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’

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

Ex Williams-Sonoma exec pleads guilty to $16M warehouse kickback scheme

An aerial view of a large warehouse with trucks parked at the docks.

A former Williams-Sonoma Inc. executive on Tuesday pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud for accepting $16.3 million in kickbacks from vendors that supplied equipment for company warehouses in New Jersey and stealing real estate broker commissions.

Eric Marsiglia, 52, admitted that over a four-year period ending in about 2022 he conspired to defraud Williams-Sonoma (NYSE: WSM), where he served as vice president of engineering, projects, planning, facilities and real estate, the Department of Justice announced. Marsiglia oversaw the selection and leasing of warehouse space throughout the United States as well as the purchase of steel racking, forklifts and related logistics services.

According to court documents, starting in 2018, Marsiglia accepted money from co-conspirators in exchange for steering Williams-Sonoma business to three New Jersey companies that supplied forklifts, racking systems and machinery for warehouses. Marsiglia set up a shell company, REM Group, to receive and conceal the kickbacks. In total, he received over $12.2 million in warehouse kickbacks, which he concealed from the retailer.

From 2020 through 2022, Marsiglia also conspired to divert real estate broker commissions associated with Williams-Sonoma warehouses that stored kitchenware and home furnishings. He directed those payments to accounts held by REM Group and then distributed portions of those proceeds to himself and co-conspirators. Marsiglia concealed from Williams-Sonoma that he was diverting broker commission payments to accounts he controlled, rather than to the firm that was entitled to them, prosecutors said. The scheme resulted in the theft of more than $4.1 million in broker commissions.

(Why It Matters: Williams-Sonoma is a publicly traded company. Cargo theft by outsiders is big news in the logistics sector, but stopping inside jobs is also important to prevent companies from losses.)

Marsiglia pleaded guilty to money laundering for engaging in wire fraud to conceal and disguise the diversion of the broker funds.

A federal grand jury indicted Marsiglia on April 11, 2023, along with three other individuals on charges arising from the kickback and broker commission diversion schemes. Another co-conspirator was later charged in a superseding indictment in 2024. All defendants charged have pleaded guilty to federal offenses.

Marsiglia is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 3 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He faces a maximum statutory penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each of the two wire fraud conspiracy counts and a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for conspiracy to commit money laundering, subject to sentencing guidelines.

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

Taiwan manufacturer settles case over falsified customs entries for $5.2M

Maersk raises 2026 outlook again as earnings surge

A crane lowers a large ocean container at a port with stacks of containers in the background.

A.P. Moller-Maersk raised its full-year earnings outlook after second-quarter revenue climbed 20% year over year and EBITDA reached $3.0 billion, as robust Far East export demand, higher spot rates and congestion across key trade lanes lifted results.

Revenue rose to $15.8 billion in the second quarter from $13.1 billion a year earlier. EBIT increased to $1.6 billion from $845 million, producing a 10% EBIT margin. Ocean was the principal earnings driver, adding $2 billion in revenue during the quarter.

The Copenhagen-based company (OTC: AMKBY) said disruption to traffic through the Strait of Hormuz prompted cargo destined for the Gulf region to move through alternative ports and inland routes.

Maersk redeployed affected vessel capacity to other expanding trades. Import demand was particularly strong in Africa, North America and Latin America, while exports from the Far East – especially China – remained a principal source of volume growth.

Spot freight rates rose substantially, according to Maersk, reflecting demand, increasingly unbalanced trade flows, tight capacity and port congestion in Europe, the Middle East, the east coast of South America and West Africa. The company said these supply-chain bottlenecks are straining landside infrastructure from ports to inland transportation networks.

Ocean Leads Improvement

Maersk’s ocean segment increased revenue by 23% year over year. Loaded volumes rose 4.1%, led by Asian exports, while average loaded freight rates increased 22%. Vessel utilization remained high at 96%.

Ocean EBIT reached $935 million, compared with $229 million in the prior-year quarter and a $192 million loss in the first quarter of 2026. Unit cost at fixed energy declined 0.8%, as greater volumes offset higher operating expenses.

