Trucking

Trucking operations in the Midwest will halt this weekend.

A. Duie Pyle is expanding near the Port of Virginia with an integrated LTL and warehousing facility.

BSI Consulting identified rail cargo theft as a top area of concern, particularly in the U.S. Southwest and Midwest.

The Port of Long Beach, half of the busiest U.S. container gateway,  is laying plans to double throughput to 20 million containers by 2050.

R&R Family of Companies has sold its WLX/Western Logistics Express unit to CJK Group just days after closing carrier Taylor Express.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is seeking public comment on renewing its commercial motor vehicle marking requirements. While the FMCSA documents over 153,000 marking violations in 2024 alone, an underground economy of swapped placards helps chameleon carriers and Carrier Identity thieves stay one step ahead of investigators.

A credit card and fifteen minutes can now put an unvetted operator behind the wheel of 80,000 pounds, with full legal authority to share the road with your family. The underwriting standards that once kept dangerous carriers off the highway have collapsed, and everyone from crash victims to taxpayers is footing the bill.

In December 2025, Waymo recalled 3,067 robotaxis after its vehicles ran red lights and blew through school bus stop signs at least 20 times in Austin alone, including one incident that occurred moments after a child crossed in front of a vehicle. Meanwhile, Aurora’s autonomous trucks have completed over 100,000 driverless miles in Texas without a single school bus incident. The difference is methodology, and understanding that difference might just save your life.

Tender rejections are at 9.97%.

SB 1587 adds $1 million minimum damages, employer liability and ICE notification requirements

This week in Borderlands Mexico: Volatile trade, rising carrier costs reshape retail shipping strategies; Cainiao launches U.S.–Mexico cross-border logistics service; and Speedora launches white-glove logistics service in Arizona.

The U.S. trucking industry continues to face a harsh economic reality: spot rates have failed to keep pace with inflation, squeezing carrier margins and contributing to significant financial pressure on truckers nationwide. Here’s a clear visual of the disconnect — spot trucking rates (via the SONAR National Truckload Index) overlaid against the Consumer Price Index […]

Trucking capacity has been steadily exiting the market over the past couple of years. These exits, however, came on the heels of the massive COVID-era oversupply, cushioning their impact on the market. With capacity continuing to tighten going into 2026, the industry will start to feel the effects of this long-term constriction.  Underneath the day-to-day, […]

Taylor Express shut down without warning on Jan. 12, cutting off support and leaving some truck drivers sleeping in their rigs while trying to get home, former employees said.

Early rollout driven by customer demand gives McLeod users immediate access to Aurora Driver capacity

The freight industry moved $14 trillion in goods last year. It cannot function without trust, trust that the carrier picking up your load is who they claim to be, trust that the broker paying you will actually pay, and trust that the load you accepted exists. That trust has been systematically exploited for decades. At its root, every form of freight fraud, chameleon carriers, double brokering, cargo theft, identity spoofing, comes down to one question: Are you who you say you are?

A permanent shutdown of Smoky Mountain Logistics will leave 145 drivers and staff without jobs by Feb. 28.

Dartanyan Gasanov, co-owner of Westfield Transport, is scheduled to stand trial on March 2, 2026, in Springfield, Massachusetts, on federal charges related to the June 2019 crash that killed seven Jarheads Motorcycle Club members. He reportedly rejected a no-time plea agreement and chose to fight the charges at trial. Meanwhile, the driver who killed seven people was acquitted, remains free under an immigration supervision order, and becomes eligible to petition for his license back in June 2026.

That ELD mounted in your cab? It needs cellular. Your AI dashcam uploading safety footage to the cloud? Cellular. Real-time GPS tracking? Cellular. Wednesday’s Verizon outage was a reminder that modern trucking’s entire technology stack rides on infrastructure we don’t control, and can’t fix when it fails.

ACT Research data shows used truck sales and prices rebounded at the end of 2025.

