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’

States sue Trump administration over bid to access 17 million CDL records

A coalition of 22 state attorneys general and the state of Pennsylvania filed two lawsuits Thursday seeking to block the Trump administration from obtaining a database containing the personal information of roughly 17 million commercial driver’s license holders nationwide.

The lawsuits allege that the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Department of Homeland Security are unlawfully attempting to gain access to the Commercial Driver’s License Information System (CDLIS), a state-owned database that contains sensitive information including drivers’ names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and license records.

According to the coalition, FMCSA demanded that the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), which operates CDLIS on behalf of the states, turn over records for every commercial driver in the system going back five years.

The states claim the agency threatened to terminate more than $10 million in federal funding and contracts if AAMVA refused to comply. DHS later issued a subpoena seeking the same information.

The legal challenge comes as AAMVA reportedly indicated it would comply with the federal government’s demand absent court intervention, prompting the states to seek an emergency order blocking the transfer of the records.

“The Commercial Driver’s License database helps states ensure they’re licensing drivers that meet essential safety criteria, including being medically fit, possessing a safe driving record, and other standards used to maintain safe roads,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in a news release.

“The Trump Administration does not have the authority to use this state-owned database for unnecessary purposes and put the sensitive data of Massachusetts drivers at risk.”

Coalition alleges privacy violations

The lawsuits contend that DOT, FMCSA and DHS are violating multiple federal privacy laws by creating a separate federal database using information obtained from CDLIS without public notice or safeguards governing how the information would be used, shared or protected.

The coalition also argues the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to consult with states before seeking the records and by lacking a legitimate need for the data.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said the administration is attempting to seize confidential state records without legal authority.

“The Trump administration is attempting to seize confidential state records without any lawful justification,” James said in a statement. “New Yorkers provide their personal information to the state with the expectation that it will be protected, not handed over to anyone who demands it.”

Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings said the dispute extends beyond commercial driver licensing and into broader questions of privacy and federal authority.

“The president is jeopardizing millions of working class Americans’ privacy in service of an unrelated immigration agenda,” Jennings said.

What is CDLIS?

Congress established CDLIS in 1986 as a state-to-state information-sharing system designed to help licensing agencies determine whether CDL applicants are already licensed elsewhere and whether they meet federal qualification standards. Since 1988, AAMVA has operated the system under contract with the Department of Transportation.

State licensing agencies use CDLIS to verify a driver’s identity, medical fitness, immigration status and driving history before issuing or renewing a CDL. Records in the system contain personally identifiable information, including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers and state licensing information.

The states said that CDLIS was created as a tool for state licensing agencies, not as a federal repository of commercial driver information. According to the complaints, federal officials have never before sought access to the entire database.

New York officials said disruption of the CDLIS system could affect nearly 500,000 CDL holders in the state and approximately 20,000 commercial learner’s permit holders, while also complicating efforts to verify driver qualifications and maintain highway safety.

States seek emergency relief

The coalition is asking the court to declare the federal demands unlawful, block the administration from obtaining the records and prevent AAMVA from turning over the information while the litigation proceeds.

The lawsuits allege violations of the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, the Privacy Act, the Administrative Procedure Act and constitutional limits on federal spending authority.

The coalition includes attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia, along with the state of Pennsylvania. Minnesota joined one of the related legal actions involving DHS.

Why it matters: The outcome of the lawsuits could determine whether the federal government gains access to a database containing the personal information of 17 million commercial drivers and could reshape the balance of authority between states and federal agencies over CDL records and driver privacy.

Yang Ming’s first-half rebound sets up a volatile second half

Yang Ming Marine Transport’s first-half 2026 results show a substantial recovery in earnings as tariff-driven front-loading, a stronger early peak season and higher freight rates lifted second-quarter performance.

The Taiwan company (2609.TW) nevertheless expects the balance of the year to be shaped by trade-policy uncertainty, geopolitical disruption and the continuing risk of excess vessel supply.