Logistics & Services revenue grew 15% year over year and 11% sequentially, with an EBIT margin of 5.1%, up 0.5 percentage points from the first quarter. The segment generated EBIT of $217 million, compared with $175 million a year earlier. Maersk cited Gulf-region landbridge services, strong air and project logistics forwarding volumes, and favorable contract mix in its Solutions segment.

Terminals revenue increased 11%, supported by a 7.1% improvement in revenue per move and 2.2% volume growth. Terminal EBIT was $458 million, essentially unchanged from $461 million in the second quarter of 2025.

Guidance raised again

Maersk now expects full-year global container-market volume growth of about 4% and raised its 2026 financial guidance:

Measure	New guidance	Previous guidance
Underlying EBITDA	$10.5–12.5B	$8–10B
Underlying EBIT	$4.5–6.5B	$2–4B
Free cash flow	Greater than $0	At least negative $1.5B

The company attributed the revision to its second-quarter performance and improved visibility for the rest of the year.

Maersk also highlighted continued infrastructure investment, including the opening of APM Terminals’ $350 million fully electrified container terminal at Suape, Brazil, and an agreement with Hateco Group and Da Nang City to develop and operate Vietnam’s Lien Chieu Container Terminal. Maersk said the Vietnam project represents investment of more than $1.7 billion.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

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How NFI Is Operationalizing AI Across the Entire Transportation Management Stack

When FreightWaves launched the AI Excellence in Supply Chain Awards, the goal was to cut through the noise of an industry where “AI” has become a marketing buzzword slapped on every press release, and instead spotlight the companies that are leveraging AI in truly revolutionary ways.

The awards recognize real deployments and measurable outcomes as opposed to flashy pitches. Entries are judged on the strength of the AI application itself, how deeply it’s integrated into existing workflows, and the tangible results it produces.

This year, NFI was named one of the honorees in the Operational AI Integration category for logistics companies. Specifically, the honor goes to the AI work embedded across NFI Transportation Management, the company’s managed transportation arm.

While many organizations showcase chatbot pilots or bolt-on AI features, few can demonstrate a coherent AI strategy that spans multiple functions, operates in production long enough to generate significant value, and measurably enhances human capacity.

Inside NFI’s AI Strategy: Build vs. Buy, and a Three-Pillar Framework

NFI Transportation Management describes its philosophy as a “build-versus-buy framework” designed to prioritize speed, ROI, and customer value over simply adopting whatever AI tool is trending. Rather than chasing a single flashy use case, NFI organized its AI investments into three categories that map directly onto where the technology creates the most leverage: Operational Support, Back Office Support, and Customer Value Add.

Operational Support is where NFI has attacked manual load tracking, one of freight’s most persistent pain points. Instead of associates manually checking in on freight via calls, emails, and portal logins, NFI deployed agentic AI that uses web scraping, email monitoring, and automated phone check-ins to track loads with minimal human intervention. The tool is already live for LTL freight and is being onboarded for truckload, and it’s saving 160 hours per week and growing. Alongside it, NFI built a natural language chatbot that gives associates instant access to SOPs and reporting, cutting down on formal training time, reducing help-desk tickets, and, according to NFI, improving employee satisfaction in the process.

Back Office Support is where the “eliminate the monotonous” philosophy shows up most clearly. Three tools do the heavy lifting here:

An email triage and response system that uses agentic AI to process inbound freight bill correspondence automatically, saving 60 hours per week and growing, with more use cases already in development.
A freight bill-to-load match exceptions tool, which trains a model to handle the tedious work of matching freight bills to the correct loads. That process historically required manual searching. Two of three planned phases are already live, saving 17-plus hours per week, with another 10 hours of potential savings identified as the third phase rolls out.
An FBA aging app that automatically prepares aging reports for carriers on request, good for 15 hours per week in savings and a direct improvement to how carriers themselves are served.

Add it up, and all of this puts the back-office productivity gains at more than 100 hours reclaimed per week, plus the equivalent of four full-time employees’ worth of capacity freed from load-tracking duties alone.