Purchase comes amid growing Tesla Semi buzz

The conversation around Right to Repair has been floating around trucking for years, but it’s usually talked about in vague terms. More access. More fairness. More competition. What Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) is pushing for right now is much more specific — and much more urgent. At its core, this is about who controls […]

In this episode of Running on Ice, host Mary O’Connell sits down with Travis Ross and Megan Bafford to break down how cold chain operations can take advantage of the winter months to optimize ahead of the spring and summer season.

Southeastern Freight Lines is expanding Mexico connectivity through a new partnership with Fletes México Carga Express.

The transportation and logistics sector has proven its resilience through several major disruptions and supply chain upheavals including events like the pandemic, the blockage of the Suez Canal, the Russia-Ukraine War, but today’s operational realities present a new set of challenges that can’t be solved simply by adding more hands to the deck. The traditional […]

Vooma users can instantly validate their pricing against SONAR’s spot rates and lane scores.

New device combines advanced processing, hands-free communication and license plate recognition for fleet safety

R&R Family of Companies is facing growing scrutiny from carriers and lenders following an executive termination and reports of payment issues.

The Trump administration’s decision to drop its appeal that tied billions in transportation funding to immigration enforcement represents a significant legal setback, but don’t mistake this tactical retreat for surrender. For motor carriers employing non-domiciled CDL holders, the regulatory battlefield has only shifted, not cleared.

The trucking and heavy equipment industries have undergone a dramatic transformation since the pandemic. Fleet operators have adapted their business models, and buyer behaviors have shifted fundamentally. The demand for speed and efficiency has never been higher. Yet somehow, the marketplaces where trucks, trailers, and heavy-duty equipment change hands are still stuck in the past.

Mexico-based logistics startup WeShip plans to launch U.S. domestic parcel services in 2026.

Indiana test road delivers 190 Kilowatts to a prototype Cummins class 8 electric vehicle at 65 MPH

A stolen 39,000-pound front loader became a weapon against Nevada police this week, and the incident underscores an industry losing up to $1 billion annually to equipment theft with only a 20% recovery rate.

CVSA’s five-day Human Trafficking Awareness Initiative kicks off today across the United States, with law enforcement and carriers conducting coordinated outreach at truck stops and weigh stations through Jan. 16. Since Truckers Against Trafficking launched in 2009, the organization has trained over 1.8 million transportation professionals, generating thousands of hotline calls and identifying more than 1,200 potential victims.

A five-year-old Maine boy was dragged nearly 300 feet and run over by his own school bus after his arm became trapped in the closing doors. The NTSB investigation comes as national data shows approximately 16 children die annually in school bus loading zones, a number that has persisted for decades despite available technology to prevent such tragedies.

When a commercial vehicle operator is charged with killing three people and walks out of jail on bond following a hearing that doesn’t appear on the public court docket, questions need to be asked. El Hadji Karamoko Ouattara’s January 7 bond hearing is on the docket, but after nearly three weeks since the crash, no one has identified the motor carrier he was hauling for.

A 35-year-old Mexican national working for an Arizona-based trucking company was arrested at the border after allegedly targeting middle school girls and multiple women during a single night in Ellensburg, Washington. The case fits a disturbing pattern the FBI has tracked since 2004 through its Highway Serial Killings Initiative, which has linked more than 850 murders to long-haul truck drivers and currently tracks 450 active suspects.

Tennessee has notified approximately 8,800 CDL holders that they must provide proof of citizenship or lawful presence by April 6 or face an automatic downgrade to a standard driver’s license. The move follows Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s escalating enforcement campaign that has already frozen California’s non-domiciled licensing program and threatened multiple states with the loss of federal highway funds.

This week in Borderlands Mexico: Tariff noise to stay loud in 2026, Flexport warns importers; Echo Global Logistics launches EchoXBorder; and LS Cable & System USA opens logistics hub near Po

Inventory levels dropped at their fastest clip in over ten years according to the LMI in December. This lean management strategy could be a boon for trucking.

