Freight

Adam Wingfield Thursday, May 21, 2026

The Charcoal on That Truck Costs More to Import, More to Buy, and Is Headed to a Cookout That Runs 13% Higher Than Last Year. Here Is What That Tells You About the Consumer Right Now.

Pull up the import data on U.S. charcoal briquette shipments and you are looking at something that some people in trucking would not think to check heading into a holiday weekend. But that data, read against the consumer spending picture for Memorial Day 2026, tells you something specific about the supply chain, the retail freight […]

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Rob Carpenter Thursday, May 21, 2026

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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Rob Carpenter Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Carrier vetting 101. Spoiler: It’s not about safety.

Safe isn’t always exposure-free or risk-free. Compliant isn’t always safe. What “safety” means doesn’t matter. A carrier can be all three of those things on paper and still bury everyone who touched the load in exposure. This is a working primer on how risk professionals actually vet, qualify and screen a carrier.

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