Customer Value Add is centered on Navitrace, a global intelligence platform that serves as the engine for what the company refers to internally as its “Digital Twin.” The Digital Twin is a virtual replica of a customer’s transportation network, built from proprietary data and contracted rates, capable of running “what-if” scenarios on demand. This allows customers to model the impact of adding or removing carriers, compare contracted rates against market pricing, or evaluate consolidation strategies. Navitrace is designed to provide actionable insights rather than simply presenting complex dashboards.

NFI reports that the Digital Twin is uncovering an average of 5% to 10% in transportation savings per customer, with one client alone realizing more than $600,000 in annual savings. Alongside it, automated appointment scheduling has produced a 75% reduction in dwell time, directly cutting down on costly on-time, in-full (OTIF) fines for customers. That tool is live with some customers now and is expanding through the rest of 2026.

A Platform Built by Operators, for Operators

The development of Navitrace was a strategic response to a market saturated with cumbersome, one-size-fits-all visibility tools that often fail to reflect the nuances of individual shipper operations, such as varying accrual structures, budgeting approaches, and KPIs.

Navitrace utilizes a modular, microservices-based architecture designed for agility and seamless integration with emerging technologies. It is explicitly forward-looking, serving as more than a real-time reporting layer. As NFI notes, the Digital Twin is built to reveal scenarios that organizations might not have previously considered.

Proactive, tailored solutions are the basis of NFI’s entire submission, whether the tool in question is customer-facing or purely internal.

NFI describes the goal of its AI integration as “shifting the human-technology paradigm,” using automation to strip out friction and latency from repetitive tasks specifically so that people can move from reactive firefighting into proactive, strategic work. In practice, that deepens customer and carrier relationships, applies what the company calls “professional empathy” in carrier interactions, and aids in continuously optimizing the network.

AI conversations often skew toward replacement rather than reallocation, but NFI’s framing is part of what set this entry apart in a category that’s getting crowded fast, as every logistics provider races to claim its own AI story.

“What set NFI apart was that they could show their work,” said Adam Wingfield, FreightWaves’ Editorial Director. “Most entries in this category talk about AI in the abstract, but NFI came in with hours saved, dollar figures, and a clear read on what’s live versus what’s still in development. Concrete specificity is exactly what this award is supposed to recognize,” he said.

NFI hasn’t fallen into the temptation of leaning on a single flashy feature. The company has laid out several discrete tools, each with a clear goal, a documented deployment status, and a specific, quantified result.

Congratulations to NFI Transportation Management on a well-earned honoree spot, and on doing the less glamorous, more difficult work of operationalizing AI across an organization.

Click here to learn more about NFI Transportation Management.

Inside Univar Solutions’ Carrier Kickoff

FreightWaves Today broadcast live from the Westin in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, for Univar Solutions’ annual Carrier Kickoff event, where roughly 100 transportation providers and more than 200 attendees gathered alongside Univar Solutions’ procurement and operations leadership for a supplier conference built around the fact that relationships, not just rates, win freight when trucks get scarce. The room reflected a cornucopia of modal opportunity, with liquid bulk, truckload, less-than-truckload, rail, air, and parcel providers all represented under one roof.

After a four-year freight recession that hollowed out capacity across the industry, tender rejections are climbing again and insurance costs are spiraling. Soft-market leverage doesn’t last forever, and some shippers are learning that the hard way. FreightWaves’ interviews with carriers and brokers at Univar Solutions’ Carrier Kickoff made clear that the companies which invested in carrier relationships during the downturn are the ones that will keep trucks moving now that the market has turned.

No one made that case more directly than Rob McRae, Vice President of Transportation, North America at Univar Solutions, the host of the event and the executive most responsible for its existence. McRae operates in a uniquely constrained corner of the freight market. Roughly 90% of Univar Solutions’ volume moves in the liquid bulk hazmat space, and that niche dramatically shrinks the pool of qualified carriers before capacity even tightens.

“It’s a very small niche of the registered DOT carriers,” McRae said. “It gets very competitive to get those assets.”

