled every trucking bill in Congress, every name, and laid it against the crash data in their own states.

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Rob Carpenter

SCOTUS killed the broker defense; is truck leasing next?

The SCOTUS decision stripped brokers of the federal preemption defense used for years to escape negligent carrier selection claims. Almost nobody is talking about the commercial leasing and rental companies that made the decision to hand a 33-ton vehicle to the carrier in the first place. Their legal shield was different and the Supreme Court published the map to it.

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07 July
Rob Carpenter

The MCSAP bang-for-buck State rankings

Washington spent a year threatening states over truck safety enforcement. Here’s who we give millions to for trucking enforcement and how they spend it across million inspections.

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06 July
Rob Carpenter

The prosecution and the pardon that ended the diesel wars

On July 3, 2026, President Trump pardoned early a dozen people who were convicted under the Clean Air Act for tampering with diesel emissions, months after the Justice Department stopped prosecuting diesel cases entirely. The technology is still bolted to every truck on the road, and nobody in Washington wants to discuss the “what now” of who pays for it.

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Jun - 2026 -
26 June
Rob Carpenter

FMCSA says: Less paper, more enforcement

FMCSA is stripping out compliance noise with one hand and chasing chameleon carriers with the other. The trick is keeping the two in balance.

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23 June
Rob Carpenter

PM Intervals are your lifecycle extension

How maintenance frequency maps to violation patterns, and why the carriers stretching their service intervals are the same ones showing up with brake and hub seal failures at roadside.

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17 June
Rob Carpenter

Hazardous materials drivers can’t speak English

To hold a hazardous materials endorsement, a driver must pass a written knowledge exam on regulations, packaging, and emergency procedures, administered in English. So, how does a driver cited 98 times for being unable to read or speak English still hold that endorsement?

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12 June
Rob Carpenter

The Faster Labor Contracts Act passed the House

H.R. 5408 gives employers 120 days to reach a first union contract or a government arbitrator writes one for them. The House passed it 230-193 on June 9. The Senate is the last wall. If you run trucks, this is not someone else’s problem.

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11 June
Rob Carpenter

Who’s hauling America’s Fourth of July explosives?

On June 6, a trailer full of fireworks burned and detonated for 25 minutes on I-75 outside Chattanooga. The driver had no hazmat endorsement, no placards, no shipping papers.

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Rob Carpenter

The Driver remains the box truck’s Achilles heel

Federal safety rules attach to the truck, not the driver. Get under the weight, the seats, or the license class, and some screening lifts. Here’s what the inspection data shows about who ends up behind the wheel of your delivery truck.

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Rob Carpenter

The DVIR could be the maintenance program key you’re missing

Pre-trip inspections are the first line of defense against mechanical failure on the highway. For most of the industry, they are a 30-second checkbox exercise completed in the cab. That gap between regulation and reality is showing up in courtrooms.

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10 June
Rob Carpenter

The medical certification gap is putting CDLs at risk

Under National Registry 2, the physician is now required to upload the results directly to the FMCSA, which then transmits the data to the state. The driver’s career and the carrier’s compliance both depend on a workflow that the physician may not understand exists.

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01 June
Rob Carpenter

Inside hotshot trucking’s ghost fleets

As enforcement tightened on long-haul trucking, marginal operators did not leave the business. They moved into hotshot and auto transport, where the rigs are smaller, the inspections fewer, and the insurance cheaper.

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May - 2026 -
26 May
Rob Carpenter

How legislators and insurers built a trucking crisis

Commercial auto has lost $4.9 billion in a single year. Fourteen consecutive years of underwriting losses. Crash rates are actually falling. So why is the industry bleeding? It stopped doing the one thing insurance was designed to do.

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21 May
Rob Carpenter

Another CA truck crash and two dead kids on Highway 99

A Freightliner Cascadia operated by Amritsar Trans Inc., a five-truck carrier out of Manteca, California, rear-ended three vehicles on Highway 99 near Lodi on May 19, 2026, killing two young men. The driver fled on foot. The carrier sits inside a web of 267 carriers clustered across residential addresses in the same ZIP code, and 10 involuntary revocation actions.

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20 May
Rob Carpenter

79 ELDs revoked since January. 12 more just hit the list.

FMCSA removed 12 more electronic logging devices from the registry today, bringing the total to 79 revocations since January 2025. The registered list is bleeding devices faster than the market is adding them. At this rate, the agency may be building a de facto third-party certification standard without ever formally adopting one.

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