First-half performance

For the first half of 2026, the ninth-largest liner reported consolidated revenue of US$2.62 billion, while the second quarter outperformed both the first quarter and the year-earlier period. The carrier attributed the improvement principally to an early peak season, stronger cargo demand and firmer freight rates, with tariff uncertainty prompting cargo owners to advance shipments.

The result represents a marked improvement from the company’s first-quarter baseline. In Q1, Yang Ming recorded revenue of $1.2 billion, after-tax profit of $44.7 million and earnings per share of $0.013. At that point, the company cited softer freight rates than a year earlier and vessel-deployment effects linked to Middle East geopolitics.

The first-half rebound also follows a more difficult 2025, when Yang Ming’s full-year revenue fell to $5.07 billion, and after-tax profit declined to $530.3 million, or $0.15 per share. Still, 2025 marked its sixth consecutive profitable year, underlining the carrier’s ability to remain profitable despite a less favorable rate environment and substantial network disruption.

Yang Ming has a substantial North American presence, concentrated in the trans-Pacific trade. It 10 weekly Asia-U.S. West Coast sailings and four weekly Asia-U.S. East Coast sailings among 21 named Asia–North America loops.

What improved

Yang Ming said the momentum was driven by three mutually reinforcing factors:

Front-loading demand: Uncertainty surrounding tariff policy encouraged shippers to move cargo earlier, creating an unusually strong early peak-season pattern;
Higher freight rates: Yang Ming said rate gains accompanied the cargo-demand increase and helped lift Q2 above both Q1 and the prior-year quarter.
Effective-capacity constraints: Diversions away from the Red Sea around the Cape of Good Hope, port congestion and slower sailing speeds have absorbed vessel time and reduced effective capacity, partially offsetting the delivery of new tonnage. Yang Ming identified these factors in its 2025 results discussion.

Outlook: Volatile trade, fragile balance

Yang Ming’s outlook remains cautious. It identified trade protectionism, changing trade policies and geopolitical conflict – particularly in the Middle East and Red Sea – as enduring risks to trade flows and supply-chain reliability. Rerouting has reduced capacity on affected services and made transshipment arrangements more complicated, while also raising terminal-congestion risk, insurance costs and bunker expenses.

Supply-demand balance remains a structural challenge. Yang Ming cited approximately 1.59 million container units of scheduled new ship deliveries in 2026. Based on the Alphaliner data cited by the company, global fleet supply was expected to grow 3.8% in 2026, ahead of projected demand growth of 2.5%.

That imbalance does not necessarily translate directly into weaker spot markets. Yang Ming notes that tighter decarbonization standards may encourage slow steaming and retirement of older vessels, reducing usable capacity and absorbing some of the delivery wave.

The company says it will monitor trade flows and demand, adjust service networks and capacity deployment, improve service stability, and maximize slot utilization. It also plans to replace older vessels gradually with more energy-efficient and smart ships while diversifying energy risk and maintaining environmental compliance.

Yang Ming named the 15,500-TEU LNG dual-fuel vessel YM Wayfinder in June for deployment on the Asia-North Europe FE3 service, signaling continued investment in larger, lower-emission ships despite the uncertain market.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

U.S. container imports surge on China peak season momentum

New harbor commission president backs Long Beach port plans

Trump extends Jones Act waiver; direct effect “pennies per gallon,” say analysts

Asia-US East Coast box rate hits new high of $9,400

Top West Coast port sees second-best July on record

The Port of Long Beach ran to its second-busiest July on record and the fourth-strongest month in its 115-year history.

Long Beach, which with adjoining Port of Los Angeles comprises the top San Pedro Bay import gateway, moved 928,508 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) in July, down from 1.7% from July 2025.

Imports were essentially flat, off 0.1% to 467,461 TEUs, while exports increased 14.8% to 104,843 TEUs. Empty containers, frequently an indicator of future imports, fell 7.4% to 356,205 TEUs.

SONAR Ocean Booking Index for China-Long Beach containers is elevated from a year ago.

Analysts say the surge is backed by surprising consumer resilience amid inflation and higher peices, and marks the beginning of an extended peak season that is now expected to stretch into September. The National Retail Federation revised its summer import forecast to steady, elevated gains while Maersk (OTC: AMKBY) on Thursday raised its full-year guidance for the second time.

