The ‘ingenious strategy’ behind most truckers’ least favorite week of the year: International Roadcheck

International Roadcheck Week is hardly the sexiest topic in trucking, but it is a darn-tootin’ important one. Inspectors in the U.S. and Canada halt tens of thousands of trucks for vehicle inspections for a few days every summer or early fall. They remove thousands of trucks and drivers from the road; in 2021, 16.5% of inspected vehicles were put out of service along with 5.3% of drivers.

It’s uncommon for truck drivers to actually get their vehicles inspected at random during most of the year. To avoid International Roadcheck Week, many truckers simply don’t drive during that period of time — which, presumably, means more unsafe vehicles and drivers on the road outside of the inspection blitz. It’s a question that ate at Andrew Balthrop, a research associate at the University of Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of Business.

Around 5% fewer one-person trucking companies are active during International Roadcheck Week. But Balthrop and his fellow researcher, Alex Scott of the University of Tennessee, found a major upside to the inspection blitz — even with all the folks who avoid it. According to their working paper published in March 2021, vehicles are safer a month before and after the inspection period. There’s a 1.8% reduction of vehicle violations, according to Balthrop and Scott’s analysis. Surprise inspection blitzes don’t result in the same uptick of compliance.

I caught up with Balthrop about his research last week at FreightWaves’ Future of Supply Chain conference, and we chatted again on the phone this week about his findings on International Roadcheck Week.

Enjoy a bonus MODES and a lightly edited transcription of our phone interview:

FREIGHTWAVES: For our readers who are not aware of what Roadcheck Week actually is, can you explain a little bit about what it and why it is important to drivers and companies?

BALTHROP: “The International Roadcheck is part of an alliance between the inspectors in Canada and the ones in Mexico and the U.S. to have a unified framework for making sure trucks are safe to operate. That should make it easier to go across borders when you have this kind of unified structure.

“In the U.S., one of these CVSA inspection blitzes is the International Roadcheck that happens for three days in the summer. Usually it’s a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And usually it’s the first week in June.

“And in it, they focus on Level One inspections, the North American Standard Inspection where they inspect the driver records, the hours of service, the licensure and I believe medical records as well. Then they inspect the truck. It’s an in-depth inspection where the inspector will actually crawl under the truck to look at various things. And these inspections, from the data that I’ve seen, take about a half an hour on average.

“During the Roadcheck Week, they’ll do about 60,000 inspections, so 20,000 a day. They’re going to pull over a lot of trucks, and this can cause a little bit of congestion at the weigh stations and the roadside inspections localities as the inspectors are doing these inspections.”

Roadcheck Week doesn’t catch all truck drivers, but it has a long-lasting benefit to safety

FREIGHTWAVES: So, can most drivers kind of expect to be pulled over? How likely is that?

BALTHROP: “There’s 1 million or 3 million trucks on the road, somewhere around there on any given day. With 20,000 inspections, most drivers still will not get inspected, but there’s going to be a higher proportion of drivers inspected.

“You’re more likely to get inspected on these days. If you don’t have a recent inspection on your record, or if you have a bad recent inspection on your record, you’re more likely to be pulled over on these days.”

FREIGHTWAVES: Your research focused on that it’s just unusual that this inspection is announced, that it’s planned. We were talking before about how normally, if you’re trying to assure quality or compliance, you would not announce an inspection in advance. It would be more of a surprise-type situation.

Can you walk us through why that’s so unusual, or what’s the rationale that you see behind announcing it in advance?

BALTHROP: “It is unusual, and on the surface, it doesn’t make much sense, but it turns out to be kind of an ingenious strategy. So I’ll walk through it here.

“Over the course of a year, there’ll be 2 million inspections of 3 or 4 million trucks out there. The average rate of inspections is pretty low. It’s not uncommon for truckers to go years without having an inspection. With this low inspection intensity, the FMCSA has sort of a problem of, how does it get anybody to abide by the regulations?

“I’m a jaded economist, and I don’t worry or consider too much ethics and morality and all that kind of stuff. It comes down to incentives for drivers to follow these inspections. The incentives do guide behavior. So, how could the FMCSA incentivize drivers to follow these regulations more closely and adhere to the standards?

“They do this by announcing the blitz. This does two things. On one side, it allows everybody to prepare in advance. There’s a bunch of anecdotal evidence out there that people do prepare for these blitzes in advance. They will have their trucks inspected beforehand for any problems. They’ll time maintenance and upkeep in advance to make sure that their vehicles are in order. “They’ll be a little bit more cognizant of the driver-side regulations. One thing we notice in our study is that hours-of-service violations really drop during these extensions, because people see them coming. They don’t fudge the books in any way.”

Owner-operators can evade Roadcheck Week. Big carriers, not so much.

BALTHROP: “The issue with the announcement, on the flip side, is that it allows people to just dodge the inspection entirely. For a long time, people have talked about how owner-operators and smaller carriers time their vacations for this particular time. They could do this for a couple reasons. To avoid the hassle is a nice way to put it, but it also allows you to be noncompliant to avoid the high-intensity inspections.

“You have this balance here that on one side you get the behavior you want with people complying with regulations. That’s the behavior the FMCSA wants. But on the flip side, you get a bunch of people that are kind of outright dodging inspections.

“When you compare these two things on balance, the policy is actually pretty effective because you get a lot of people focused on maintaining their trucks and obeying the rules during that particular week. Especially with the vehicle maintenance stuff, that lasts a long time.

“In our research, we saw that vehicle violations, a month before and up to a month afterwards, is when you still notice your vehicle violations. That trucks are kind of better maintained around these blitzes.

“The ingenious aspect of it is that the FMCSA, by concentrating their inspection resources all at one time and announcing it, they’re making it clear that they’re serious about enforcing these regulations and everybody prepares for it. For the number of inspections that are happening, you get fewer tickets than you would have otherwise expected.

“The FMCSA, they’re putting people through a little bit of a hassle, but they’re not having to write a bunch of tickets to get people to comply. They’re not really punishing a whole bunch of people because, by making this apparent that this is going to happen, people comply and the FMCSA gets what they want essentially without having to come down on carriers too hard.”

A convenient time for a vacation, indeed

FREIGHTWAVES: OK, interesting. And how does this pattern of shutting down, how does that compare for an owner-operator versus a driver for a big fleet?

BALTHROP: “If you’re a motor carrier with thousands of power units, you can’t just pack up and not do business on a particular day. They just don’t have that option. So they get inspected at a higher intensity, and you see the larger carriers kind of more focused on making sure that they’re prepared for these inspections. With so many inspections, the larger carriers are going to be inspected at higher rates. You can really damage your reputation if your equipment isn’t in order on this particular day.

“Versus the smaller carriers, especially if you’re talking about a single-vehicle fleet, an owner-operator type, it is not that difficult to just not work for those three days. And so you see a lot about that.

“In terms of what the roadway composition looks like, if we look at inspection data and relative to a typical day with the usual inspections, on these Roadcheck days, you have about 5% fewer owner-operators on the road than you otherwise would expect.”

FREIGHTWAVES: Wow. And when you say owner-operators, you also mean just like fleets with just —

BALTHROP: “One-vehicle fleets.”

FREIGHTWAVES: OK, that’s interesting.

BALTHROP: “You know, you see a little bit of effect with the smaller fleets, below six vehicles, but it basically disappears by the time you get to a hundred vehicles.

“This effect is being driven by smaller carriers staying off the road in terms of avoidance. You see this goes also how you would expect; it’s also older vehicles that stay off the road. This is correlated with carrier size. The larger carriers use newer vehicles and owner-operators tend to use some of the older vehicles. But it’s particularly the older vehicles that are off the road.

“This makes intuitive sense. Older vehicles are more costly to keep compliant. Maintenance is more costly, and they’ve been around longer so there’s time for more stuff to have broken essentially.

How a truck driver gets stopped for inspection

FREIGHTWAVES: Can you explain a little bit more, the idea of having this inspection history and why it would benefit a larger or small carrier?

BALTHROP: “Getting flagged for inspection is sort of random, but not totally. If somebody notices something obviously wrong with your truck, that’s ground for a more in-depth inspection. Or if you get pulled over for some other reason, this can be grounds for inspection of some type.

“But there’s also the inspection selection service. The computer program that is random, that it randomly flags people in for inspection, but it’s based on your inspection history.

“So if your firm hasn’t been inspected recently, or if your carrier doesn’t have a very dense inspection history, you’ll be more likely to trigger that system to pull you in and have you inspected. If you have a dense inspection history, you’re less likely to get inspected.”

FREIGHTWAVES: So how do you get pulled over for inspection? As a person who only drives a passenger car, my main interaction with being pulled over is, I’m driving down the freeway or wherever, and I get stopped by the police. How does it work for a truck driver? How does getting pulled over or inspected work in that way?

BALTHROP: “The law is that you cannot pass a weigh station without pulling in and getting weighed. At that point they may flag you to be inspected. Now, in the past decade or two, there’s been a bunch of electronic devices that are installed in cabs. You may have heard of PrePass or Drivewise. This allows you to pass weigh stations.

“I don’t have data on how many trucks have the in-cab devices. But from a trucking perspective, they’re so convenient that you don’t have to stop every time you cross a state line. I think the vast, overwhelming majority of trucks have some sort of one of these electronic devices. The DOT inspectors at these roadside inspection points have a dial they can twist essentially about how many people they want to inspect.

“So during the roadcheck inspection week, they’ll crank that dial all the way up and pull everybody over. And if they get too backed up, they might crank it back down a little bit and so on.”

FREIGHTWAVES: OK, interesting. It reminds me of a highly sophisticated E‑ZPass.

A $10 million-plus expense to trucking companies every year … but it’s worth it if just one fatal crash is avoided

FREIGHTWAVES: Zooming out, when we hear about large truck crashes, something like a vehicle maintenance issue is not really the most sexy explanation. But just looking at the FMCSA data, in 29% of all truck crashes, a major factor is brake problems. So it seems like a lot of the truck crashes on the road are caused by vehicle maintenance, versus something like the driver using illegal drugs or some other sort of more dramatic explanation. Can you speak a little bit to why this sort of vehicle maintenance is important for safety in preventing large crashes?

BALTHROP: “We did a little bit of a back-of-the-envelope cost benefit analysis of this. Let me try and make sure I remember it clearly, but we have it in the paper that the cost of this on one side is that you have the compliance costs the firms are undertaking, and then you have to add to that the delay costs from doing this, and then the cost of the inspection itself, having to pay federal inspectors to do this.