The Chinese American Truckers Association filed suit against FMCSA and California DMV this week, challenging an indefinite licensing freeze that has stranded qualified drivers in bureaucratic limbo.

Congress is scrambling to block Chinese purchases of farmland near bases. But nobody is systematically vetting who climbs into the cab to haul freight to and from military installations. Given everything we now know, shouldn’t we at least ask the question?

USPS didn’t track deaths. It didn’t verify who was authorized to transport its freight. And it kept hiring carriers with conditional safety ratings while 79 people died in contractor crashes over three years. Now, with Duffy’s DOT threatening to revoke California’s CDL program and USPS’s first enforcement attempt collapsing within days, the Postal Service is trying again, this time claiming safety as its priority, a priority it ignored for a decade.

A Texas trucking company must rehire a driver and pay $100,000 in damages after investigators determined the driver was fired for raising safety complaints.

There’s a moment most small fleet owners reach — usually late at night, staring at parked trucks — where the thought creeps in: “Maybe I just need help finding drivers.” It sounds simple. Logical, even. But recruiting isn’t just about finding people. It’s about filtering, selling, onboarding, and retaining — all at the same time. […]

Every cycle creates the same temptation. Rates start to firm up. Capacity thins out. Enforcement tightens. Someone tells you, “Now’s the time to grow.” And for some carriers, that will be true. But for many others, scaling in 2026 without the right foundation will quietly turn a survivable business into a fragile one. The mistake […]

Starting January 1, 2027, new heavy-duty diesel engines will hit the road. And when engines change, oil has to change with them. That’s the entire story. Under upcoming EPA regulations, heavy-duty diesel engines must achieve significant emissions reductions: an 80% decrease in nitrogen oxides (NOx) and a 50% cut in particulate matter. Furthermore, these rules […]

Part One laid the groundwork for why knowing your numbers matters in trucking. Not in a motivational way. Not in a “be a better business owner” cliché way. But in a very real, very practical sense: if you don’t know what it actually costs you to run your truck, you’re not negotiating freight — you’re […]

Avkha Equity Holdings acquisition positions Dart Transit as a growth platform across the U.S. truckload market, officials said.

Some of the loudest conversations in trucking right now aren’t coming from policy rooms, conference stages, or trade group press releases. They’re coming from drivers, fleet owners, and industry veterans who feel like something fundamental shifted — and nobody warned them it was coming. That’s why this episode of The Long Haul was different on […]

More than 2,000 workers have been laid off across logistics and manufacturing firms as 2026 begins, driven by facility closures, lost contracts and bankruptcy filings.

Late 2025 data shows subtle shifts in spot, contract rates amid carrier exits

California’s years of documented CDL fraud, enforcement failures, and defiance of federal regulations finally caught up with it. Today’s $160 million funding cut for non-domiciled CDL violations, combined with October’s $40 million ELP penalty, marks the largest federal enforcement action against a state licensing program in FMCSA history.

The last time “south Minneapolis” and “National Guard” appeared in the same headline, Reginald Denny was getting his skull fractured in 91 places four blocks from where an ICE agent just shot a woman in the head. What fleets need to know about the Insurrection Act, driver safety protocols, and operating when federalism breaks down.

Trucking is rarely a one-person job. Every mile logged, every late night delivery, every holiday spent on the road usually has a family on the other end of it—supporting, sacrificing, adjusting, and carrying part of the load. That’s something the industry doesn’t talk about enough. And it’s exactly what the OOIDA Mary Johnston Scholarship Fund […]

State licensing agencies had a decade to implement what amounts to a database connection for CDL medical certifications. Instead, FMCSA has spent 2025 issuing waiver after waiver while drivers get placed out of service and fraud vulnerabilities persist. The agency’s hands-off approach to NRII enforcement explains why states feel comfortable ignoring federal CDL standards across the board.