Year-to-date, Long Beach has processed 5,758,086 TEUs through the first seven months of 2026, a gain of 1.2% y/y.

Volvo Trucks: $60M Saved with OTA Updates [24% Fewer Stops]

Volvo Trucks is transforming fleet operations with groundbreaking over-the-air (OTA) software updates. Learn how this technology empowers drivers to initiate updates overnight or during breaks, eliminating downtime. Volvo’s Chief Digital Officer Nicole Portello reveals how these updates have already cut unplanned stops by 24% and saved fleets an estimated $60 million in avoided downtime. Discover the impact of real-time data, predictive maintenance, and what’s next for connected trucking.

Volvo Trucks North America has driven its software update compliance rate from 25% to more than 80% of its connected fleet by introducing unattended over-the-air (OTA) updates — a shift the company says has eliminated more than 100,000 days of unplanned downtime and generated roughly $60 million in savings across the network. The company operates more than 200,000 connected trucks in North America.

The compliance gap was stark before the rollout. “We were seeing about 25% of our truck population running on the latest software updates — so 75% of our trucks weren’t on the latest software update,” said Nicole Portello, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Volvo Trucks North America. Internal benchmarking showed trucks running current software experienced 25% less downtime than those that did not, giving the company a clear financial case to remove friction from the update process.

The new workflow lets drivers initiate an update, lock the cab, and walk away — during an overnight stop or a rest break — rather than remaining in the vehicle or traveling to a dealership. Of the 100,000-plus days of downtime avoided, Volvo calculates approximately $16 million in savings tied directly to eliminating dealership trips for software updates alone, with the remaining savings attributed to fewer unplanned mechanical stops, which are down 24% for updated trucks.

“We’ve pushed out over hundreds of thousands of software updates. If you take that entire population, that means over 100,000 days of unplanned downtime that’s been avoided, which is about $60 million,” Portello said.

Connectivity also underpins Volvo’s predictive maintenance effort. The company says it processes millions of rows of data per minute from its connected trucks, using machine learning and AI-driven pattern recognition on fault codes to get ahead of failures. Portello said that has produced a 70% reduction in problems for monitored trucks, a 30% reduction in repair time when trucks do come in for service, and a 95% first-time fix rate — because technicians can pre-diagnose issues before the truck reaches the dealership bay.

On the driver side, Volvo has launched a companion app called My Truck that surfaces fluid levels, lighting status, and remote start capability — allowing drivers to pre-condition the cab in extreme temperatures before beginning a route. Portello said the philosophy is to put actionable information directly in the hands of drivers, not just fleet managers or dispatchers.

Looking ahead, Portello said safety technology and broader AI integration are top priorities for 2026 and 2027, alongside deeper predictive maintenance capabilities on the new VNL and VNR platforms, which he described as the most connected trucks Volvo has built. She also noted that the real-world data streaming off those trucks feeds back into the company’s R&D process, helping identify potential quality issues for future product generations. For fleets navigating an increasingly connected landscape, Portello offered a pointed directive: “Make sure you’re not just getting data, but you’re getting actionable data that you can use to further drive your business.”

Volvo’s OTA update compliance jumped from 25% to over 80% of its 200,000-truck North American connected fleet, saving an estimated $60 million
Trucks running the latest software show 25% less downtime; predictive maintenance yields a 70% problem reduction and 95% first-time fix rate
New unattended update capability lets drivers lock the cab and walk away, eliminating dealership trips and recovering more than 100,000 days of unplanned downtime

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

Rising Fleet Costs? Data Has Answers

Rising maintenance costs are hammering fleets. Join Brad Bournes from Love’s Travel Stops as he breaks down the biggest cost pressures today, from surging parts and labor to technician shortages. Discover how leveraging predictive maintenance and smart data tools can transform your fleet operations from a cost center to a strategic advantage.