“On the benefit side, it reduces crashes. So when we add up, just looking at the cost of what an inspection is, we don’t have a good idea of how to measure the compliance cost. It’d be fun to measure the delay cost, but I don’t have good enough price data on that to get at that cost.

“But if you look at what the cost of an inspection is, it is something like $100 or $120 is what you would pay to have one of these inspections done privately. A lot of people do this in the run-up to inspections, and have it done privately so that you can fix whatever the problems are and be sure that you would pass the FMCSA inspection.

“With that $120 figure, if you aggregate that up to 60,000 inspections or whatever, and you take that in comparison, I’m going to give you a bad figure here, it’s on the order of $10 million. That is about the value of a statistical human life. Looking at this economically, it’s worthwhile if it saves one human life. If you identify just one faulty brake system that would’ve resulted in an accident, you’re getting some value out of the program.

“When you add those other costs in there, we’re going to need to save a couple of lives, but in terms of cost benefit analysis with this kind of stuff, we’re usually looking at orders of magnitude differences in cost and benefits to say something for sure.

“If you can save just a couple lives, this program will pay for itself.”

Time to start inspecting in the winter

FREIGHTWAVES: Then one last question: Is there any rationale for this program happening in the summer?

BALTHROP: “I think part of it is that for the inspectors this gets much harder and much more miserable to do in winter conditions.”

FREIGHTWAVES: That makes sense.

BALTHROP: “Inspectors are less productive. One of the things that we talk about in the paper, that they have in addition to the International Roadcheck, is that they have Brake Week where they focus a little bit more on brake inspections. You have Operation Safe Driver a little bit later on in the summer, usually in September, where it’s a little bit more focused on passenger vehicles and how they drive around these trucks.

“But there’s not one in the winter time. There’s an unannounced brake check that usually happens in May, a surprise inspection that’s just one day. But you’re right in pointing out that it might be worthwhile having one of these in the wintertime. You have this periodic high-intensity inspection that kind of incentivizes everybody to be compliant through the summer.

“But there’s nothing in the winter, so that’s an area. But if I was managing the FMCSA, that would be one of the first questions I ask, ‘Why don’t we have one of these in the wintertime?’”

FREIGHTWAVES: That makes sense. Maybe they can do it in the South or something. Maybe a Miami January inspection …

That’s it for this special bonus MODES. Subscribe here if you’re not already receiving MODES in your inbox every Thursday. Email the reporter at rpremack@www.freightwaves.com with your own tales on International Roadcheck Week or any other trucking topics.

Why the Northeast is quietly running out of diesel

The nozzle of a diesel fuel pump is inserted into the tank of a commercial truck as its driver looks on the bankground.

The East Coast of the U.S. is reporting its lowest seasonal diesel inventory on record. And some trucking companies appear spooked.

The East Coast typically stores around 62 million barrels of diesel during the month of May, according to Department of Energy data. But as of last Friday, that region of the U.S. is reporting under 52 million barrels.

The sharp increase of diesel prices has been a major stressor in America’s $800 billion trucking industry since the beginning of 2022. According to DOE figures, the price per gallon of diesel has reached record highs — a whopping $5.62 per gallon. It’s even higher on the East Coast at $5.90, up 63% from the beginning of this year.

When relief is coming isn’t yet clear, and experts say higher prices are the only way to attract more diesel into the Northeast.

“I wish I had some good news for the Northeast, but it’s bedlam,” Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at OPIS, told FreightWaves.

2022 has seen record-setting diesel prices. (SONAR)

Everyday Americans don’t fill up their cars with diesel, but the fuel powers our nation’s agriculture, industrial and transportation networks. More expensive diesel means the price of everything is liable to increase. Trucks, trains, barges and the like consumed about 122 million gallons of diesel per day in 2020.

Patrick DeHaan, a vice president of communications at fuel price site GasBuddy, reported that retail truck stops are hauling fuel from the Great Lakes to the Northeast, calling it “extraordinary.” We’ve also seen anecdotal reports from truck drivers posting company memos:

pic.twitter.com/yFYyjzYMWE
— Craig Fuller 🛩🚛🇺🇦 (@FreightAlley) May 11, 2022

#FuelShortage #DieselShortage #SupplyChainCrisis pic.twitter.com/zVmXlshXN0
— Don Ricardo 👑 🇺🇸 🇩🇴 (@NjPier) May 5, 2022

Pilot Flying J and Love’s, two of America’s largest truck stops, told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that they were not planning to restrict diesel purchases, but were monitoring low diesel inventory.

Not unlike every other supply chain crunch we’ve seen in the past few years, the cause of the Northeast’s diesel shortage is multifaceted. A yearslong degradation of refineries is rubbing against the Gulf Coast preferring to ship its oil to Europe and Latin America.

Here’s a breakdown:

1. The East Coast has lost half of its refineries.

As Bloomberg’s Javier Blas wrote on May 4 (emphasis ours):

In the past 15 years, the number of refineries on the U.S. East Coast has halved to just seven. The closures have reduced the region’s oil processing capacity to just 818,000 barrels per day, down from 1.64 million barrels per day in 2009. Regional oil demand, however, is stronger.

Rory Johnston, a managing director at Toronto-based research firm Price Street and writer of the newsletter Commodity Context, told FreightWaves that refining is a “thankless industry,” with intense regulations that have limited the opening of new refineries. The Great Recession of 2008 led to several East Coast refineries shuttering, but there have been more recent shutdowns too. One major Philadelphia refinery shuttered in 2019 after a giant fire (and it already had declared bankruptcy), and another refinery in Newfoundland shut down in 2020.

Billionaire John Catsimatidis owns a small oil refinery in the US East Coast and several hundred gas stations from Pennsylvania to New York:

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see diesel being rationed on the East Coast this summer.” #OOTT #DieselCrisis https://t.co/9g1e5UIf20
— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) May 11, 2022

2. It’s a financial risk to bring diesel to the Northeast.

The Northeast has increasingly relied on diesel from the Gulf region. Much of that diesel travels to the Northeast through the famous and much-adored Colonial Pipeline. You may remember the 5,500-mile pipeline from last year, when a ransomware attack shuttered it for nearly a week!

It takes 18 days for oil to travel on the Colonial Pipeline from its source in Houston to New York City (or, more specifically, Linden, New Jersey), Kloza said.

That’s a long enough time to prioritize Colonial pipelines financially risky for traders — or, as Kloza said, “incredibly dangerous” — thanks to a concept called “backwardation.”

Backwardation refers to the market condition in which the spot price of a commodity like diesel is higher than its futures price. It’s only gotten stronger over time in the diesel market, Kloza said. So, a company could send off a shipment of diesel and find that it dropped by $1 per gallon in the time the diesel traveled from the Gulf Coast to New York — er, New Jersey. That could mean hundreds of thousands or more in lost profits, so traders often avoid such a fate.

“We’re not in an era where there are any U.S. refiners or big U.S. oil companies who would ‘take one for the team’ and bring cargo in where it’s needed,” Kloza said.

The desperation is showing in New England and the mid-Atlantic regions. New England diesel retail prices are up 75% from the beginning of 2022, per DOE data. In the mid-Atlantic, diesel is up 67%.

It’s not worth the risk, even amid ultra-high prices. As FreightWaves’ Kingston reported last week, the spread between a gallon of diesel in the Gulf Coast and its New York harbor price is usually a few cents. Last week, that swung up to 66 cents.

But that uptick still isn’t justifying moving oil to the Northeast — particularly when traders can make so much more money selling diesel abroad.

3. Of course, we can blame COVID and the crisis in Ukraine.

The catalyst for this diesel shortage, of course, is the ongoing conflict in Ukraine — particularly Europe’s desperation for diesel after weaning off Russian molecules.

As CNBC reported in March, Europe is a net importer of diesel. Europe consumed some 6.8 million barrels of diesel each day in 2019; Russia exported some 600,000 barrels per day of that. Today, Europe has only eliminated one-third of its Russian diesel, so prices are expected to continue to climb amid that transition. Latin America, too, has been clammoring for U.S. diesel.

The Gulf Coast has been happy to provide such diesel, amid “insane” prices for diesel abroad, said Johnston. Waterborne exports of diesel from the U.S. Gulf Coast hit record highs last month, according to oil analytics firm Vortexa. (The records only date back to 2016.)

Naturally, COVID is also to blame for the Northeast’s run on diesel. Those refineries still retained on the East Coast scaled back during the pandemic due to staffing issues. It takes six months to a year to reignite refineries that were previously shuttered, Kloza said.

The ‘everything shortage’ endures

It’s been a tale as old as, well, last year. An industry is quietly hampered by supply issues for years, or even decades, and COVID pulls back the curtains on its unsteady foundation. It’s particularly jarring for commodities we never thought about before, like shipping containers or pallets, but that quietly underpinned our livelihood all along.

Recall the Great Lumber Shortage of 2020? Big Lumber had unusually low stockpiles of wood by the summer of 2020, thanks to a vicious 2019 in the lumber industry shuttering sawmills and the spring of 2020 sparking staffing issues. (There was also a nasty beetle infestation.) Those in lumber expected the pandemic to slow the economy, not ignite online shopping, construction and housing mania. It meant lumber went from around $350 per thousand board feet pre-pandemic to a crushing $1,515 by the spring of 2021. The lumber price roller coaster persists today.

In diesel, there’s no beetle infestation, but there are plenty of other headaches. It all means higher fuel prices on the East Coast, particularly the Northeast, to lure molecules from the Gulf Coast. And, down the line, probably more expensive stuff for you.

Do you work in the trucking industry? Do you want to say that you hate or love MODES? Are you simply wanting to chitchat? Email the author at rpremack@www.freightwaves.com, and don’t forget to subscribe to MODES.

Updated on May 13 with the latest comments from truck stops.

Exclusive: Central Freight Lines to shut down after 96 years

Nearly, 2,100 employees will be laid off right before Christmas. Central Freight Lines is the largest trucking company to close since Celadon ceased operations in 2019.

Waco, Texas-based Central Freight Lines has notified drivers, employees and customers that the less-than-truckload carrier plans to wind down operations on Monday after 96 years, the company’s president told FreightWaves on Saturday.

“It’s just horrible,” said CFL President Bruce Kalem.

A source close to CFL told FreightWaves that CFL had “too much debt and too many unpaid bills” to continue operating, despite exploring all available options to keep its doors open.

Kalem agreed.

