Freight

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

A Philadelphia man has been sentenced to nearly eight years in prison after federal investigators dismantled a cargo theft ring responsible for more than $1.5 million in stolen freight. Court filings reveal how the crew targeted sleeping drivers, coordinated thefts through group chats and moved stolen cargo across the region, offering the transportation industry a rare look inside how organized cargo theft operations work.

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.

After criminals allegedly hijacked a Walmart-bound shipment, Global Protection discovered that legitimate carriers, drivers and paperwork are not always enough. The company explains how the incident changed its approach to verification and why slowing down became part of its security strategy.

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?

The cargo was unusual. The alleged theft method was not. According to public reporting, criminals compromised a legitimate carrier’s identity and used it to divert a Walmart-bound shipment worth $1.7 million, a tactic the FBI says is becoming increasingly common.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

While a booming heavy-industrial sector has shielded certain segments, the broader housing affordability crisis is actively suppressing volumes across multiple shipping modes.

The Headline Number: Spot Rates Hit an All-Time Record Craig Fuller set the tone in the opening minutes, and the data backed it up at the close. The SONAR National Truckload Index, which tracks daily spot rates inclusive of fuel, hit 383, an all-time record. Fuller, a self-described rate nerd from a trucking asset background, […]

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.

From cartel-linked theft investigations to testimony before Congress, Lemm’s message was clear: cargo theft is no longer just a transportation problem.

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.

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 […]

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.

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.

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.