Fleet maintenance costs have climbed 8.6% according to the most recent ATRI report, and the pressure shows no sign of letting up. Parts inflation driven by tariffs, a shortage of diesel technicians, and extended equipment trade cycles are compounding the problem — pushing more fleets to look at data and AI tools to claw back margin. Brad Bournes, manager of fleet maintenance and service at Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores, told FreightWaves that the industry’s response is shifting from reactive repairs to predictive maintenance powered by integrated telematics and repair-history data.

Bournes said the single biggest operational win Love’s has measured so far is in administrative efficiency. Fleets using Love’s FleetView platform to import repair and parts invoices automatically — with line items coded to VMRS standards rather than lumped into broad labor and parts categories — have cut invoice-processing time by up to 60%. That time savings also improves data quality, which feeds directly into the platform’s predictive models.

On the cost side, Bournes pointed to an AI audit layer that checks every imported invoice against repair history, national labor and parts benchmarks, warranty conditions, and potential rework situations to flag anomalies. Fleets piloting that feature have seen maintenance cost reductions of 15% to 20% in the specific areas where the audit is applied, though Bournes cautioned that deferred maintenance backlogs built up over the past three years are still creating noise in the numbers.

“The fleets that are going to win over the next few years, I believe, are the fleets that are going to adopt that technology and really turn their fleet maintenance program from a cost center to a real strategic advantage by having that visibility and be able to make those decisions quickly with the data that they need,” Bournes said.

Bournes drew a sharp distinction between preventive and predictive maintenance. Traditional preventive maintenance — oil changes, scheduled inspections, time- or mileage-based PMs — has historically been shaped by failures that already occurred. Predictive maintenance, by contrast, pulls together sensor data, telematics, and full repair histories to identify failure patterns before a breakdown happens. Bournes compared it to pattern recognition: “It’s just pattern matching, right?” he said, noting that wider public familiarity with AI over the past year has made fleets more willing to engage with the concept.

The shift matters financially because roadside breakdowns carry a steep premium over shop repairs. Bournes said extended trade cycles — a widespread response to higher new-equipment prices driven partly by tariffs — are increasing the frequency of those costly roadside events, creating a difficult capital decision for fleet managers weighing continued high operating costs against the capital expenditure of replacing aging iron. Having granular, structured data is essential to making that call, he said.

Love’s FleetView embeds predictive alerts directly into the repair order workflow so technicians and outside vendors see upcoming maintenance flags in context, rather than in a separate portal. Bournes said reducing the number of logins and dashboards required to act on data has been a key adoption driver. The platform’s AI agents, which currently handle invoice import, auditing, and an AI assistant for querying fleet data, are slated to expand over the next couple of years as Love’s continues development.

Fleets using Love’s FleetView’s automated invoice import have cut processing time by up to 60%, while AI invoice auditing has reduced maintenance costs 15%–20% in tested areas.
ATRI data shows fleet maintenance costs rose 8.6% last year, with tariff-driven parts inflation and technician shortages keeping pressure elevated.
Bournes says predictive maintenance — combining telematics, sensor data, and repair history — is moving from concept to measurable results, but broad industry adoption is still early.

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

Spot Rates Split as Tender Rejections Hold Above 13%

Tender rejections are stuck near 13.5%, still far above a balanced freight market — but spot rates and volumes are starting to tell a more complicated story. In this SONAR update, we break down why truckload demand softened faster than expected, how intermodal is taking share from long-haul truckload, why short-haul freight still looks firm, and where reefer spot rates are flashing regional pressure in the Midwest. If you run freight, buy capacity or price loads, this is the setup to watch now.

Truckload tender rejection rates have stalled at 13.5%, more than double the 5% to 7% range considered a balanced market, but a faster-than-expected demand pullback and a measurable shift toward intermodal are beginning to pressure dry van spot rates, according to Zach Strickland’s latest SONAR update.

Strickland noted that rejection rates sat near 5.5% one year ago, and that anything above the 10% threshold makes it “extremely challenging for most shippers to find capacity.” The current stall around 13.5% signals a still-tight market, but a trendline that formed in June had been pointing toward an eventual return to equilibrium in the 5% to 7% range — and demand has been eroding faster than seasonal norms suggest it should.