“Years of operating losses and struggles for many years sapped our liquidity, and we had no other place to go at this point,” Kalem told FreightWaves. “Nobody is going to make money on this closing, nobody.”

Central Freight will cease picking up new shipments effective Monday and expects to deliver substantially all freight in its system by Dec. 20, according to a company statement.

A source familiar with the company said he is unsure whether CFL will file Chapter 7 or “liquidate outside of bankruptcy,” but that the LTL carrier has no plans to reorganize.

The company reshuffled its executive team nearly a year ago in an effort to stay afloat, including adding the company’s owner, Jerry Moyes, as CFL’s interim president and chief executive officer. Moyes remained CEO after Kalem was elevated to president in July.

“I think it was surprising that there wasn’t a buyer for the entire company, but buyers were interested in certain pieces but not in the whole thing,” the source, who didn’t want to be identified, told FreightWaves. “Part of it could have been that just the network was so expansive that there was too much overlap with some of the buyers that they didn’t need locations or employees in the places where they already had strong operations.”

Third-party logistics provider GlobalTranz notified its customers that it had removed CFL as “a blanket and CSP carrier option immediately, to prevent any new bookings,” multiple sources told FreightWaves on Saturday.

CFL, which has over 2,100 employees, including 1,325 drivers, and 1,600 power units, is in discussions with “key customers and vendors and expects sufficient liquidity to complete deliveries over the next week in an orderly manner,” a CFL spokesperson said. Approximately 820 employees are based at the company headquarters in Waco.

Despite diligent efforts, CFL “was unable to gain commitments to fund ongoing operations, find a buyer of the entire business or fund a Chapter 11 reorganization,” another source familiar with the company told FreightWaves.

Kalem said the company had 65 terminals prior to its decision to shutter operations.

FreightWaves received a tip from a source nearly two weeks ago that CFL wasn’t renewing its East Coast terminal leases but was unable to confirm the information with CFL executives.

Another source told FreightWaves that some of the LTL carrier’s West Coast terminals had been sold recently, but that no reason was given for the transactions.

At that time, Kalem said the company was “working to find alternatives” and couldn’t speak because of nondisclosure agreements. He said executives at CFL, including Moyes, were trying to do everything to “save the company.”

“Jerry [Moyes] pumped a lot of money into the company, but it just wasn’t enough,” Kalem said.

Kalem said he’s aware that a large carrier is interested in hiring many of CFL’s drivers but isn’t able to name names at this point.

“Central Freight is in negotiations to sell a substantial portion of its equipment,” the company said in a statement. “Additionally, Central Freight is coordinating with other regional LTL carriers to afford its employees opportunities to apply for other LTL jobs in their area.”

As of late Saturday night, Kalem said fuel cards are working and drivers will be paid for freight they’ve hauled for the LTL carrier until all freight is delivered by the Dec. 20 target date.

“I’m going to work feverishly with the time I have left to get these good people jobs — I owe it to them,” Kalem told FreightWaves. “We are going to pay our drivers — that’s why we had to close it like we’re doing now. We are going to deliver all of the freight that’s in our system by next week, and we believe we can do that.”

During the outset of the pandemic, Central Freight Lines was one of four trucking-related companies that received the maximum award of $10 million through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). This occurred around the time that CFL drivers and employees were forced to take pay cuts, a move that didn’t go over well with drivers.

“It all went to payroll,” Kalem said about the PPP funds. “Yes, our employees and drivers did take a pay cut over the past few years, and we gave most of it back, even raised pay over the past several months, but it just wasn’t enough to attract drivers.”

FreightWaves staffers Todd Maiden, Timothy Dooner and JP Hampstead contributed to this report.

Watch: Central Freight Lines’ impact on the LTL market

FreightWaves CEO and founder Craig Fuller reacts to the Central Freight Lines news:

“With Central struggling for many years and unable to reach profitability, it makes sense that they would want to liquidate while equipment and real estate are fetching record prices.”

Central Freight Lines statement

Here is the statement given by Central Freight Lines to FreightWaves late Saturday after reports surfaced of its impending closure:

“We make this announcement with a heavy heart and extreme regret that the Company cannot continue after nearly 100 years in operation. We would like to thank our outstanding workforce for persevering and for professionally completing the wind-down while supporting each other. Additionally, we thank our customers, vendors, equipment providers, and other stakeholders for their loyalty and support.

“The Company explored all available options to keep operations going. However, operating losses sapped all remaining sources of liquidity, and the Company’s liabilities far exceed its assets, all of which are subject to liens in favor of multiple creditors. Despite diligent efforts, the Company was unable to gain commitments to fund ongoing operations, find a buyer of the entire business, or fund a Chapter 11 reorganization. Given its limited remaining resources, the Company concluded that the best alternative was a safe and orderly wind-down. As we complete the wind-down process, our primary goal will be to offer the smoothest possible transition for all stakeholders while maximizing the amount available to apply toward the Company’s obligations.

“Central Freight is in negotiations to sell a substantial portion of its equipment. Additionally, Central Freight is coordinating with other regional LTL carriers to afford its employees opportunities to apply for other LTL jobs in their area. Discussions are ongoing and no purchase of assets or offer of employment is guaranteed.”

Brief history of Central Freight Lines

1925	Founded in Waco, Texas, by Woody Callan Sr.
1927	Institutes regular routes in Texas between Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin.
1938	Dallas facility opens as world’s largest freight facility.
1991	Receives 48-state interstate operating authority, expands into Oklahoma.
1993	Joins Roadway Regional Group and begins service in Louisiana.
1994	Expands into Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Mississippi.
1995	Consolidation of Central, Coles, Spartan and Viking Freight Systems into Viking Freight Inc. is announced. Central’s Waco corporate HQ starts closure.
1996	Becomes the Southwestern Division of Viking Freight Inc.
1997	Investment group led by senior Central management purchases assets of former CFL from Viking Freight and reopens as a new Central Freight Lines.
1999	Expands into California and Nevada.
2009	CFL Network provides service to Idaho, Utah, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
2013	Acquires Circle Delivery of Tennessee.
2014	Acquires DTI, a Georgia LTL carrier.
2017	Acquires Wilson; new division created with an increase of 80 terminals.
2020	Wins Carrier of the Year from GlobalTranz. Acquires Volunteer Express Inc. of Dresden, Tennessee.

Source: Central Freight Lines

Warehouse cramming is about to begin — Freightonomics

nVision Global, is a leading Global Freight Audit, Supply Chain Management Services company offering enterprise-wide supply chain solutions. With over 4,000 global business “Partners”, nVision Global not only provides prompt, accurate Freight Audit Solutions, but also providing industry-leading Supply Chain Information Management solutions and services necessary to help its clients maximize efficiencies within their supply chain. To learn more, visit www.nvisionglobal.com

Warehouse space is at a premium right now and with peak season right around the corner, shippers are starting to scramble for space.

Zach Strickland and Anthony Smith look into what shippers are doing to prepare for the end-of-year crunch. They welcome Zac Rogers from Colorado State University to the show to talk through the industry tightness.

The three also talk about the latest Logistics Managers Index results and what they mean for the fourth quarter of 2021.

You can find more Freightonomics episodes and recaps for all our live podcasts here.

Seasonality pushing rejections and rates higher ahead of the Fourth

This week’s DHL Supply Chain Pricing Power Index: 75 (Carriers)

Last week’s DHL Supply Chain Pricing Power Index: 70 (Carriers)

Three-month DHL Supply Chain Pricing Power Index Outlook: 70 (Carriers)

The DHL Supply Chain Pricing Power Index uses the analytics and data in FreightWaves SONAR to analyze the market and estimate the negotiating power for rates between shippers and carriers.

The Pricing Power Index is based on the following indicators:

Load volumes: Absolute levels positive for carriers, momentum neutral

The Outbound Tender Volume Index at 15,980 is nominally higher now than basically at any point in the past 12 months with the exception of the week prior to Thanksgiving/Black Friday last year. OTVI captures all electronic tenders, including rejected ones, so when accounting for the rejection rate, we can get an even more accurate look at volumes.

OTVI rose through the back half of May into the national holiday and has risen even further since. Throughout the back half of May and into the middle of June, tender rejections declined substantially. Meaning, current volume throughput is actually understated when comparing OTVI now to OTVI in November 2020. After adjusting for rejected tenders, the accepted outbound tender volume index is just 2.2% below the 2020 peak in November. At that time, OTVI surged towards 17,000, but the rejection rate moved in-kind towards its natural ceiling of 28%. So, the total accepted freight tenders in mid-June is comparable to the peakiest of peak seasons in 2020. Incredible.

However, since the middle of June, tender rejections have begun increasing again heading into Independence Day, a time when many drivers spend time off the road with their families. The move higher in OTVI this week has been driven primarily by higher rejection rates, rather than higher freight demand.

Over the past month, the drivers of freight volumes have continued to be imports and from just about every port. The west coast continues to provide seemingly non-stop container ships, while Houston, New Orleans, Miami and Savannah are seeing very strong throughput as well.

It is van volumes that are driving freight markets higher right now. The Reefer Outbound Tender Volume index has tumbled 25% since its all-time high in the weeks after the polar vortex in February. Since Memorial Day, ROTVI has fallen another 10.5%. This is likely a factor of declining grocery demand, but I would expect the trend to reverse course in the near future as summer festivities accelerate.

Dry van volumes pushed higher in the back half of May and into June while reefer volumes have declined significantly.

SONAR: VOTVI.USA (Blue); ROTVI.USA (Green)

The congestion at our nation’s ports has spread from Los Angeles and Long Beach to Oakland, California. The California coastline is a parking lot of container ships, most of which are full to the brim with imports, awaiting berth. As detailed in the economic section, there are some signs that the reversion is underway with Americans paring back spending on pandemic superstar categories in favor of airlines, lodging and entertainment. But spending remains strong despite the moderation, and low inventory levels offset much of the decline that will occur from slowing demand. Real inventories are 3% higher now than pre-pandemic, but real sales growth is far outpacing inventory growth, leading to the lowest inventory-to-sales ratio in decades.

On the manufacturing side, the ISM Manufacturing PMI expanded in May after declining in April. We’ve been in expansionary territory for 12 consecutive months. New orders, production, imports/exports and employment are all growing. The major issues should come as no surprise: Deliveries are slowing, backlogs are growing and inventories are too low.

In all, there are many, many catalysts to keep freight demand strong for the foreseeable future. Americans are traveling and spending on services at a high clip, but the high savings rate is enabling it to occur without a massive detriment to goods spending.

