The Playbook

The headline writes itself and the industry groups are celebrating: Pell Grants are coming to CDL schools. The American Trucking Associations called it a move that would “dismantle financial barriers that prevent students from low-income households from accessing the career pathways that lead to the trucking industry.” The Secretary of Education said a great education […]

A crash on the Florida Turnpike last August killed three people. The driver was Harjinder Singh, a native of India who had entered the country without authorization in 2018 and was operating a commercial motor vehicle under an out-of-state CDL. On March 6, 2026, the Florida Senate passed a bill in direct response to that […]

A driver gets his permit in Hawaii, boards a plane to New Jersey, trains Sunday through Thursday, passes a skills test on Friday, flies home Saturday, and walks out of a DMV with a commercial driver’s license. Federal law allowed all of it. That’s the problem.

Before you can have an honest conversation about what’s happening to DACA recipients in the trucking industry right now, you have to first be honest about what DACA actually is – because a lot of people are weighing in on this policy debate without a firm grip on the facts, and that confusion is doing […]

Most small carriers do not lose in hiring. They lose in what happens after the handshake — the documentation that didn’t get collected, the employer verification that never got followed up on, the drug test that cleared but nobody logged into the right system, the medical card that expired and sat in a drawer for […]

Diesel is approaching $5 a gallon and the geopolitical situation driving it is not showing signs of a quick resolution. You cannot control what crude does on the futures market. You cannot control what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz. You cannot control whether the Federal Reserve pauses rate cuts or whether the broker on […]

A bill moving through the House of Representatives right now would establish the first federal framework for putting fully autonomous heavy-duty trucks on public roads. The SELF DRIVE Act of 2026 — formally H.R. 7390, introduced February 5 by Rep. Bob Latta of Ohio — is being framed by its supporters as a necessary step […]

The price used to set diesel surcharges gained more in a week than it ever has in its 30+ year history.

There is no show like it in this industry. The Mid-America Trucking Show — MATS — returns to the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville from March 26 through March 28, 2026, and if you operate a small trucking company, an owner-operator business, or a fleet under twenty trucks, the question of whether you should go […]

The deadline everyone in trucking has been watching finally arrived. On March 6, 2026, approximately 13,000 non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses were cancelled in California — not by a clean resolution, not by a negotiated agreement between the state and federal government, but by California bowing under the weight of a funding threat it had already […]

Diesel prices have spiked to $5.96 per gallon in premium markets as escalating Middle East tensions collide with America’s crumbling refinery base. The surge comes at a critical inflection point for trucking, with tender rejection rates climbing and capacity tightening after a brutal four-year freight recession, raising questions about whether the industry can capitalize on the recovery when fuel costs threaten to erase margin gains.

Small carriers and owner operators are not just fighting market conditions. They’re fighting the messaging. Every week, from the moment a DOT number gets applied for to the day a carrier tries to scale beyond their first truck, there is a constant stream of outreach, advertising, promises, and pitches flooding in from every direction. Fuel […]

For the first time in three years, the trucking industry was starting to believe it again. Not celebrating – this industry is too battle-tested for that – but believing. The numbers were moving in the right direction. Spot rates were climbing. Excess capacity had bled out of the market through years of carrier exits, ELP […]

This is not a drill, and this is not a market correction. What is happening to oil prices right now is a full-scale geopolitical energy shock, and if you operate a small trucking company – a fleet of one to twenty trucks, an owner-operator running solo, a box truck or hotshot operator trying to hold […]

Diesel prices at both the retail level and in the futures market are soaring in the wake of the Middle East conflict.

Florida didn’t just get cold this winter. It got cold in a way that most growers working those fields hadn’t seen in over a decade, and the damage to the state’s produce supply is still being tallied. What started as a warning on the weather radar turned into one of the most consequential agricultural events […]

America sits on more oil than it can refine. While the Strait of Hormuz burns, the real chokepoint is between the wellhead and the truck stop.

A firsthand, frontline reality of how freight moves from broker, carrier, spot, shipper direct, interlined and non-commodity freight to the crash scene.

New bills, new enforcement actions, and a September deadline that turns every stalled bill into a live round.

The benchmark diesel price used for most fuel surcharges has risen for the 7th consecutive week.