Because of that scarcity, Univar Solutions treats its carrier network as something closer to a fleet of partners than a rotating cast of vendors. About half of Univar Solutions’ freight moves through third-party carriers by design, McRae said, allowing the company to reach customers outside its private fleet’s delivery zones without sacrificing personal familiarity. That way, assets are available when demand spikes.

“For us, being able to know who you’re talking to, for us as well as the carrier, makes it like you’re talking to a friend,” McRae said. “Putting faces to names makes it easier to get that asset when other companies, our competitors, aren’t necessarily investing in the carriers.”

McRae drew a direct comparison to his time in small parcel, pointing to the consistency of a single, familiar face on a delivery route as the model Univar Solutions is chasing at scale. “We view our carrier partners as an extension of our brand,” he said. “We want them to say, ‘Oh yeah, it’s James, he’s with Univar Solutions.’”

The payoff is that Univar Solutions was the first chemical distributor to win FreightWaves’ Shipper of Choice award, and has earned the distinction for the past three consecutive years.

“We did not seek this award whatsoever,” McRae said. “Don’t try to get it; just do the right things and follow the right processes.”

Carriers Say the Model Is Working

While McRae framed the philosophy, the carriers in the room supplied the proof points, and each described a version of the same dynamic. Capacity has genuinely tightened, and the shippers who built relationships before the market turned are the ones getting served first.

Brad Hadley, Vice President of National Accounts at Saia, has watched that shift play out directly in LTL volumes. Saia posted its best tonnage quarter on record in the same period, and Hadley traced it to truckload capacity draining out of the market. “Capacity’s tightened, truckload prices have increased,” Hadley said. “Shipments that might have been half loads that were cheaper for customers to move via truckload have now shifted back to the LTL side.”

The volume shift is colliding with a carrier base that’s trying to recapture margin after years of taking on freight below cost, according to Hadley, who has represented Saia in Univar Solutions’ routing guide for close to 15 years. “We know that we need to get paid for the services that we’re providing,” he said. “It’s not that I like sticking it to the shippers. It’s because there does need to be balance, and we do need carriers to be able to cover their costs and be safe and compliant with quality drivers.”

Ben Caplenor, EVP of Operations at LRT Solutions, made a similar case from the smaller-carrier side of the room, arguing that in a market crowded with comparable service offerings, differentiation has to come from somewhere other than rate. “You’ve got to stick out with customer service,” Caplenor said. “Safety is super important in our world right now. That’s table stakes for everybody. But service is something that we can stand on and stick out with.”

According to Caplenor, there’s pressure building underneath that service pitch. A wave of adverse litigation outcomes are reshaping how carriers operate. “It’s pretty scary,” he said. “We’re going to have to do some things differently and pay more attention to certain things. There are a lot of challenges coming at us right now, so we just have to stay on top of it.”

Brian Reilly, Vice President, National Account Sales at RXO, framed the current environment as an inflection point for how shippers structure their routing guides altogether. Reilly said the traditional waterfall model of locking in contract rates on infrequent lanes months in advance is increasingly unworkable when spot rates are running well above those figures by the time freight needs to move.

“Spot was a slight premium,” Reilly said. “Now, with acceptance being lower, spot is 40%, 50%, 60%, sometimes 70% higher than what you thought your contract rate was going to be, but it’s a paper rate that’s never going to be honored.”

Reilly’s broader argument echoed the idea that shippers who proactively engage with providers, rather than simply issuing rate demands, get better outcomes when capacity is scarce. “If price is the same, and if service metrics are the same, what else is it that you do that separates you to win the tiebreak?” Reilly said.

For customers, these investments translate into reliable capacity, safer transportation and more consistent service, particularly during periods of market disruption when securing qualified transportation assets becomes increasingly challenging.

Where the Market Goes Next

Tyson Wimberly, Senior Vice President of Sales and Revenue Management at Covenant Transport, tied the shift to a mix of regulatory pressure and driver economics that’s been building for years and is now catching up with the industry.