As technology outpaces federal regulations, litigation hurdles loom for self driving trucks

North American Class 8 truck orders surged in December as fleets released pent-up demand, FTR Transportation Intelligence says.

SupplyOne’s acquisition of Wertheimer Box underscores ongoing consolidation and realignment in the packaging sector.

Uber Freight executives say resilient U.S.–Mexico freight flows could help anchor trucking demand in 2026.

Deal with world’s largest automotive supplier aims to integrate specialized hardware for factory and upfit installations

This week in Borderlands Mexico: Podcast series focuses on high-stakes US–Mexico trade conversations; Mexico begins tariffs of up to 35% on Chinese imports; and Chihuahua becomes Mexico’s top exporting state in 2025.

Spot rates and tender rejections exceeded 2024, 2023, and 2022 levels.

California’s latest high-risk audit reads like a warning label for the freight industry. As the state struggles with data integrity, benefit administration, and mounting fiscal pressure, the consequences may extend beyond Sacramento, into CHP staffing, roadside inspections, and federally funded enforcement programs that trucking depends on.

California delays cancellation of 17,000 non-domiciled CDLs until March despite Secretary Duffy’s January 5 deadline. With $160 million in federal funding and potential decertification of the state’s entire CDL program on the line, the standoff could reshape federal-state authority over commercial licensing for years.

Lior Ron details why point-to-point operations, OEM-blessed hardware and rapid AI advances pave the way to future deployments

uShip CEO Sean Wu says flexibility will be freight’s most valuable currency in 2026.

A string of drug seizures highlights how traffickers continue to target commercial freight routes.

Testing by Center for Pet Safety confirms secure options for drivers’ animal companions, amid estimates of hundreds of thousands of pets on U.S. roads daily.

Revised DMV rules pave the way for heavy-duty driverless vehicles, balancing safety concerns with the push for innovation.

Transportation attorney Matthew Leffler says that a new bill in Congress meant to hold freight brokers accountable has some issues.

Dangerous winter driving conditions shut down a major Michigan highway after a tractor-trailer crashed through an overpass and exploded on impact.

When you got your CDL and started hauling freight on public highways, you traded some constitutional protections for the privilege of operating in a closely regulated industry. Here’s what that actually means when a badge knocks on your sleeper berth door.

Queen Transportation abruptly shut down last week, leaving truck drivers and office staff suddenly unemployed.

The end of the year sneaks up on small carriers faster than most people realize. One minute you’re grinding through the end of the season, chasing loads and keeping wheels moving. The next thing you know, it’s late December and everyone is talking about filings, renewals, and “stuff you’re supposed to do.” Year-end actions are […]

Walmart’s $152 million warehouse acquisition near Phoenix highlights a surge of logistics and real estate investment transforming the Southwest freight market.

The 10 Playbook Stories That Defined Trucking in 2025 — And Why They All Point to the Same Truth If 2025 taught the trucking industry anything, it’s that the pressure wasn’t coming from just one direction. It wasn’t only rates. It wasn’t only regulation. It wasn’t only technology or labor or compliance. It was all […]

This week in Borderlands Mexico: TCS is betting on Monterrey as cross-border trade gets more complicated; Union Pacific plans 2,000-acre Mainline Texas Industrial Park near Houston; and Former Waco bottling plant to be redeveloped into I-35 distribution center.

Fleet telematics provider Motive has filed paperwork to go public, a move that could intensify competition in the freight technology market.

Mexico remained the United States’ largest trading partner in 2025, but policy shifts and enforcement crackdowns reshaped cross-border commerce.

A class-action lawsuit filed in Alameda County seeks to block California’s Jan. 5 cancellation of nearly 20,000 commercial driver’s licenses. The plaintiffs argue the DMV is punishing immigrant drivers for the agency’s own administrative failures while refusing to let them reapply for corrected credentials, violating state law and due process.