SONAR: OTVI.USA (2021 – Blue; 2020 – Green; 2019 – Orange; 2018 – Purple)

Tender rejections: Absolute level and momentum positive for carriers

After declining steadily from mid-March to mid-May, the Outbound Tender Reject Index has reversed course heading into Independence Day. This is typical for a national holiday as carriers selectively choose loads to bring drivers closer to home. OTRI now sits above 25% for the first time in June.

One of our newest indices in SONAR gives us the ability to compare markets on as close to an apples-to-apples basis as possible. FreightWaves’ Carrier Trend Market Score indices are divided into two perspectives – shipper/broker and carrier. The scores are positioned on a scale from 1-100 and have values measuring van and refrigerated (reefer) capacity. The higher values represent more favorable trends for whichever perspective. For instance, a value near the high-end of the range would suggest very favorable conditions for carriers in our carrier capacity trend score index.

For the past several weeks, capacity disparities have been driven by import volumes. The markets with the tightest carrier capacity coincide with the nation’s busiest ports. Ontario, California, Savannah, Georgia, and Atlanta all have carrier capacity trend market scores of 100.

SONAR: Capacity Trend Market Score (Carriers – VAN)

By mode. Reefer rejection rates tumbled from it’s all-time high in March to under 35% in mid-June before popping higher over the past two weeks. Reefer rejections are still quite high from a historical standpoint at 38%, but are significantly lower than just three months ago when reefer carriers were rejecting half of all electronically tendered loads.

SONAR: VOTRI.USA (Blue); ROTRI.USA (Orange)

Dry van tenders make up the majority of all tenders, so the van rejection rate mirrors the aggregate index closely. Van rejections have surged from ~23% to ~26% over the past two weeks.

Yes, one-in-four loads being rejected is not ideal, but it’s better than 30%. I am unaware of any meaningful signals that capacity is being added at a rate that would change my outlook. With so many catalysts for demand, and many constraints on drivers including the Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse, driver training school closures and continued government unemployment benefits, the outlook is tight throughout this year and into 2022. That’s not to say we won’t see improvement as consumers revert to pre-pandemic spending habits and drivers enter or reenter the market. But I’m not expecting any quick reversal of this environment; there are simply too many catalysts driving volume and suppressing capacity.

SONAR: OTRI.USA (2020/21 – Blue; 2020 – Green; 2019 – Orange)

Freight rates: Absolute level and momentum positive for carriers

Throughout June, spot rates have moderated while contract rates have pushed higher. The Truckstop.com dry van rate per mile (incl. fuel) has fallen from $3.21 to $3.11 since the beginning of June, while FreightWaves van contract rates have risen from $2.50 to $2.59/mile, exclusive of fuel.

I still believe the Truckstop.com dry van national average will not retest the post-vortex surge pricing that brought spot rates up to an all-time high of $3.30. But, there aren’t many catalysts to bring spot rates down anytime soon either. Demand is unwavering with continued strong consumer goods demand, humming industrial recovery and a potentially cooling, yet still sizzling, hot housing market. And carriers can’t fill enough trucks to keep up with demand.

Prior to the seasonal movements we’re seeing in tender rejections, routing guides generally had been improving through Q2. We should continue to see a convergence between spot and contract rates, but spot rates will remain historically very elevated throughout the summer as demand simply outstrips capacity.

SONAR: TSTOPVRPM.USA (Blue); VCRPM1.USA (Green)

Economic stats: Momentum and absolute level neutral

Several economic releases this week are worth noting.

Weekly jobless claims were released Thursday and give us one of the best close-to-real-time indicators of the overall economy. This week, the data was again very promising as the labor market continues on a bumpy but trajectorially stable recovery path.

First-time filings totaled 411,000 for the week ended June 19, a slight decrease from the previous total of 418,000 but worse than the 380,000 Dow Jones estimate, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Initial claims have held above 400,000 for consecutive weeks after falling to a pandemic low of 374,000 three weeks ago. As things stand, the current level of initial claims is about double where it was prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The good news on the jobs front is that continuing claims are on the decline, falling to 3.39 million, a drop of 144,000. That number runs a week behind the headline claims total.

Initial jobless claims (weekly in May 2020-May 2021)

At the time of writing, the newest weekly data for the week ending May 29 had not been updated in SONAR. This week, claims fell from 405,000 to 385,000.

SONAR: IJC.USA

Consumer. Turning to consumer spending, as measured by Bank of America weekly card (both debit and credit) spending data, total card spending (TCS) in the latest week accelerated to 22% over 2019. This is the first time in June that TCS has topped 20% over 2019, but spending has been running up 16-19% consistently on a two-year comp for months. For contect, the average pre-pandemic two-year growth rate was about 8% (from 2012 to 2019).

The Bank of America team highlighted service spending in the nation’s two largest state economies, California and New York, which are now fully reopened. Spending at restaurants is now well above 2019 in both states, and the team believes there is more capacity for spending to accelerate in the states that were slower to reopen given pent-up demand.

There was also a notable acceleration in spending on clothing this week, according to Bank of America. It could be a reversal from some softening in the early weeks of June, or an indication of people refreshing wardrobes ahead of a return to work, more travel and vacations. One tepid statement for freight markets from this week;s report: Leisure spending is on the rise and durable goods spending is flatlining.

FreightWaves’ Flatbed Outbound Tender Reject Index, both a measure of relative demand and capacity, moves directionally with the ISM PMI.

SONAR: ISM.PMI (Blue); FOTRI.USA (Green)

Manufacturing. Over the past two weeks, regional manufacturing surveys have reported generally positive readings amid logistical challenges. The New York Fed’s Empire State business conditions index declined 6.9 points to 17.4 in June, retreating from strong readings the past two months. The Empire State Index is a diffusion index with a baseline of zero; any reading above zero indicates improving or expansionary conditions.

Delivery times lengthened to a new record during the month, new orders and shipments fell, and inventories entered negative territory. The supply chain and transportation challenges are as visible upstream as downstream, but overall the manufacturing sector is handling. Growth continued throughout the second quarter in both the Empire State and Philly Fed indices.

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s business activity index edged lower to a still robust 30.7 in June from 31.5 in the prior month. Unlike NY, the pace of shipments growth accelerated in the Philly region during June. The employment subcomponent rose to a very healthy 30.7 from 19.3 last month, the regional bank said.

Record-long lead times, wide-scale shortages of critical basic materials, rising commodities prices and difficulties in transporting products are continuing to affect all segments of the manufacturing economy, but demand remains strong.

For more information on the FreightWaves Freight Intel Group, please contact Kevin Hill at khill@www.freightwaves.com or Andrew Cox at acox@www.freightwaves.com.

Check out the newest episodes of our podcast, Great Quarter, Guys, here.

Project44 acquires ClearMetal to strengthen predictive tools

Project44, a leader in real-time visibility of the global supply chain, announced on Thursday it has acquired ClearMetal, a San Francisco-based supply chain planning software company that focuses on international freight visibility, predictive planning and overall customer experience. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

ClearMetal, founded by top software engineers and data scientists from Stanford, Google and other Silicon Valley elites, has created a “continuous delivery experience” that leverages proprietary machine learning algorithms that can forecast supply chain disruptions.

In an interview, Jason Duboe, chief growth officer at project44, explained that bringing in ClearMetal’s elite team is essential for the company’s future predictive solutions.

“Their team construct is fundamentally different. When you look at their data science, machine learning and computer science background, they are best in class,” he said. “Applying the team to solve really interesting challenges, starting with highly predictive ETA and deeper exception management to create more predictive analytics is really a key component here.”

Project44 recently acquired Ocean Insights to gain global supply chain vessel visibility and has announced it has expanded its truckload tracking services within Asia. Bringing on this new team of engineers will allow the company to capitalize on strong predictive tools, strengthening the supply chain of its customers.

“We’re going to be expanding deeper into Asia, and from a port perspective, getting data much earlier than competitors,” explained Duboe. “Our freight forwarder integrations will give us much deeper visibility from an end-to-end perspective in these regions.”

Along with the acquired skills the ClearMetal team will bring to project44, it brings a large book of customers, including large CPGs, retailers, manufacturers, distributors and chemical companies. These advanced use cases will strengthen the predictive planning tools, and project44 continues to expand into different customer markets.

“What we gain from ClearMetal is a holistic platform for anybody that joins the platform in the future,” said Duboe. “They have large customers with incredibly demanding and advanced use cases. So when it comes to order and inventory, functionality, supplier onboarding, and moving upstream into those processes, we can capture exceptions earlier on.”

Click here for more articles by Grace Sharkey.

Project44 expands real-time visibility into China

Project44 reels in Ocean Insights in ‘largest acquisition in visibility space’

‘Project44’s vision has always been global’

Borderlands Mexico: Texas cross-border traffic rises by 400 trucks through Saturday pilot

Borderlands Mexico is a weekly rundown of developments in the world of United States-Mexico cross-border trucking and trade. This week in Borderlands Mexico: Texas cross-border traffic rises by 400 trucks through Saturday pilot; Truck freight between US and Mexico reaches $75.4B in September; and Teleflex invests $5M in new medical device manufacturing facility in Mexico.

Texas cross-border traffic rises through Saturday pilot program

U.S. Customs and Border Protection expects to extend a pilot program expanding Saturday commercial truck operations at the World Trade Bridge in Laredo, Texas, for another 90 days as officials evaluate changes in cross-border freight traffic.

The pilot, which began Sept. 5, extends Saturday commercial processing by three hours, with operations running from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. The expansion was requested by Mexico’s National Customs Agency (ANAM) and trade stakeholders seeking to improve import and export truck flows.

Armando Taboada Jr., assistant director of field operations for CBP’s Laredo Field Office, said the expanded schedule has been accompanied by increased Saturday truck traffic and declining Sunday volumes.

Taboada said Saturday commercial truck traffic has increased by approximately 400 to 500 trucks, while Sunday crossings are averaging about 300 to 400 fewer trucks.

“It appears that some importers/carriers are shifting some truck crossings from Sundays to Saturdays,” Taboada told FreightWaves.

The shift suggests some cross-border trucking companies and importers are taking advantage of the expanded Saturday operating schedule rather than increasing their overall weekend freight movements.

The initial 90-day pilot is scheduled to conclude in early December, but CBP expects the program to continue for another three months to gather additional data on commercial cargo processing.

