The changing freight media landscape was on full display at the F3: Future of Freight Festival last week in Chattanooga Tennessee, as influencers, salespeople, presenters and executives intermingled during and after the events.

On Thursday FreightWaves presented the FreightTech 25 awards, which were chosen independently by a panel of CEOs, industry leaders, academics and investors who scored the companies. Chattanooga, Tennessee-based accounting and auditing firm HHM administered the vote. The awards recognize the most innovative and disruptive companies in the freight technology sector.

The Convoy saga has taken another turn as venture-backed freight forwarder Flexport announced Wednesday that it has acquired Convoy’s technology stack for an undisclosed sum. This comes after Convoy, which was valued at $3.8 billion from its final funding round 18 months ago, shuttered operations on Oct. 19.

On Wednesday the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released its latest Cost of Congestion study showing U.S. highway traffic congestion added $94.6 billion in costs to the trucking industry.

Seattle-based digital freight broker Convoy on Wednesday canceled all shipments from its marketplace and company representatives promised more details of a business transition were forthcoming. By Thursday, company employees were told in a meeting that Convoy was “closing down its core business operations.”

A Q3 shipper survey by Morgan Stanley suggests the freight industry has moved “deeper into limbo” as completion of an excess inventory purge now leads to uncertainty as there is no immediate need to restock.

FreightWaves on Tuesday interviewed Angela Acocella, postdoctoral researcher at Tilburg University and researcher with the MIT Center of Transportation and Logistics looking at the impact of ghost lanes on shipper and carrier networks.

Confusion erupted on Monday following reports that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was looking to set a 68 mph maximum speed setting for trucks newer than the 2003 model year.

A report published Tuesday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) must make its complaint database more transparent and publicly available.

At a Morgan Stanley investor conference Tuesday, trucking executives predicted a muted peak season after acknowledging the industry is in the midst bottom of the freight cycle while hoping for some improvement in 2024.

In an article published Tuesday, FreightWaves CEO and founder Craig Fuller made a case that the trucking industry is not consolidating anytime soon.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Wednesday released parameters on data collection for a new study to determine the impact of detention time on drivers. The Information Collection Request (ICR) was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval and opened the window for public comments.

On Thursday, self-driving trucking company Kodiak Robotics and Pilot Co. opened their first truckport for autonomous vehicles at the Pilot Travel Center in Villa Rica, Georgia. According to the news release, the truckport will be used by Kodiak to launch and land its autonomous trucks and serve as a hub for drivers to pick and drop off loads for first- and last-mile deliveries.

Proposed rulemaking on automatic emergency braking (AEB) introduced in June by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is getting more pushback from a coalition of state law enforcement officials and brake manufacturers that argue more dialogue is needed before moving forward.

Media outlet TMZ reported that singer-songwriter Taylor Swift gave each truck driver who worked as part of her Eras Tour a bonus check of $100,000 before her Santa Clara, California, show last Saturday.

The saga of less-than-truckload carrier Yellow may be coming to a close based on reporting that Yellow’s senior vice president of sales told staff their last day would be this Friday, and that the carrier would file for bankruptcy on Monday.

Truckload and multimodal carrier J.B. Hunt told analysts on an earnings call Tuesday that it’s still too early to tell how the 2023 peak season for freight will turn out.

The first meeting of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Truck Leasing Task Force (TLTF) discussed and drafted recommendations on Tuesday regarding limiting or eliminating the power a trucking company has over lease purchase agreements with drivers.

The freight recession’s impact on small fleets and owner-operators gained mainstream media attention on Monday with an article by Shannon Pettypiece, a senior policy reporter for NBC News. The article related the story of Arnesha Barron, a 39-year-old driver who in 2021 became an owner-operator after working at a trucking company for six years.

Negotiations between the Teamsters union and Yellow Corp. remain ongoing, with the fate of the nation’s third-largest LTL carrier hanging in the balance. Yellow is facing stiff resistance from the Teamsters over proposed operational changes that would consolidate operations between purchased regional carriers New Penn and Holland and integrate them into Yellow’s nationwide network.