Freight

Adam Wingfield Tuesday, February 17, 2026

When the Farm Belt Feels the Pressure: What Agricultural Strain Could Mean for Freight

American agriculture rarely makes front-page freight headlines, yet it quietly underpins a significant portion of trucking demand. Grain, livestock, fertilizer, seed, feed, refrigerated meat, packaged goods, ethanol, farm equipment—entire freight ecosystems depend on a stable farm economy. Recent reporting has highlighted a sharp rise in farm bankruptcies and growing concern from agricultural leaders about systemic […]

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Rob Carpenter Monday, February 16, 2026

Open Borders, Open Trucking

You can’t own a fishing boat, fly an airplane, broadcast a radio signal, split an atom, or drill for oil in America without proving you’re an American. But you can operate an 80,000-pound commercial motor vehicle on every highway in every state in the nation without being a citizen of this country, or even setting foot in it. Welcome to the American trucking industry, where the door isn’t just open. It’s been taken off the hinges.

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Rob Carpenter Friday, February 13, 2026

Trucking Risk Control Could Become the New Entrant Gate

For decades, insurance was the one thing you couldn’t fake your way past to start a trucking company. That’s no longer true. As instant-issue coverage and $300 authority fees make it easier than ever to place 80,000 pounds on public highways without verification, a scalable, pre-authority risk-control model could restore the gate the industry lost without adding a single federal employee to the payroll.

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Rob Carpenter Thursday, February 12, 2026

Inside the Shadow Market: 200,000+ Trucking Crashes Without Guaranty Fund Protection

My investigation found 76 Risk Retention Groups insure nearly 30,000 motor carriers linked to more than 6,300 fatal crashes, all without state guaranty fund protection for crash victims. The findings come as reports indicate that major insurers, including Chubb and AmTrust, are exiting the Chicago trucking market, funneling high-risk carriers into RRGs that have already incurred $199 million in unpaid losses and multiple insolvencies.

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Adam Wingfield Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Why Credit Is Quietly Deciding Who Survives in Trucking

For most owner-operators and small carriers, the conversation about survival usually starts with rates. Fuel prices come next. Then brokers. Then regulations. But during a recent episode of The Long Haul, one reality kept surfacing over and over again: many carriers don’t fail because they can’t run freight — they fail because they never fully […]

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Rob Carpenter Saturday, February 7, 2026

Sam Express, AJ Partners, and Sham CDL School Aydana in Investigation of Fatal Indiana Amish Crash

A fatal Indiana crash has exposed a pipeline stretching from Kyrgyzstan to Chicago to Philadelphia, chameleon carriers sharing trucks and DOT numbers, a CDL school with no public footprint, an ELD allegedly built with a backdoor, and a driver whose immigration status passed a federal database check. Secretary Duffy is investigating. Will the investigation follow the money?

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Rob Carpenter Friday, February 6, 2026

REAL-ID, Mail-Order CDLs, and America’s CDL Free-for-All.

A Mexican licencia federal de conductor can be obtained without a behind-the-wheel road test. Third-party brokers advertise mail-order processing for as little as $200. Under existing reciprocity agreements, that license can be converted to an American CDL in states that accept foreign credentials, and at least six of those states have been flagged by FMCSA for failing to verify the legal presence of non-domiciled applicants.

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Rob Carpenter Friday, January 30, 2026

FMCSA Counts Inspections. Nobody Counts Compliance.

FMCSA and its state partners conduct 3.3 million roadside inspections annually, placing nearly a million vehicles and drivers out of service, but states are measured on inspection volume, not enforcement outcomes. The inspectors’ own alliance wants to eliminate the requirement that carriers confirm they fixed the problems. There are 800,000 carriers and 12,000 audits a year. Texas has a state law that conflicts with federal ELP requirements, so drivers get licensed there and are placed out of service elsewhere. We’re counting inspections. Nobody’s counting compliance.

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