“It will depend on the final pilot numbers and input from the City of Laredo, Trade Stakeholders, and CBP,” Taboada said. “The pilot is expected to be extended another 90 days to get a proper gauge of commercial cargo truck processing results.”

Despite the increase in Saturday crossings, CBP has not observed significant congestion or processing delays at the World Trade Bridge.

“For the most part, traffic is steady and no major wait times or processing delays are being experienced,” Taboada said.

He credited improvements in the bridge’s commercial vehicle inspection infrastructure with helping CBP accommodate truck traffic.

Through the City of Laredo’s Donations Acceptance Program contributions, the World Trade Bridge expanded from seven primary inspection lanes to 19, including 15 regular lanes and four Free and Secure Trade (FAST)/Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (CTPAT) lanes.

Taboada said the additional inspection capacity has improved commercial truck processing during weekdays and weekends.

However, weekend commercial traffic remains substantially lower than weekday volumes.

CBP also released preliminary commercial truck and rail crossing statistics covering Aug. 23 through Nov. 7 across the eight ports of entry administered by its Laredo Field Office.

The figures include commercial truck movements at the World Trade Bridge, Colombia-Solidarity Bridge, Eagle Pass, Brownsville, Pharr, Hidalgo and other South Texas crossings.

The report also includes rail activity at Laredo, Eagle Pass and Brownsville, offering a broader view of commercial freight movements between Mexico and the United States.

The World Trade Bridge continues to account for a substantial share of commercial truck traffic in the Laredo Field Office, underscoring the importance of the crossing to U.S.-Mexico trade.

Truck freight between US and Mexico reaches $75.4B in September

The value of goods transported by trucks between the U.S. and Mexico reached $75.4 billion in September, accounting for approximately 78% of the $96.3 billion in total trade between the two countries, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS).

Total U.S.-Mexico freight trade increased 34.2% compared with September 2025, according to a BTS report released Friday.

Across both the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders, trucks transported $109.7 billion in freight during September, a 27.6% increase compared with the same month last year.

Combined North American transborder freight totaled $161.1 billion, up 23.4% year over year. U.S.-Canada freight accounted for $64.8 billion, a 10.1% increase.

Rail shipments between the United States and Mexico totaled $8.3 billion in September, followed by vessel freight at $6.5 billion, air cargo at $2.8 billion and pipeline shipments at $900 million.

Laredo, Texas, remained the leading U.S. truck freight gateway, with $38.1 billion in total cross-border freight across transportation modes during September, according to BTS. El Paso, Texas, and Otay Mesa, California, were also among the leading truck crossings for U.S.-Mexico trade.

The figures underscore trucking’s dominant role in North American trade, particularly along the U.S.-Mexico border, where manufacturers and shippers rely heavily on commercial vehicles to move goods between the two countries.

Teleflex invests $5M in new medical device manufacturing facility in Mexico

U.S.-based medical technology manufacturer Teleflex has inaugurated a $5 million machining facility in Chihuahua, Mexico, expanding its manufacturing capabilities for medical devices and specialized components.

The new 8,073-square-foot facility will manufacture high-precision tooling and components used in medical device production, according to a report by Mexico Industry.

The investment strengthens Teleflex’s existing manufacturing operations in Chihuahua, where the company operates four production plants employing approximately 2,000 workers.

The new machining workshop is designed to expand the company’s ability to produce specialized tools and precision components required for medical equipment manufacturing.

Headquartered in Wayne, Pennsylvania, Teleflex develops and manufactures medical technologies used in vascular access, interventional cardiology, anesthesia, surgery, urology and emergency medicine. The company serves U.S. healthcare providers and hospitals.

Teleflex operates in 36 countries and serves health care providers in more than 150 markets.

Why it matters: U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say extended weekend hours could provide more scheduling flexibility for cross-border carriers and shippers without significantly increasing processing delays.

Spot rates jump ahead of holidays

Chart of the Week: National Truckload Index – USA SONAR : NTI.USA

The National Truckload Index (NTI), which measures dry van spot rate movement across the U.S., jumped to its highest level since July in early November. The NTI rarely climbs this early ahead of the holidays. What’s driving the increase, and what does it mean for this year’s holiday shipping season?

Many may point to fuel as the reason for this unseasonal rise. However, while elevated fuel costs may help explain some of the year-over-year growth and the longer-term divergence between spot and rejection rates this fall, it is difficult to tie fuel cleanly to this recent spot market jump. The NTI includes fuel, yet diesel costs have fallen roughly 3.5% since late October while the NTI has risen more than 4% over the same period.

Fuel does influence rates with a lag, but diesel hasn’t seen a sharp increase since early September, which is well beyond the typical lag of a few weeks.

As mentioned in earlier articles, carriers can’t always pass along fuel costs unless the market will bear it. The same is true for any input cost, as many businesses know from trying to pass upstream inflation on to their customers. This latest jump appears to be driven by market conditions, though the picture is nuanced because there has been no corresponding rise in tender rejection rates.

National dry van rejection rates have been trending lower since July, though still elevated. Rejection rates above 10% is still a sign of insufficient capacity. Rejection rates and spot rates don’t move in a one-to-one relationship for several reasons, even if they tend to track each other over time. Perhaps the most important distinction is that tender data represents the much larger contracted freight market, while the spot market is a fringe environment that accounts for roughly 10% to 25% of truckload freight, depending on the market.

The recent disconnect between the contract and spot markets may be tied to a surge of freight moving outside of contracted agreements. On last week’s episode of Freightonomics, Dr. Zac Rogers, co-author of the Logistics Managers’ Index (LMI), said that many retailers appear to have waited until the last minute to bring inventory into the country.

This is reflected in the sharp jump in inventory level growth in the October LMI. The reading of 66.9 was the highest for this component of the index since 2022. The last-minute surge was the product of demand uncertainty, rising inventory holding costs, and more streamlined supply chains.

Demand uncertainty has been the story of 2026, as many retailers expected consumers to pull back on spending due to ongoing inflation. That has happened in some areas more than others, but in aggregate it has largely washed out.

Shippers have also been dealing with their own inflation, as the cost of holding inventory has increased significantly. This has pushed them toward just-in-time (JIT) ordering, which they have used with great success. With holding costs this high, the extra expense of shipping later is easier to justify. Intermodal has benefited greatly from elevated trucking and warehousing costs, growing by double digits over 2025 levels.

Dr. Rogers also noted that supply chains have evolved since COVID, becoming more streamlined and flexible. This lets shippers move freight through their networks more precisely, cutting transit time and allowing them to delay orders.

With the holidays approaching and the truckload market still not fully recovered, shippers likely know that waiting until the week before Thanksgiving will be expensive, so some are trying to get ahead of the curve.

Some of this freight may also be rail volume shifting back to truck after disruptions hit BNSF and CSX in recent weeks. Domestic container volumes still have not fully recovered and appear to be hitting a ceiling, unlike the previous two years, when domestic container volumes grew into December.

About the Chart of the Week

The FreightWaves Chart of the Week is a chart selection from SONAR that provides an interesting data point to describe the state of the freight markets. A chart is chosen from thousands of potential charts on SONAR to help participants visualize the freight market in real time. Each week a Market Expert will post a chart, along with commentary, live on the front page. After that, the Chart of the Week will be archived on FreightWaves.com for future reference.

SONAR aggregates data from hundreds of sources, presenting the data in charts and maps and providing commentary on what freight market experts want to know about the industry in real time.

The FreightWaves data science and product teams are releasing new datasets each week and enhancing the client experience.

To request a SONAR demo, click here.

Denial of funds to NY over non domiciled CDLs overturned: appellate court

New York State has come out on top in a legal battle with the Department of Transportation over how long a non-domiciled CDL can stay in effect.

In a unanimous decision issued Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a three-judge panel agreed with New York’s argument that denial of a portion of the state’s federal transportation funds over the issue of non-domiciled CDL eligibility was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The federal DOT in April said it was denying New York State approximately 4% of its normal funding after it objected to New York’s policies on non-domiciled CDLs.

Specifically, the federal government including the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)–which was a defendant in the case brought by New York–said New York was granting non domiciled CDLs to non-citizens whose authorization to stay in the U.S. expired before the amount of time on the license, which could be as much as eight years.

New York’s counter argument was that there is nothing in federal law that requires a non-domiciled CDL to end prior to the expiration of a driver’s authorized stay in the U.S.

Lots of money at stake

The amount impacted by the DOT’s ruling: $73,502,543.

The panel was unambiguous in rejecting FMCSA’s argument that federal rules allowed denial of funds over the mismatch between expiration of a CDL and a person’s legal ability to stay in the country.

“As FMCSA itself concedes, the plain text of the federal regulations in place during the relevant period did not contain an expiration-matching requirement,” the judges wrote in their rejection of the federal government’s arguments. “The regulatory structure and history confirm that conclusion.”

To obtain a CDL, beyond the normal requirements of meeting the operational tests, non-domiciled CDL holders needed to present “lawful presence documentation instead of proof of citizenship or lawful permanent residency,” the judges said in summarizing the history of the dispute. The CDL could only have a term of “five years after initial issuance and eight years after renewal—the same as for domiciled licenses,” the court wrote.

That documentation could be an unexpired Employment Authorization Document (EAD) or a foreign passport along with an approved I-94 form. The I-94 is given to foreign visitors when they arrive legally in the U.S.

More than 30k potentially affected

The size of the universe in question is not small, according to the judges’ summary: about 32,600 non-domiciled CDLs or Commercial Learning Permit holders in New York, which it said was about 7% of the licenses in the state.

(New York is not the only state where this battle is ongoing. There is a similar suit before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia between the federal government and California).

After a review of the state’s practices in 2025, FMCSA found that “New York was substantially noncompliant with federal regulations,” the court said in its summary. Its objections were the CDLs that ran past a license holder’s expiration date for being in the U.S.

New York said that “requirement” wasn’t in the law and that it couldn’t be in violation of a rule that didn’t exist.

But as the court said in its summary, “FMCSA stated that the expiration matching requirement was ‘not a new requirement,’ and that its ‘focus on other aspects of a State’s CDL program in previous years’ did not preclude it from enforcing the requirement now.”

In backing New York, the court said FMCSA had “conceded in its final determination, throughout its appellate briefing and at oral argument that the plain text of the regulation does not contain a matching requirement.”

The ‘common sense’ defense

But the agency also argued against a “literal” reading of the regulation, the court said. FMCSA argued that its interpretation of the regulations was “common sense,” the court wrote.