“One of the reasons for that, because we’re in a supply-side-led cycle, demand has really fallen down faster than we expected, especially from a seasonality standpoint,” Strickland said. The tender volume index, which measures shipper-to-carrier load tenders, has fallen below April levels — a notable drop given that April is itself a slow month and July typically only moderates modestly from June.

“We’re seeing almost a mirror image of replacement” — Zach Strickland, describing the divergence between long-haul truckload and domestic intermodal container volumes.

Long-haul truckload tender volumes are up just 2% year over year, while domestic intermodal container volumes have risen 8% year over year, and Strickland said the widening gap is a key driver of the modal shift narrative. Short-haul tender volumes — loads under 100 miles — are up 4% year over year, outpacing long-haul, and Strickland pointed to that resilience as evidence the truckload cycle is not nearing an early end. Short-haul freight is also the segment least susceptible to intermodal substitution.

On the spot rate side, a spread is opening among the three modes. Flatbed remains the strongest, supported by AI data center construction activity, though rates have begun to edge lower. Refrigerated spot rates, which had been moving nearly in lockstep with dry van, are now separating to the upside. Dry van, the mode most exposed to intermodal competition, is pulling back and would show a largely red — declining — national rate map, Strickland said.

A regional signal is drawing particular attention. Midwestern rejection rates spiked earlier this week, and the same pattern is now appearing in refrigerated spot rates, with increases concentrated in protein and grain corridors. Strickland flagged it as early for a harvest-driven rate move and called the region one to watch for carriers and shippers active in temperature-controlled freight.

Tender rejection rates are holding at 13.5%, more than double the 5–7% balanced-market benchmark, but demand is falling faster than seasonal trends expected
Domestic intermodal container volumes are up 8% year over year vs. 2% for long-haul truckload, pointing to modal shift as a key driver of dry van rate softness
Midwest refrigerated spot rates and rejection rates are spiking early, with protein and grain corridors flagged as a region to watch ahead of harvest season

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

AI agents can find the load. MapUp helps them determine its profitability

Western Express tractor-trailers alongside FuelGuru MCP branding

AI dispatch agents have gotten good at finding freight. They’ll pull from load boards, filter by equipment and radius, and return a ranked list in seconds. What they still struggle to do is tell an operator whether that top-ranked load actually pays.

MapUp aims to close that gap with the launch of FuelGuru MCP. The company calls it the first production Model Context Protocol server built for fleet fuel purchasing, tolls and commercial truck routing. It lets any AI agent, load board, dispatch tool or TMS copilot ask MapUp’s engine what a trip will really cost for a specific truck on a specific day under a fleet’s own rules.

“While these AI agents are already helping to pick a good load, the next level of intelligence is defining what is a good load,” MapUp CEO Katie Mahlawat told FreightWaves. “Right now the good definition is time and cost and how that trade-off plays out.”

The load that looks fine but really isn’t

Mahlawat used a concrete example. A broker posts $1,800 all-in for a five-axle dry van from Harvey, Illinois, to Philadelphia. On the 773-mile practical route, that works out to about $2.33 a mile. The posted rate alone says nothing about what remains after route-specific fuel, tolls and time.

In an August 2026 FuelGuru analysis, MapUp priced three commercial routes for the same trip. The practical I-80 route covers 773 miles in 11 hours and 49 minutes of driving, more than a solo driver can legally run without a 10-hour break, with $192.97 in tolls and $554.58 in fuel, leaving $1,052.45 of the rate before driver pay, equipment and fixed costs. The fastest option, which combines I-80 with the Pennsylvania Turnpike, arrives 23 minutes sooner but leaves only $908.91.

That is $144 in extra fuel and tolls to buy back 23 minutes — a marginal tractor hour priced at $374. Very few fleets in North America treat a marginal hour of driver time at that rate. Many simply price all-in or chase a target rate per mile. The truck then takes the faster route because nobody priced the alternative before it rolled.

The cheapest line on the table punishes the opposite instinct. An I-70 routing carries the lowest tolls at $150.36 but adds 39 miles and 62 minutes. At a $54-an-hour loaded driver cost, that extra hour costs about $56 to save $22.77 in combined fuel and tolls — a net loss before it threatens the delivery window.