“We are in a much more favorable marketplace than we were the last four years,” Wimberly said, before pivoting to what he sees as the more urgent fix still needed industrywide: driver pay. “Driver pay absolutely has to correct,” Wimberly said. “That is probably the number one criteria in attrition of drivers.”

Wimberly also connected Covenant’s approach to sustainability (including B100 fleet deployments on select dedicated accounts) to the same customer-relationship logic driving the rest of the event. “If it’s something that’s important to you, it’s important to us,” Wimberly said. “We would be customer-led, and we will go through this journey with you.”

All around the industry, various segments all reflect a market in transition. The shippers, carriers and brokers gathered in Chattanooga largely agreed on the diagnosis. Capacity has left and isn’t coming back quickly, insurance and equipment costs are climbing regardless of individual safety records, and driver economics need to catch up with the moment. Univar Solutions continues to invest in the partnerships, operational excellence, and trust required to keep freight moving to deliver on service reliability when the market flips.

That’s what “shipper of choice” looks like when it’s actually tested.

Click here to learn more about Univar Solutions.

Continental Tire and myMechanic team up to fix roadside service’s phone-call problem

Technicians perform roadside tire service on a commercial truck parked on a highway shoulder

A truck loses a tire outside its home terminal, and the fleet’s telematics system already knows it. What it doesn’t know is which dealer is open, which one has the right tire in stock, or how long it will take someone to answer the phone. That gap, between data and dispatch, is where roadside breakdowns turn into four-hour ordeals and $450 to $750 a day in losses, according to myMechanic data.

Continental Tire is betting that gap can be closed with its recent partnership with the roadside service management system myMechanic. The tire maker announced this week that it is connecting its U.S. dealer network to myMechanic, the roadside management platform that launched Dealer-Connect in June. The integration folds Continental’s dealers into a single digital workflow that carries a service request from the first alert through dispatch, status updates, documentation, and reporting, without asking fleets or dealers to change who they already call when a truck goes down.

Two networks, one workflow

The focus is deliberately narrow for the partnership. Do not replace the relationships that already work, just stop losing time between them. Continental brings a national dealer footprint and decades of tire expertise. myMechanic brings the software that turns a phone chain into a tracked digital event.

Niklas Vauth, head of digital transformation for Truck Tires Americas at Continental Tire, framed the move as part of a broader shift in how the company sees its dealer network functioning in a connected fleet ecosystem.

“At Continental, we believe the future of roadside service is digital, connected, and open. By partnering with myMechanic, we are creating a seamless service experience that improves fleet uptime while helping our trusted dealer network grow through new service opportunities,” Vauth said in the release.

Technical integration and onboarding between the two companies are already under way, according to the companies.

The math behind the urgency

The numbers driving this deal are not new to anyone who has run a fleet. Continental’s own research into fleet uptime has flagged unplanned maintenance gaps and traffic congestion as two of the biggest cost drivers for regional and local carriers, where tight delivery windows leave almost no room for a truck to sit idle. A missed pickup doesn’t just cost a load: it costs a customer relationship, and in a competitive regional freight market, that business often lands with a competitor before the disabled truck is even back on the road.

Alex Bezzubets, founder of myMechanic, had previously shared with FreightWaves what digital dispatch saves against that backdrop. Fleets that route service requests through myMechanic resolve roadside events about 25 minutes faster than fleets still working the phones.

Building the connected ecosystem

The Continental deal is the latest piece of a wider push by myMechanic to knit together a fleet-service network that doesn’t require fleets to abandon their existing telematics or dealer relationships. Its most recent product, Dealer-Connect, routes fleet road calls straight to tire dealers without an added app, login, or call-center handoff. myMechanic has also joined the Platform Science marketplace, giving fleets running those telematics systems a direct line into its provider network.

For Continental, the partnership dovetails with a broader digital push already under way in its tire business. The company’s ContiConnect platform uses tire-mounted sensors and AI-based tread-wear modeling to flag problems before they strand a truck, part of what Continental describes as a shift toward catching tire wear before it fails rather than after. Pairing that kind of upstream monitoring with a faster, digitized response when something does go wrong closes a loop that’s been open for years. Telematics could tell a fleet something was about to fail, but the response to an actual breakdown still ran through whoever happened to pick up the phone.