“FMCSA’s concession that a ‘literal’ reading of the ‘clear’ words of its own regulations supports New York’s understanding should be the end of the matter,” the court wrote.

But asking New York to “infer” that what FMCSA’s actions were the intent of the law “is unsupported by the regulatory text,” according to the court.

“All in all, the regulatory history reflects that, before September 2025, states were not required to tailor non-domiciled CDL validity periods to the expiration dates on lawful presence paperwork,” the court wrote in its summary. The court said the 2011 rule that FMCSA was enforcing doesn’t contain such a matching requirement, and noted that FMCSA had decided “not to enforce an expiration-matching requirement until now.”

“FMCSA has not pointed to a single instance before the final determination in this case when it found a state noncompliant for failing to adhere to that requirement,” the judges wrote.

More articles by John Kingston

Amazon-focused bill likely to pass in NYC but only after changes

Teamsters say they’ve organized Amazon employees in Indiana; company demurs

Transportation committee in House set for overhaul post-election

Tanker strikes cruise riverboat in New Orleans

A tanker struck a docked passenger riverboat on the Mississippi River on Friday, triggering a multiagency rescue operation and closing a stretch of the river to vessel traffic.

The 25-foot bitumen tanker Atlantic Asphalt struck American Cruise Lines’ paddlewheel riverboat American Heritage at approximately 12:30 p.m. local time near 1350 Port of New Orleans Place, according to port officials. About 129 passengers, in addition to crew members, were aboard the riverboat, which had docked roughly two hours earlier to begin disembarkation, local media reported.

New Orleans local NBC affiliate WDSU has obtained video showing the initial impact between the tanker Atlantic Asphalt and riverboat American Heritage earlier today. The riverboat had 129 people on board who were in the process of disembarking when it was hit. pic.twitter.com/UuOXcXfGSc
— Denn Dunham (@DennD68) November 13, 2026

Video from WDSU showed the larger tanker striking the stationary riverboat, tipping it onto its side and partially submerging it. Footage showed people wearing life jackets in the water near the collision site.

“Multiple individuals have been rescued, and search-and-rescue operations remain ongoing,” a New Orleans city spokesperson said. Authorities had not confirmed the number of injuries or the cause of the collision in the initial reports.

BREAKING: A tanker has slammed into a docked river cruise ship on the Mississippi River in New Orleans, with about 129 passengers aboard.

Port NOLA says the tanker Atlantic Asphalt struck American Cruise Lines' American Heritage at about 12:30 p.m. local time, while passengers… pic.twitter.com/o6VBQLHwBV
— Wyatt Matthews (@WyattMatthewsX) November 13, 2026

CBS News reported at least 14 people were rescued from the water.

The 2017-built tanker is owned by Nave Shipping SA of Liberia and registered in the Marshall Islands.

American Cruise Lines said its passengers and crew had been evacuated and that it was working with emergency authorities. It was not immediately clear whether everyone aboard had been accounted for, NBC News reported.

“We are in close coordination with the U.S. Coast Guard and local authorities,” the company said. “Guests and crew were evacuated, and we are deeply concerned for everyone involved.”

Port NOLA Harbor Police, the New Orleans fire and police departments, the Coast Guard and emergency medical personnel responded. Officials established a triage area inside the Port of New Orleans Administration Building.

The Coast Guard closed the Mississippi River to all vessel traffic between mile markers 93 and 96 while responders assessed the situation and conducted emergency operations. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who has been serving as a special envoy to Greenland, said he was heading to New Orleans and was in contact with local officials and law enforcement.

“Our immediate priority is the safety of all passengers, crew members and first responders,” the Port of New Orleans said in a statement. “This remains an active and evolving incident.”

Why it matters: The collision created an immediate threat to passengers and crew aboard a docked vessel while also halting vessel movements along one of the busiest stretches of the Mississippi River.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Evergreen Marine nine-month profit up 18% to $2.16 billion

White House to extend Jones Act waiver as deadline nears, sources say

Record October as Los Angeles tops 1 Million TEUs for second straight month

Hapag-Lloyd profit jumps as stronger freight rates drive guidance upgrade

AI cargo thefts top $150 million from June 2025 to June 2026

Cargo thieves stole more than $150 million in artificial intelligence equipment between June 2025 and June 2026, increasingly using fraudulent carrier identities and falsified shipping documents to steal high-value shipments, according to a report from Overhaul.

The company’s AI Infrastructure Intel Report, released Oct. 21, analyzed 111 different AI equipment theft incidents across the United States from 2023 through June 2026. The number of incidents increased 34% since 2024, according to Overhaul.

The report comes weeks after the recent theft of $11.4 million in NVIDIA hardware from a shipment traveling from Oakland, California, to Fort Worth, Texas. Oakland police said the theft was reported Sept. 13 and remains under investigation, with no arrests announced.

Overhaul’s $150 million estimate covers a 12-month period from June 2025 through June 2026. By comparison, Scott Cornell, chair of TAPA Americas and an executive at SPG Cargo & Logistics, estimated that $110.6 million in data center freight had been stolen between June 3 and Aug. 14, 2026, when he shared the figure during an appearance on FreightWaves’ Fraud Watch podcast. The estimates cover different periods and categories of freight. Cornell’s estimate also predates the $11.4 million NVIDIA shipment theft, which was picked up on Aug. 29.

In the report, fraud or deception was involved in 92% of the reported thefts. Overhaul described incidents as deceptive pickups when criminals use tactics such as identity theft, fraudulent carrier identities and altered bills of lading to obtain shipments.

The report includes incidents identified within Overhaul’s own network, as well as thefts reported across the industry through open and closed intelligence sources. Overhaul sells supply chain visibility and risk management services.

The sheer value of AI equipment makes it an attractive target for cargo thieves. Overhaul estimates a single flagship AI server rack costs roughly $3 million, meaning a truckload of computing hardware can represent millions of dollars in potential losses.

“As thieves become increasingly deceptive, visibility into a shipment alone isn’t enough to stop it from being taken,” Barry Conlon, CEO and founder of Overhaul, said in the release. The report’s conclusion that visibility alone is not enough supports the case for Overhaul’s broader services.

The increase in AI equipment theft comes amid a broader rise in cargo crime across North America. Verisk CargoNet recorded 2,646 confirmed thefts in the United States and Canada in 2025, an 18% increase from the previous year. Estimated losses reached nearly $725 million, up 60%, while the average value per theft climbed to $273,990.

The financial impact of AI equipment theft can extend beyond the value of the stolen cargo. Overhaul estimates that for every dollar of stolen hardware covered by an insurance claim, roughly $3 in additional losses go unclaimed. The company said the 3:1 ratio is a conservative estimate based on a RAND research paper. Those indirect costs include deployment delays, lost contract eligibility, regulatory and compliance exposure, and additional security investments.

The incidents highlight a challenge for shippers and logistics providers moving high-value technology: Tracking a shipment’s location may not be enough when criminals can impersonate legitimate carriers and manipulate shipping documents. Verifying the identity of the person collecting a load and confirming that they are authorized to transport it are also critical to preventing theft.

Why this matters

The growing value of AI infrastructure is creating new opportunities for cargo thieves, who are increasingly using carrier impersonation and fraudulent paperwork to intercept shipments. For shippers and logistics providers, tracking technology alone may not be enough to prevent losses as verifying carrier identities and pickup authorization becomes increasingly important. Overhaul provides supply chain visibility, risk management and cargo security solutions designed to help companies monitor shipments and prevent theft.

Trailer Flexibility Is Becoming a Growth Strategy for Carriers

For most carriers, growth follows a familiar script: buy a truck, then buy or lease a trailer to go behind it. Repeat. The script is simple, but it ties up scarce capital in depreciating equipment over its life, or locks in a long-term contract, often before a carrier knows whether the freight to support it will last.

Matt Harb, Chief Product Officer at REPOWR, spends much of his day talking with carriers who are living that tradeoff. Speaking with The Long Haul at F3 in Chattanooga, Harb said his goal in those conversations is to understand what carriers need from the trailer on their back, though the discussion rarely stays there. “They’re feeling the heat from every different part of the industry,” he said, pointing to fuel costs, broker relationships, and the hunt for good loads as constant pressures.

REPOWR’s answer is a trailer-sharing marketplace that lets fleets access trailer capacity short-term instead of committing to long-term capex, now backed by software built for the fleets that supply the trailers.

How the marketplace works

REPOWR works with large and mid-sized fleets to reduce repositioning costs, giving small fleets short-term access to equipment. Harb said the platform carries about 3,500 trailers nationwide at any moment, including flatbeds, reefers, and dry vans, with rentals ranging from three days to 90 days. Roughly 75 fleets list equipment in a given month.

Rates are daily, with no hidden fees, and carriers pick up and return trailers with inspection forms at both ends. In many cases, Harb said, another trailer is waiting at the drop location. He acknowledged that the Airbnb comparison is not universally loved inside the company, but conceded it fits. “We’re Airbnb or Turvo for trailers,” he said.

The model also works both ways. Carriers that need repositioning or have idle trailers can list them for others to use, which Harb said can offset payments or generate extra revenue during slow stretches or while a carrier is committed to power-only work for the holidays.

The hidden price of power-only

Power-only has grown because it removes the capital commitment of owning a trailer. Harb argued that it also removes something carriers rarely price in. “They give up control mostly,” he said. Filtering a load board for power-only freight, he noted, typically leaves a fraction of the available loads. “You’re giving up lanes. You’re giving up better rates,” he said.

Control, in his view, is what carriers trade away, and it quickly becomes a flexibility problem. “Control is the biggest piece, and control really kind of boils over into flexibility,” Harb said.

To help carriers who need a trailer for a limited stretch, REPOWER recently launched short-run pricing. For most trailers on the marketplace, rentals shorter than 14 days run at nearly half the usual cost. Suppliers benefit because their equipment gets repositioned faster, which is how the company can offer the lower rate. The same logic applies to repositioning generally: Harb said a trailer owner who relies on a loadout broker may pay $500 to $600 for a move that REPOWR’s platform can handle at little or no cost.

Renting as a way to test the market

Harb said the most common mistake he sees is not about equipment type. It is about business structure: attaching long-term capital to a decision before it has been tested.

He described a 15-truck fleet that regularly rents 10 to 15 trailers a month on the platform and was preparing to buy three trucks and long-term lease reefers because shippers had promised good lanes. His advice was to rent first. The economics of buying are steep. “A trailer is not eight grand anymore. I mean, a new dry van trailer is $45,000, and a used one needs to be under 10 years old for many shippers,” Harb said.

