Trucking

Rob Carpenter Wednesday, April 29, 2026

The case for continuous license monitoring

The single most common-sense safety reform available to the trucking industry right now is to acknowledge that a regulation based on annual snapshots of a driver’s licensing status is inadequate for an industry where licenses can be suspended, revoked, or downgraded at any time.

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Julie Van de Kamp Tuesday, April 28, 2026

TruckSmarter Partners with SONAR To Deliver TRAC Spot Rates For Motor Carriers

TruckSmarter is taking the freight industry into the future with the launch of Dispatch, combining AI capabilities into the industry’s first chat-based interface built specifically for freight. Now, truck drivers can eliminate hours scrolling through traditional load boards. Instead, drivers can ask anything to find loads, deploy agents to execute actions, such as a bidding […]

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Adam Wingfield Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Your Truck Is Getting More Expensive to Fix. Here Is the Data on Why — and What to Do Before It Gets Worse.

The maintenance cost story in trucking has been quietly telling the truth about the freight recession in a way that spot rates and load volumes never fully captured. When freight slows down, trucks run fewer miles, which means fewer service events per truck per month. The Q4 2025 Decisiv/TMC Parts and Labor Service Benchmark Report […]

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Rob Carpenter Saturday, April 18, 2026

Gord Magill wrote the book trucking needed

Gord Magill has been behind the wheel since high school. So was his father. So was his grandfather. That lineage gives “End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers” something most books about trucking fundamentally lack: the credibility that comes only from someone who actually lived it.

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Thomas Wasson Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Mudflap acquires AI capacity platform Parade

Mudflap has completed its acquisition of Parade. The deal pairs Mudflap’s location-verified carrier network with Parade’s capacity management platform for brokers, which has facilitated more than $40 billion in total cumulative freight transactions. Mudflap boasts more than 515,000 drivers across over 100,000 verified carriers. The Palo Alto-based fintech company provides fuel discount solutions to carriers […]

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Matt Herr Thursday, April 9, 2026

Three Strategies for Closing Fleet Risk Blind Spots

Fleet operators tend to think of risk in terms of isolated events, such as a crash, a failed inspection, or a compliance lapse. But according to Bob O’Connell, Account Executive of Strategic Accounts at J.J. Keller & Associates, that way of thinking is itself the biggest blind spot in the industry. “A lot of carriers, […]

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Rob Carpenter Thursday, April 9, 2026

How the worst of trucking failed Athena Strand

On Nov. 30, 2022, a delivery driver put Athena Strand in the back of a branded van and strangled her. The company that hired him was seven months old. Its owner had never worked a day in the trucking industry. The box was checked. The FBI has linked more than 850 murders to commercial truck drivers since 2004 and is tracking 450 active suspects right now. This is a hiring problem. It has always been a hiring problem.

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Rob Carpenter Thursday, April 9, 2026

Diesel is $5.62 a gallon. Hire the right Driver.

The war with Iran moved diesel up nearly 50 percent in five weeks and analysts are modeling $6 and higher if the Strait of Hormuz stays disrupted into summer. Carriers are repricing surcharges, shippers are absorbing new fees and everyone is looking for relief. The biggest lever most fleets have on their fuel budget is not an aerodynamics package or a new engine spec. It is the driver.

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Julie Van de Kamp Wednesday, April 8, 2026

SONAR Launches Bulk Trucking Contract Rate Benchmarks via API, Bringing Pricing Transparency to One of Freight’s Most Opaque Segments

First standardized, accessible bulk freight rate data delivers outbound state-based pricing and round trip rates to shippers, carriers, and logistics operators CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — April 8 2026 — SONAR today announced the launch of Bulk Rates within the SONAR API, delivering the first standardized contract rate benchmarks for bulk trucking — a segment of the […]

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Julie Van de Kamp Wednesday, April 8, 2026

SONAR Expands Coverage Guide with Enhanced Scoring, Richer API Data, and Direct Load Integration via Coverage Guide Connect

Three updates to SONAR’s load prioritization and coverage strategy tool give carrier sales teams deeper lane intelligence, more actionable guidance, and a live connection between internal freight systems and the market. CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — April 8, 2026— SONAR today announced a significant expansion of Coverage Guide, SONAR’s load prioritization and coverage strategy tool, with three […]

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Adam Wingfield Sunday, April 5, 2026

The Two Materials That Predict Freight Demand Both Just Posted Gains. Here Is What February’s Data Is Telling Us.

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. […]

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Craig Fuller, CEO at FreightWaves Saturday, April 4, 2026

Rail and truck data highlight a strong industrial economy

U.S. freight railroads delivered one of their strongest performances in years during March 2026, signaling that the goods-producing economy is regaining meaningful momentum across multiple sectors. According to the Association of American Railroads’ (AAR) latest Rail Industry Overview, total U.S. rail carloads averaged 230,401 per week in March — the strongest March result since 2019 […]

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Matt Herr Wednesday, April 1, 2026

How Carriers Can Prepare for CVSA’s International Roadcheck 2026

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s annual International Roadcheck is scheduled for May 12-14, and this year’s event will zero in on two issues that continue to generate tens of thousands of violations across North America: ELD tampering/falsification and cargo securement. This year, inspectors are going old school. During the 72-hour enforcement window, CVSA-certified inspectors at […]

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Rob Carpenter Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Secretary Duffy prioritizes barriers to entry in trucking

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.

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Adam Wingfield Monday, March 30, 2026

$5.38 Diesel, a War in the Middle East, and a Refinery Fire in Texas. Here Is Your Fuel Survival Plan for the Next 90 Days.

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 […]

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Adam Wingfield Monday, March 30, 2026

The Market Maybe Telling You to Grow. Here Is Why the Smartest Carriers Are Waiting 90 More Days Before They Pull the Trigger.

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. […]

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