That’s the disconnect Continental and myMechanic are aiming at. Roadside service’s biggest inefficiency isn’t a lack of technicians but a lack of coordination — an issue the industry has been circling for years, and one both companies say they intend to fix without asking anyone to change who they trust to fix the truck.

Uber Freight confirms cyber incident after hackers claim nearly 1 million files

A hacker group calling itself Helix claimed it stole nearly one million Uber Freight files. Uber Freight confirmed Wednesday that someone accessed part of its systems and repositories without permission. The company told FreightWaves it identified, contained and remediated the incident. It did not verify Helix’s files or identify the information involved.

Helix listed Uber Freight on its data-leak site Aug. 6 and described material from several repositories. The group claimed it accessed mailboxes, OneDrive accounts and accounts-receivable materials. It has not provided independent proof confirming the records’ authenticity or scope. Uber Freight has not confirmed the group’s description of the material.

Uber Freight confirms incident

An Uber Freight spokesperson told FreightWaves, “The incident was identified, contained and remediated.” The spokesperson added, “We promptly engaged federal law enforcement.” Uber Freight also wrote, “There has been no impact to Uber Freight’s business operations.” The company wrote, “Our systems are secure and fully operational.”

The response did not address whether customer, carrier, employee or vendor information appeared within accessed repositories. Uber Freight has not disclosed notifications, forensic assistance, or a timeline for further findings. The company also has not confirmed contact with Helix. Uber Freight continues to investigate the incident.

Google links Helix to a wider extortion campaign

Google Threat Intelligence Group tracks Helix as part of the UNC6671 activity cluster. Researchers linked Helix, Falcon, Pink and Redact through shared phishing infrastructure. The group often impersonates corporate help desks through phone calls and fake login portals. Google does not identify Uber Freight as a confirmed UNC6671 victim.

Google reported that the cluster shifted toward transportation, technology and hospitality targets during June. Its researchers documented campaigns designed to capture employee credentials and multi-factor authentication tokens. Those credentials can allow criminals to access cloud tools and remove company information. Uber Freight has not identified how someone accessed its systems.

Why it matters

Freight platforms can hold shipping, carrier, payment and pricing data that criminals may target after unauthorized access. Uber Freight confirmed the incident, but the company has not disclosed what information the intruder accessed.

CFCO

FreightWaves offers Certified Fraud Compliance Officer coursework for transportation professionals. The program includes practical lessons on identity verification, suspicious communications and fraud-response decisions. Google reported that Helix-linked actors pose as help-desk personnel to capture credentials. Those verification steps can help teams identify a scam before granting system access.

Click here for more articles on cargo theft and freight fraud by Phil Brink.

K9 stop on Louisiana’s I-12 uncovers 358 kilos of meth in semi-trailer, driver now in ICE custody – FreightWaves

Wild West returns to California rails as suspected train burglar fires at BNSF officer – FreightWaves

Prosecutors say a hit man killed a federal witness tied to staged 18-wheeler crashes – FreightWaves

K9 stop on Louisiana’s I-12 uncovers 358 kilos of meth in semi-trailer, driver now in ICE custody

Livingston Parish deputies stopped an 18-wheeler on Interstate 12 eastbound in Denham Springs, Louisiana. Their investigation uncovered nearly 800 pounds of methamphetamine inside the trailer. Authorities identified the driver as Anton Vitalyevich Rakov, a Russian national. Deputies took Rakov into custody because of his immigration status.

The Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office reported that its K9 Division conducted the traffic stop. Narcotics investigators later searched the commercial trailer. They found approximately 358.14 kilograms, or 789.56 pounds, of methamphetamine. Officials have not disclosed what prompted the initial stop.