What rental does, he said, is let carriers experiment: “It’s the flexibility to change quickly, to add quickly, to reduce quickly, and to do all that without any sunk costs.” Buying or signing a long-term lease, by contrast, means “you’ve just hitched your wagon to a depreciating asset.”

That approach also applies to adapting to shippers. Harb said he often hears from carriers whose customers change specifications, such as a move from roll-door equipment to swing-door trailers, leaving them stuck with a trailer they committed to for 12 months. Some carriers use REPOWR on both sides, listing the equipment they cannot use and renting what the shipper now wants. “You can stay agile as those shippers’ needs change,” Harb said.

Drop-and-hook without owning the trailers

Harb said he believes the vast majority of freight now moves through drop-and-hook, and he argued that some carriers assume they are locked out because they cannot meet the trailer-to-tractor ratios shippers want, commonly three-to-one or more. REPOWR changes that, because a carrier can match a trailer commitment to the length of the project. “You’re not matching a short-term commitment to a long-term commitment,” he said.

Quality, accountability and onboarding

REPOWR takes safety and security seriously. Pickup and return inspection forms categorize trailer issues, and the company scores fleet quality, which affects how listings rank and are priced. Harb said REPOWR has stopped working with suppliers whose equipment repeatedly was not there when carriers arrived.

Accountability runs both ways. Carriers’ insurance is on file, and every listing details equipment such as air-ride or spring-ride suspension and swing or roll doors. “It’s our job to hold both accountable,” Harb said.

To join, carriers need at least six months of active authority and must clear a Persona identity verification, Highway authority check, and a safety-screen phone call that Harb said filters out applicants. Signing up is free and takes about six minutes using DOT number and identity verification. Booking a trailer takes about seven minutes and requires two certificates of insurance, one naming the supplier as additionally insured. Harb said 85% of pickups happen the same day or the next day. Rentals are charged in 30-day increments, with no extensive credit check.

The supply side: automating trailer repositioning with TOP

The marketplace only works if trailers are available where carriers need them, which is the challenge REPOWR’s Trailer Optimization Platform, or TOP, is built to solve. In the interview, Harb described the logic behind the low rental rates: “We’re stopping them from having to have all this idle equipment or pay for these repositions.”

According to REPOWR, TOP is an automated capacity planning platform designed to execute trailer repositioning, not just analyze it. The company says fleets typically pay to reposition about 3% of their trailers each month, usually through phone calls, spreadsheets, and brokers at $400 or more per move. Harb puts the going rate for a loadout broker at $500 to $600, but this number increases when capacity is tight.

Here is how the platform works:

Import the network. Fleets share trailers and locations by CSV, data feed, or TMS integration.
Set targets. Locations roll up into markets, each with a target trailer range.
Balance automatically. When a market runs long, TOP lists surplus trailers on the REPOWR marketplace. Carriers reserve and move them as part of normal activity.

The result, REPOWR says, is that a repositioning move earns revenue for the trailer owner instead of costing money. For carriers renting on the platform, it also means a steadier supply of equipment in more markets.

REPOWR’s illustrative model for a 2,500-trailer fleet puts annual repositioning costs at $225,000 without TOP and $135,000 with it. Adding coordination costs and marketplace revenue, the company projects total savings of about $197,000 a year. Those are the company’s projections, not independent results. REPOWR says a 6,000-trailer fleet was onboarded in two days, and that the platform is built for fleets of 150 or more trailers.

Fleets can send 90 days of repositioning data, and REPOWR says it will return a projected savings analysis with no commitment required.

A warning on rental fraud

Harb closed with a caution for the whole industry as trailer rental scams target owner-operators. His rule is blunt. “Nobody is doing trailer rentals with Zelle or Cash App,” he said. Carriers should talk to a person, verify that the provider owns the equipment, and treat unrealistic prices as a warning sign. “I saw one that was $180 for three months of a trailer, like maybe rethink that,” he said. He added that scammers are copying branding and websites. “People are spoofing websites now.”

His message to carriers weighing their next equipment move was simple: “You don’t have to be stuck.”

Click here to learn more about the Trailer Optimization Platform.

Trucking Recession Continues: Why Carriers Face Layoffs and Bankruptcies

The freight market is seeing some interesting trends with mixed volumes and rising rates across modes, but small carriers are under immense pressure. We’re breaking down tender rejections, spot rates, and contract rates, highlighting why some carriers face layoffs and bankruptcies despite a recovering market. Plus, learn about the lowest truck count since early 2022.

The U.S. trucking market shed roughly 100,000 for-hire tractors over the past year — including about 51,000 in a single month this past summer — pushing the active tractor count to its lowest level since early 2022, FreightWaves data shows. The capacity exodus is the clearest signal yet that the prolonged freight recession has permanently squeezed out a meaningful share of the carrier base, particularly among small fleets.

The shrinkage is not evenly distributed. Fleets running between 20 and 1,000 trucks are actually up 12% over the last five years, but the edges of the industry are contracting sharply. Carriers with 1 to 6 trucks have erased their entire pandemic-era expansion, while fleets with more than 1,000 trucks are down about 9% as larger carriers deliberately park equipment to maximize utilization rather than grow headcount.

“It’s not necessarily that trucks are disappearing, it’s that they’re moving up,” said Julie Van de Kamp. “The 1 to 6 truck carriers have really erased the entire pandemic boom when so many trucks came in after that tight capacity market.”

The root cause, Van de Kamp said, is a lag effect: rates are rising but have not climbed fast enough to rescue carriers whose finances were battered during a prolonged period when rates ran well below costs. Diesel topping $6 a gallon adds further pressure for any operator not fully offsetting fuel costs through surcharges. Increased regulation and liability concerns are compounding the squeeze on small fleets, while large carriers face a persistent driver recruiting and retention challenge.

On the rate side, conditions are improving. The all-in spot rate (NTI USA) stood at $360 as of the broadcast date of Friday, November 13, up 2.86% month over month. Truckload contract rates (VCRPM1 linehaul) hit $2.88, a 25% jump year over year. Intermodal contract rates (IMCRPM1 USA) reached $1.78, up more than 6.5% year over year — still representing substantial savings versus truck for shippers willing to convert freight.

Overall tender rejection rates (STRI) are holding just below 13% at 12.87%, down roughly 1% month over month but supported by the tightening tractor supply. Flatbed and refrigerated tender rejections are both hovering around 20% to 21%, levels that have held since late September. Dry van rejections are softer at 10.4%. Volumes, measured by the STVI index, rose about 4% from October 1 (11,068) to the current reading of 11,405, even as the index slipped 3% to 4% week over week.

Van de Kamp flagged early signs of pre-peak tightening out of California and rising volumes in parts of Texas and the western Midwest, including Kansas. She advised shippers to budget for higher contract rates into 2027, pursue mode conversion to intermodal where feasible, and monitor reefer and Midwest demand trends. For carriers, she offered a pointed reminder: “Really understand your true costs when pricing out that freight.”

For-hire tractor count has fallen roughly 100,000 in a year, hitting its lowest level since early 2022, with 51,000 tractors lost in a single summer month.
Small carriers (1–6 trucks) have erased all pandemic-era growth while mid-size fleets (20–1,000 trucks) are up 12% over five years, reshaping industry structure.
Truckload contract rates are up 25% year over year at $2.88 linehaul, but diesel above $6 a gallon and lagging rate recovery continue to push smaller carriers into failure.

This Summary is generated thanks to a transcription of the interview, for the full interview please enjoy the video above.

Freightos’ founder accuses company of ‘rigging’ proxy vote as company opposes his proposals

Freightos founder and former CEO Zvi Schreiber has accused the company of “rigging” a shareholder vote by omitting one of his proposals from its proxy card. He said properly executed proxy forms would automatically count as votes against the proposal.

The proposal is included in Freightos’ proxy statement but cannot be supported through the company’s standard proxy voting process. Shareholders who want to vote in favor must attend the Dec. 16 annual general meeting in person at Freightos’ offices in Modi’in, Israel.

Schreiber has now written to the full board, giving it until Tuesday, Nov. 17, to issue a revised proxy card that allows shareholders to vote on all resolutions. He said he would “escalate” the matter if the company does not make the change. Schreiber did not comment on what that escalation would be.

The dispute comes ahead of Freightos’ Dec. 16 annual general meeting, where shareholders will consider three proposals submitted by Schreiber. In a proxy statement filed Nov. 4, Freightos urged shareholders to reject all three, which seek to remove Chairman Udo Lange, introduce annual elections for all directors and refocus the business on its digital freight-booking platform.

The proposals are the latest development in a dispute between Schreiber and Freightos over the company’s direction and financial performance. Schreiber stepped down as CEO in January and left the board in February. He publicly launched his shareholder campaign on Sept. 9, after submitting his three proposals to Freightos in July. He remains a 6% shareholder in the company.

Schreiber argued that Freightos should prioritize growth of its Platform business, which facilitates digital freight bookings, rather than its Solutions segment, which sells software and data products to logistics companies. He has also questioned the company’s emphasis on software, arguing that advances in artificial intelligence could make those products easier to replicate.

The advisory resolution and proxy card dispute

Schreiber’s second proposal calls for the board to appoint a chairman with experience scaling growth-stage technology companies and refocus the company’s strategy on rapid growth, with greater emphasis on its Platform segment. The recommendation is advisory and nonbinding, meaning the board would not be required to act on it even if shareholders approve it.

Despite that, the board still defended its current strategy, arguing that its solutions and platform businesses support one another.

“The Board believes that prioritizing near-term Platform growth at the expense of this integrated approach could undermine the very foundations of the company’s long-term growth potential,” Freightos said.

The company argued that the recommendation was “abstract and imprecise” because it combined two separate issues: the qualifications of the board chairman and the company’s business strategy. Both matters, Freightos said, fall within the board’s authority rather than shareholders’ rights under the company’s articles of association. Freightos also specified how shareholders’ proxy votes would be counted on the proposal.
“The shares represented by this proxy, when properly executed, will also be voted “against” PROPOSAL 4,” Freightos said.

Schreiber criticized the provision, arguing that it undermines shareholders’ ability to exercise their voting rights.

“They said something which I believe is completely, you know, essentially rigging the vote,” Schreiber said. “It’s a very basic principle of corporate law that shareholders can vote. It says it in the articles… I don’t understand it.”