“This is why ‘avoid tolls’ is bad policy and ‘always take the toll road’ is worse,” wrote MapUp co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Maneesh Mahlawat in the company’s launch note. “Neither is a decision. Both are habits.”

Nick Brooks, vice president of technology and marketing at Western Express, said the timing of the calculation is what carries the operating value.

“Being able to come back with the real fuel cost and the real toll cost at the time you are going to incur it is infinitely valuable,” Brooks said. “As toll routing gets more complicated, it is going to make profitability happen quicker.”

A universal power adapter for freight math

FuelGuru first launched last year at FreightWaves’ F3: Future of Freight Festival, where FirstFleet Chief Information Officer Austin Henderson demonstrated it alongside NavGuru, MapUp’s commercial navigation product. It originally shipped as an API, so every platform that wanted the engine had to build a custom integration.

“MCP is like a universal power adapter,” Katie Mahlawat said. “You could say you want to connect your own phone to anyone else’s speaker. How do you like them to talk to each other? That’s it.”

Now the integration is largely a credential. “Get an API key from us, plug it in your Claude configuration, it gets added as a skill,” she said. “Now you have an agent which is a FuelGuru brain.”

An agent hands over the load, truck position, equipment, appointment windows, tank level, fuel economy, card pricing and fleet rules. FuelGuru returns practical, fastest, cheapest and alternate routes with drive time, vehicle-specific tolls, fleet-net fuel cost and prescribed stops.

The pricing is fleet-specific, not a national average. FuelGuru costs the negotiated rate the fleet’s card will actually capture at that station, against the state tax spread, the out-of-route miles to reach it, and the arrival time the hours-of-service plan predicts.

Lane profitability used to take a month and five teams

At a large carrier, pricing a lane often feels like navigating a committee. A sales team quoting next quarter’s rates collects cost history from the fuel desk, the toll team and finance. Those groups rarely hold the same version of the truth because of different incentives and data silos.

“That process takes somewhere between two, three weeks to a month, as well as coordination between four or five different teams, for their sales team to have that at their fingertips,” Mahlawat said.

For fleets already running MapUp, including FirstFleet and Western Express, the MCP server can read the carrier’s own history instead of relying on averaged or lagged data.

The same math reaches into fuel-surcharge negotiation. A carrier that can see route cost by customer can identify which accounts may carry a less favorable fuel-surcharge program. Mahlawat said the mismatch between static lane pricing and moving costs is what first pulled her into the problem.

“That means the same pricing is going on for a while, while things like fuel prices are fluctuating … every day toll hikes are happening.” One example was how Pennsylvania Turnpike tolls have increased every year since 2009. The five increases from 2022 through 2026 compound to about 25.

Without access to fleet-specific tools, a general-purpose chatbot falls back on public or historical estimates. It does not know a carrier’s negotiated fuel prices, card network, tank level, remaining driver hours or operating rules. “If you tell me $1,400 to $1,500 on a Wednesday evening or on a Sunday morning, it could be somewhere between $1,000 to actual $2,000,” Mahlawat said. “So this is what we are eliminating.”

Lane profitability for the 90%

Owner-operators and small fleets account for the vast majority of U.S. trucking carriers. Enterprise fuel-optimization tools were rarely built for them.

“So far 90% of trucking never had access to something like Expert Fuel or Manhattan Fuel and Route … because those are enterprise solutions and built that way,” Mahlawat said.

Bubba, the AI AutoPilot from Hey Bubba, is an early example. Through FuelGuru MCP it can evaluate available loads using the truck’s actual deadhead, commercial route, fuel plan, toll exposure and remaining hours.

“MapUp gives our AI the live fuel pricing, routing and toll intelligence to determine whether a load is cost-effective, whether to bid higher, which driver should run it and where that driver should fuel,” said Tapan Chaudhari, founder and CEO of Hey Bubba.

A prescription that never reaches the cab

Fuel optimization is not new. Compliance is where the value often leaks. Fleets that already own an optimizer commonly see driver adherence in the mid-70s percent range, in part because the plan lives in a back-office report while the driver lives in the truck.