The order directs expedited rescheduling to Schedule III, but the same agency that’s held up oral fluid testing for two years now holds the keys to marijuana testing’s future.

A new FMCSA research initiative to evaluate warning triangles and flares is really about building the regulatory foundation for autonomous truck operations. With Waymo and Aurora knocking on the door with exemption requests, the agency needs data to either justify current requirements or clear a path for alternatives.

Biden’s FMCSA buried a FOIA request seeking to link driving schools to fatality data.

This week in Borderlands Mexico: U.S.–Mexico trade stays dominant in September, tops $71B; Maersk opens $15M depot near Port of Manzanillo; and Wayside Distribution Center aims to boost Houston supply chains.

Health insurance has never been simple in trucking. For owner-operators and small carriers, it’s often one of the most confusing, expensive, and emotionally loaded parts of running the business. And in 2026, that pressure could increase — not because of a new law, but because a temporary one may quietly run out. Several provisions tied […]

With 2025 almost in the books, the smartest thing a small carrier can do right now isn’t chase one more load — it’s slow down just enough to decide what 2026 actually needs to look like. If you’re reading this with less than two weeks left in the year, you’re right on time. Not late. […]

A family-owned San Francisco tile business was defrauded of nearly $200,000 in merchandise when criminals used fake credentials to orchestrate a strategic cargo theft.

There’s a moment in every trucking journey where two operators standing in the same parking lot, pulling similar freight, and running similar equipment quietly drift onto completely different paths. On the surface, nothing looks different. Both trucks are running. Both drivers are working. Both businesses are technically “operating.” But underneath, one is being held together […]

Going from a straight truck to a semi doesn’t end when you get the keys. That’s when the real differences start to show. In Part One, we talked about the decision to move from a box truck into a semi — the systems, discipline, and readiness required before you ever sign paperwork. Part Two is […]

Some carriers are taught to think in cost per mile. It’s familiar. It’s easy to explain. And it’s only part of the picture. Cost per mile tells you how expensive it is to move the truck down the road. It does not tell you how expensive it is to run a business. That’s where cost […]

Winter doesn’t usually just put trucking companies out of business overnight. It exposes the cracks that were already there. That’s the core idea behind the Winter Readiness Masterclass we recently held inside Playbook. Not winter as a weather problem—but winter as a stress test on your equipment, your drivers, your cash flow, your dispatch decisions, […]

That story feels familiar to small carriers for a reason. Spot rates don’t move on a schedule, and they don’t follow clean rules. For years, the industry has tried to predict them with confidence — the turn is coming, capacity is tightening, just wait a few more weeks. After enough missed calls, you stop reacting. […]

FreightWaves spoke with Jackson Alexander, Executive Vice President of Sales at Reliance Partners, about what leads to nuclear verdicts, how to mitigate risk, and how the state of the insurance market for motor carriers is changing.

California is expected to reissue approximately 17,000 non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses it planned to revoke after federal enforcement pressure, setting up what may become the most significant federal-state confrontation over CDL authority in decades.

Your truck isn’t just a piece of equipment. It’s your office. Your income. Your schedule. Your leverage. And the moment a DPF light or engine fault shows up on the dash, all of that can grind to a halt. That reality is exactly why this recent episode of The Long Haul hit home for so […]

A flatbed truck hauling over-sized cargo damaged six county overpass bridges along Oklahoma’s Will Rogers Turnpike on Tuesday, forcing multiple closures.

Nirvana Insurance snags $100M pre-emptive Series D led by Valor Equity, with Lightspeed and General Catalyst joining in. CEO Rushil Goel: AI will redefine underwriting amid 20% rate hikes.

When new trucks became impossible to source, fleets had to push assets past a million miles. The ones that survived did one thing right: they greased.

RPM’s second acquisition this month adds more services to the non-asset auto hauler.