The only way a shareholder will be able to vote in favor of the resolution is if they show up in-person at Freightos’ offices in Modi’in, Israel. Schreiber said he does not expect shareholders to attend in person.

“In practice, I can tell you, I was managing these meetings. Virtually zero, if not zero shareholders actually travel,” Schreiber said. “If I remember correctly, last year, there was zero people actually voting in person at the meeting.”

Freightos’ responses to Schreiber’s other proposals

The first proposal is to remove Lange from the board, a move Schreiber tied to Freightos’ growth and decline in its share price since Lange became chairman in July 2025. Freightos shares had fallen approximately 62% between July 28, 2025, and Sept. 8, 2026, while the Nasdaq Composite gained about 25%, according to Schreiber’s campaign. Using historical closing prices from Nasdaq for both dates, Freightos shares show a slightly smaller decline of approximately 59%, while confirming the Nasdaq’s roughly 25% gain. These figures reflect a different measurement period than those in FreightWaves’ earlier coverage, which found that over the preceding 12 months, Freightos shares had fallen about 78%, while the Nasdaq Composite had gained roughly 16%.

Freightos’ board argued that removing Lange before the end of his term would disrupt leadership continuity as the company works toward profitability. Lange was re-elected to the board in 2025 with 99.9% of votes cast by shareholders present at the meeting, according to the proxy statement. Schreiber also voted in favor of Lange’s re-election in 2025, but has since changed his position following disagreements over Freightos’ strategic direction.

“Removing the independent Chairman of the Board in the middle of his elected term would disrupt the continuity of the Board’s leadership and oversight at an important stage in the Company’s development,” the company said in the proxy statement.

The board also questioned the broader rationale behind Schreiber’s proposal.

“The proposal could be perceived as a mechanism targeting a specific incumbent (Lange) rather than establishing a durable, principle-based governance standard.”

The third proposal would amend Freightos’ articles of association to require annual elections for all directors beginning in 2027. Directors currently serve staggered three-year terms, with different classes standing for election at successive annual meetings.

Schreiber argued that annual elections for all directors is generally good business practice, separate from his disagreements with Freightos’ current leadership and business strategy.

Freightos opposes the change.

“This stability allows management to resist short-term market pressures and enables uninterrupted focus on achieving key financial milestones,” the company said in the filing.

Voting requirements and deadlines

The proposals carry different voting requirements. Removing Lange as chairman and approving Schreiber’s advisory recommendation each require a majority of votes cast by eligible shareholders. The proposed amendment to Freightos’ articles of association, which would establish annual elections for all directors, requires approval by at least two-thirds of votes cast.

Shareholders will also vote on Freightos’ own proposals to re-elect directors Ezra Gardner and Pablo Pinillos and reappoint EY Israel as the company’s independent auditor. The board recommended voting in favor of both proposals.

Shareholders of record as of Nov. 5 became eligible to vote. Votes must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. EST on Dec. 15 to be counted.

Why this matters

The dispute puts Freightos shareholders in the middle of a debate over the company’s leadership, governance and long-term strategy. The outcome could influence who oversees the business, how directors are elected and whether Freightos shifts its focus toward its digital freight-booking platform.

RICO Case Against TQL, CH Robinson: What’s At Stake for Brokers?

A civil RICO lawsuit against C.H. Robinson and TQL by six motor carriers alleges racketeering and collaboration with illegal carriers to depress prices, causing lost business. With jury selection set for 2028, what does this drawn-out legal battle mean for the freight industry? Attorney Matt Leffler breaks down the complexities, motions to dismiss, and potential implications of this unprecedented case, including whether lost contracts are even actionable under RICO law.

Six trucking companies have filed a civil RICO lawsuit against TQL and C.H. Robinson, alleging the brokers conspired with illegal motor carriers to suppress rates and cost the plaintiffs tens of millions of dollars in lost contracts — a claim legal analyst Matt Leffler says faces long odds given existing Supreme Court precedent.

The case, still in the pleading phase, has a tentative jury selection date of April 2028, though Leffler cautioned the timeline could stretch even further. TQL has already filed two motions to dismiss: one arguing failure to state a claim and another seeking to move the case from Texas to federal court in Ohio on forum non-convenience grounds. C.H. Robinson filed its appearance in the case as recently as the day before the interview, with its own response expected within one to two weeks.

The six plaintiff carriers — Stevens Trucking, Western Flyer Express, D&M Carriers, Frey Miller Trucking, IWX Motor Freight, Christensen Transportation, and EOS Incorporated — allege that TQL and C.H. Robinson relied on fraudulent trucking companies using forced labor and illegal ELD manipulations, locking legitimate carriers out of shipper contracts. If the case were to survive and result in a $50 million damages finding, civil RICO’s treble-damages provision could expose the defendants to $150 million plus attorney’s fees.

“Maybe the goal isn’t to win a RICO case. Maybe the goal is simply to have a RICO litigation being talked about in the media, and maybe that’ll give pressure to other people to make decisions or changes,” Leffler said.

Leffler pointed to a significant vulnerability in the plaintiffs’ position: three of the six motor carriers have out-of-service rates for their commercial vehicles above the national average of 24.9%. He also cited the Supreme Court’s 2006 Anza decision as directly relevant precedent, noting the court held that lost business contracts tied to alleged fraud are not recoverable under civil RICO. “I think that the plaintiffs have a really hard road ahead of them,” he said.

TQL’s forum non-convenience motion centers on the argument that all relevant evidence is located in Ohio, the company’s home state, and that it has arbitration clauses and other contracts better adjudicated there. Because civil RICO is a federal statute, the case must remain in federal court regardless of which venue prevails. The court is expected to hear argument on TQL’s motions in the near term, potentially resolving the pleading phase within the next month or two.

The broader stakes for the industry are significant. Leffler noted that brokers now move 30% of all freight in the United States, a share that has steadily eroded motor carrier volumes. If the RICO claims were to survive dismissal, it could open any broker to similar litigation on the theory that vetting carriers through FMCSA processes and third-party technology is insufficient protection against civil racketeering claims. “This litigation is not going to go anywhere,” Leffler said, adding that the more likely outcome is dismissal before the case ever reaches discovery.

Six motor carriers allege TQL and C.H. Robinson conspired with fraudulent carriers, seeking damages that could reach $150 million under RICO’s treble-damages rule.
TQL has filed two motions to dismiss — one on failure to state a claim, one to transfer venue from Texas to Ohio — with CH Robinson’s response expected within weeks.
Three of the six plaintiff carriers have commercial vehicle out-of-service rates above the national average of 24.9%, a fact that could undermine their claims of lost business due to broker misconduct.

This Summary is generated thanks to a transcription of the interview, for the full interview please enjoy the video above.

Uninsured? What Mexican Border Freight Risks You’re Missing

Shipping freight into Mexico comes with unique risks, but are you properly insured? Andy Kuchar from Centerline Insurance Company reveals why relying on “contingent” coverage can leave you exposed and what steps brokers and shippers must take to protect their trailers and cargo. Learn how direct per-shipment insurance offers greater security and flexibility for your cross-border operations.

Freight brokers and shippers moving goods across the U.S.-Mexico border face insurance gaps that standard domestic or contingent policies routinely fail to close, according to Andy Kuchar, president of Centerline Insurance Company. With an estimated $420 billion in goods projected to flow through Laredo alone in 2026 — a port that surpassed Chicago as the largest U.S. port of entry in spring 2019 — the stakes for inadequate coverage have never been higher.

Kuchar said the core problem is that brokers and shippers too often rely on a motor carrier’s existing policy or on contingent auto liability coverage, neither of which reliably responds at the moment of a loss. Carrier policies may not schedule a specific trailer, may have lapsed due to a missed financing payment, or simply may not be verifiable in real time. Contingent policies compound the risk by piling on conditions that must simultaneously be true before a claim pays out.

“I kind of scratch my head and go like, wow, I’m not even sure when this would ever be enforced because there’s just so much that has to be true at the time of the loss,” Kuchar said of contingent coverage language.

Centerline has written per-shipment cargo coverage for nearly a decade, domestically and in Mexico, covering freight moving northbound, southbound, and intra-Mexico between factories. A typical domestic example Kuchar cited: a $500,000 load of flat-screen TVs moving from Dallas to Atlanta, where a carrier holds only $100,000 in cargo coverage. Centerline layers on the remaining $400,000 for roughly $80 to $100 per shipment. For Mexico, the company structures coverage on a per-shipper basis — a broker adds a shipper such as a Maytag appliances account, and every load from that shipper triggers a known per-load premium, for example $50 on a $100,000 load of appliances.

Kuchar said Centerline’s loss experience in Mexico is actually lower than in the U.S., a pattern he attributes to more relationship-driven carrier networks south of the border. Mexican theft tends to be over-the-road hijacking, which toll roads largely mitigate. U.S. losses, by contrast, skew toward identity fraud — bad actors impersonating legitimate carriers to pick up loads. Kuchar noted that Centerline’s first stolen Mexico load was $60,000 worth of Play-Doh, which thieves abandoned roadside once they discovered the contents.

When evaluating any Mexico cargo or trailer policy, Kuchar urged brokers and shippers to scrutinize exclusions and conditions carefully. Policies that void coverage if a vehicle was left unattended, or if a loss involved employee theft — an “inside job” scenario — can leave a shipper without recourse even when the broker is blameless. “Who cares who stole it? I just know that I’m out and I want to make my shipper whole,” Kuchar said, noting Centerline carries neither of those exclusions.

The Montgomery ruling, which Kuchar referenced as a catalyst for increased trailer liability awareness, sharpened industry focus on the distinction between arranging transportation and also supplying the asset. He said inquiries for trailer liability coverage spiked immediately after the decision, as companies recognized that owning or leasing trailers hauled by third-party carriers creates an exposure that arrangement-only brokerage does not. Brokers and others seeking a coverage review can contact Centerline through LinkedIn or at centerlinepc.com.

$420 billion in goods is projected to move through Laredo in 2026, making Mexico-border cargo coverage a critical and growing exposure for brokers and shippers.
Contingent auto liability policies contain so many conditions that must be simultaneously true at loss time that coverage may effectively never trigger, Centerline’s president warned.
Centerline structures Mexico cargo coverage on a per-shipper, per-load basis — for example, $50 per $100,000 appliance shipment — with no commodity exclusions, including firearms, pharmaceuticals, and liquor.

This Summary is generated thanks to a transcription of the interview, for the full interview please enjoy the video above.