“A perfect plan followed 74% of the time leaks a quarter of its value before anyone books a savings number,” Maneesh Mahlawat wrote.

MapUp splits the work. FuelGuru decides and NavGuru executes, placing the prescribed route and fuel stops into the driver’s turn-by-turn navigation. At one dedicated carrier running more than 2,500 trucks, fuel-prescription compliance moved from 74% to above 98% within four months of putting the plan where the driver already was.

The plan does not freeze at dispatch. Miss a stop, run off route or show less fuel in the tank than expected, and FuelGuru recalculates on current position, prices, time and fleet rules, then hands the revision to NavGuru.

“AI agents can automate a lot of work, but they still need the brain behind the decision,” Katie Mahlawat said. “FuelGuru MCP gives them the math to calculate the real cost of a route, including fuel, tolls and time. That is how they can understand what is actually a good load.”

Acertus expands with Fisher Shipping acquisition

Finished vehicle transportation provider Acertus announced it has acquired Fisher Shipping.

Overland Park, Kansas-based Acertus’ automotive logistics platform handles the transportation, storage, maintenance, titling and registration of finished cars and trucks. The deal expands its network of carriers and customers, and its relationships with OEMs and dealers.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“This acquisition expands our platform and deepens our ability to serve the automotive ecosystem, but more importantly, it brings talented people and trusted partnerships built over two decades,” said Acertus CEO Michael DeLuca. “Those are the foundations of long-term success.”

Auburn, Massachusetts-based Fisher Shipping will continue to operate under its existing banner and leadership team. It will now have access to Acertus’ expansive carrier network and its platform, which provides enhanced fraud prevention and real-time shipment visibility.

Fisher Shipping CEO Dave Fisher will receive an equity interest in Acertus as part of the transaction. He will also manage customer and commercial relationships for the combined organization.

“Since 2006, we’ve built this business on trust, service and an unwavering commitment to our customers,” said Fisher. “Joining ACERTUS lets us preserve those values while giving our customers access to greater capacity, technology and solutions.”

The announcement follows another big acquisition in the space earlier this week.

Proficient Auto Logistics (NASDAQ: PAL) announced Monday that it agreed to acquire California-based peer Hansen & Adkins for $130 million. The combined entity is expected to haul over four million vehicles annually, roughly one-quarter of the new car market.

Why it matters? These acquisitions are significant for the car haul sector because they highlight a clear push toward industry consolidation to gain scale, capacity, and technological sophistication.

More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:

Battle of the briefs: UP-NS fires back at AGs anti-merger letter

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are bringing out the Dream Team.

The railroads reached into academia to gather a quartet of former government anti-trust experts in an effort to refute the latest filing by red state Attorneys General urging regulators to reject the proposed merger that would create the first U.S. transcontinental freight railroad.

In a nine-page filing submitted Wednesday to the Surface Transportation Board that read like a legal brief complete with citations, the experts cautioned that merger complaints stand as conjecture – and not proof. They offered case histories and academic research supporting previous corporate tie-ups that were also contested on anti-trust grounds, and how opponents use the courts to hinder mergers.

The filing this week by the top law enforcement officials from seven Republican states said that the merger of UP (NYSE: UNP) and NS (NYSE: NSC) won’t enhance competition as required by STB rules, and will raise costs for shippers and consumers.

The experts writing for UP-NS are Alden Abbott, general counsel of the Federal Trade Commission from 2018-2021, now at George Mason University; Tad Lipsky, Jr., deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice Antitrust Division from 1981–1983 and chief antitrust lawyer at Coca-Cola from 1992–2002, also at George Mason, as is Gregory Werden, former DOJ Antitrust Division economist and lawyer; and Mark Whitener, former global executive counsel for competition law and policy for General Electric and deputy director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition from 1993–1997, now affiliated with Georgetown University.

The hundreds of filings for and against the merger carry no legal weight; STB Chairman Patrick Fuchs has made it clear that the deal will stand on its own merits as evaluated by his agency. Fuchs earlier assembled his own team of data scientists from MIT to break down the numbers, and has fiercely defended the STB’s independence and decision-making process.

