FreightWaves Playbook

Most truckers track spot rates. Some track load-to-truck ratios. A smaller number pull freight data every week. Not many are watching the pallet Producer Price Index or the American Forest & Paper Association’s monthly packaging report — which is exactly why understanding those two numbers right now puts you ahead of most of the market. […]

A data-driven investigation into the risk retention groups insuring America’s most dangerous carriers, the factoring companies keeping them cash-flowing, and what happens to crash victims when the whole thing collapses.

One Indianapolis suburb has 1,000 newly registered trucking carriers. One neighborhood inside that suburb has more than 300 active carriers covering roughly 250 homes. The CDL crackdown is real, starting today in Indiana

America’s highways became a testing ground for unqualified drivers long before anyone in Washington was paying attention. Now, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy shuttering thousands of sham CDL schools and placing unqualified truckers out of service, he emphasized to the frontline at the Mid-America Trucking Show that drivers’ day has finally come.

The benchmark diesel price used for most fuel surcharges is now up 11 weeks in a row.

Let’s start with what the numbers actually look like. On March 1, diesel was averaging roughly $3.90 per gallon nationally. By March 9, a single week produced a 96-cent spike — the largest one-week increase in diesel prices since the federal government began tracking the series. By mid-month it crossed $5. As of this week […]

If you have spent any time in trucking Facebook groups, diesel forums, or on X this week, you have probably seen some version of this story: The EPA removed DEF requirements. The DOJ said deletes are legal. DPF is going away. The whole emissions system is getting scrapped. Trump said you can modify your truck. […]

The mood has shifted. After three years of one of the most brutal freight downturns in modern trucking history, the data is finally moving in the right direction. Spot van rates have climbed for seven consecutive months. Load-to-truck ratios are at multi-year highs. Carrier exits have been accelerating, tightening the supply side of the equation. […]

You delivered the load. The BOL is signed. The POD is in. The job is done. And now you wait — 30 days, 45 days, sometimes longer — for a broker to release payment while your truck payment, your fuel bill, your insurance premium, and your driver’s paycheck are all due right now. That gap […]

One in eight return-to-duty clearances in the FMCSA Clearinghouse may be fraudulent. This is the network that made it possible.

The $750,000 federal minimum set in 1980 has lost 70% of its purchasing power and covers a fraction of what a serious crash costs today.

The benchmark diesel price used for most fuel surcharges is up for the 10th straight week.

No federal law requires an insurer to evaluate a carrier’s safety record before issuing a commercial trucking policy and that’s creating a significant safety gap.

The difference between what a driver should catch on the pre-trip and what a PM program should catch before the truck ever leaves the shop tells two completely different stories about where the failure lives

Let’s start with what is not in dispute. In 2023, 5,472 people were killed in traffic crashes involving large trucks, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System — the most reliable national crash database that exists. Seventy percent of those people — 3,837 of them — were not in the […]

A tow bill landed on trucking Facebook this week and it has been making the rounds ever since. Drivers are sharing it, tagging each other, dropping fire emojis and expletives in equal measure. Some are calling it a scam. Some are saying the driver should have known better. Most are just staring at the total […]

How a cocaine-positive truck driver exploited a federal self-certification loophole to clear 1,000 prohibted Clearinghouse violations

Rates, liability, legal chaos and insurance exposure are colliding in real time. Most carriers are not prepared for it.

One month ago the national average for diesel was $3.65 a gallon. As of this week, it is over $5.00. According to AAA, that is a 38% increase in roughly 30 days — the fastest one-month fuel price spike the trucking industry has experienced in years, driven by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes against Iran that […]

Most small carriers operate their entire business through a load board. The freight comes through a broker, the rate gets negotiated down, the carrier moves the load, gets paid on net-30 or net-45 (or quick pay/factoring), and then goes back to the board looking for the next one. That cycle is familiar. It is also […]