The experts also cited case history showing how opponents of mergers are inherently incentivized to protect their own interests, and not necessarily those of the consumer.

“Railroad competitors are not disinterested observers of this transaction; they are commercial rivals that presumably stand to lose traffic if the merged UP–NS offers a superior service product,” they wrote. “Their opposition should be understood as advocacy by market participants to protect their bottom line – not as objective evidence of likely harm to shippers or the competitive process.

“[S]ingle-line integration,” they said, “can create a lower-cost, more efficient service that intensifies overall modal rivalry.”

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Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

Rail freight stretches lead over 2025

Federal court upholds challenge to FRA’s two-person rail crew rule

BNSF earnings rise on higher volume and revenue

AAR launches freight rail research consortium

Rail merger a failure on first sight, shippers protest

FedEx 777 in retro livery lands at Memphis airport renamed for Fred Smith

FedEx Corp. landed a Boeing 777 freighter aircraft painted in a retro 1973 color scheme and the Memphis metropolitan region renamed its airport Frederick W. Smith International Airport in honor of FedEx founder Fred Smith, who died in June of last year.

Today, FedEx (NYSE: FDX) delivers over 18 million packages a day around the world and sorts more than 2.4 million packages daily at its Memphis World Hub, located at the newly dedicated airport.

Tuesday’s renaming ceremony coincided with the inaugural FedEx FWS Day of Service, which celebrates his love for his adopted hometown, how he became one its fiercest economic champions, and his philosophy of community service. Under Smith, FedEx encouraged team members to contribute time and effort to support communities where they live and work.

After serving in the Vietnam War and retiring from the U.S. Marine Corps, Smith established Federal Express in Memphis, Tennessee, for its strategic location and reliable weather. Over more than five decades, Smith’s investments built the express airline’s small terminal into a massive global logistics hub that is indispensable infrastructure for hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity each year.

As a tribute to Smith’s shared history with the city of Memphis, FedEx unveiled a mural along Plough Blvd., which skirts the airport. The artwork features a portrait of Smith composed of the iconic FedEx purple aircraft tails, FedEx announced.

*A new mural celebrating FedEx founder Fred Smith was installed on the fence at Memphis airport, now named in his honor. (Photo: FedEx)*

“Moving forward, every plane, person, and package that passes through Frederick W. Smith International Airport will carry the spirit of our visionary founder and the pride of a city that connects the world,” said CEO Raj Subramaniam at the dual event hosted along with the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority.

The event concluded with a ceremonial landing of Flight 1944, a FedEx 777 painted in the company’s original purple and red/orange livery, with the words Federal Express

The flight number honors the year Smith was born. The aircraft is named Rosie after one of Smith’s granddaughters who was born shortly before his passing. This naming continues the longstanding tradition of naming aircraft after employees’ children.

(Why It Matters: FedEx was a pioneer of the express air logistics industry and aviation who had a huge impact on how economies operate and how we consume goods.)

There were no 777s when Smith started FedEx. The first plane in the fleet was the small Dassault Falcon passenger aircraft, which he had to convert to an all-cargo aircraft with an enlarged door. On its first night of service in 1973, FedEx Express delivered 186 packages from Memphis, Tennessee, to 25 cities with 14 Dassault Falcon business jets.

“Today, we immortalize a true visionary who reshaped the logistics industry and elevated our city’s footprint on the global stage,” Terry Blue, president and CEO of Memphis Shelby County Airport Authority, said in a statement. “As passengers travel through Frederick W. Smith International Airport, we want them to be reminded of the relentless drive, innovation, and community spirit that Fred Smith championed throughout his life.”

The FWS Day of Service also is a part of Purple Week, the company’s global, enterprise-wide celebration grounded in its “People-Service-Profit” mission statement. This week, more than 120 FedEx Cares volunteer and community impact events are happening around the world, part of the company’s global community engagement program. FedEx said the day of service will continue annually.

Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

Fred Smith, FedEx founder and parcel industry pioneer, dies at 80