Investigators search the trailer of an 18-wheeler after Livingston Parish deputies stopped it on Interstate 12 in Denham Springs, Louisiana. (Photo: Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office)

Sheriff calls seizure among Louisiana’s largest

Sheriff Jason Ard described the discovery as “one of the LARGEST Methamphetamine Seizures in Livingston Parish (And, Louisiana).” The agency did not release an estimated street value. Its post also did not identify the trucking company or freight involved. Officials have not explained how investigators concealed the drugs.

Rakov remains in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, according to LPSO. The sheriff’s office has not announced state drug charges. Federal authorities have not released a charging document. The investigation remains ongoing.

The case began on a heavily traveled interstate corridor east of Baton Rouge. Denham Springs sits within Livingston Parish, roughly 20 miles from Louisiana’s capital city. Commercial vehicles move through the area every day. Investigators have not announced the truck’s origin or destination.

FreightWaves contacted LPSO for additional details about the stop, the trailer search and possible charges. The agency had not responded before publication. This story will update if officials provide further information. LPSO shared photographs showing the scale of the seizure.

What the case does not yet explain

Authorities have not linked Rakov to any broader trafficking organization. They also have not disclosed whether the truck carried legitimate freight. The post did not identify a consignee, broker, carrier or shipper. Those details could determine whether criminals targeted a transportation company or used equipment independently.

LPSO’s announcement identifies a drug seizure, not a freight-fraud case. The available information does not show a stolen identity, fraudulent pickup or double-brokering scheme. It also does not establish what the driver knew about the trailer’s contents. Investigators will need to answer those questions as the matter develops.

Why It Matters

A single commercial vehicle can carry criminal cargo across state lines quickly and quietly. Freight professionals need clear verification processes because criminal investigations may later examine every party involved in a shipment.

Click here for more articles on cargo theft and freight fraud by Phil Brink.

Wild West returns to California rails as suspected train burglar fires at BNSF officer – FreightWaves

Prosecutors say a hit man killed a federal witness tied to staged 18-wheeler crashes – FreightWaves

Ex-CBP officer used emoji code to let 477 kilos of Sinaloa Cartel drugs cross – FreightWaves

Mexico tops US trade rankings in June as Laredo handles $36.5B in freight

Mexico retained its position as the United States’ largest trading partner in June, with $89.2 billion in two-way commerce, according to the latest trade data from the Census Bureau.

Mexico ranked No. 1 among U.S. trading partners during June, ahead of Canada at $67.9 billion and China at $34.7 billion.

Laredo, Texas, remained the nation’s busiest international trade gateway, handling $36.5 billion in cross-border trade, according to Census Bureau data analyzed by WorldCity.

Chicago O’Hare International Airport was the No. 2 ranked U.S. gateway for trade in June at $35.9 billion, while the Port of Los Angeles was No. 3 at $25.8 billion.

Port Laredo’s performance highlights its role as the primary conduit for U.S.-Mexico commerce, particularly for automotive parts, vehicles, machinery, electronics and other manufactured goods moving between the two countries.

Laredo’s trade volume accounted for more than one-third of all U.S.-Mexico commerce during the month, reinforcing the city’s position as a critical hub for trucking, rail and customs operations along the southern border.

As of Wednesday, the Outbound Tender Rejection Index for Laredo (OTRI.LRD) was at 15.19%, compared to around 3.32% at the same time last year and 5.74% in 2024.

OTRI measures the percentage of truckload capacity requests that carriers decline. Since rejecting loads is generally undesirable for carriers, the year over year increase in rejection rates could indicate less available capacity or carriers rejecting contract freight in favor of better-paying opportunities.

The Outbound Tender Rejection Index for Laredo (OTRI.LRD) was at 15.19% on Aug. 12, far higher than the same period in the last three years. To learn more about SONAR, click here.

Top U.S. trading partners – June 2026

Rank	Country	Total Trade
1	Mexico	$89.2 billion
2	Canada	$67.9 billion
3	China	$34.7 billion

Top U.S. international gateways – June 2026

Rank	U.S. Gateway	June Trade Volume
1	Laredo, TX	$36.5B
2	Chicago O’Hare International Airport	$35.9B
3	Port of Los Angeles	$25.8B

Why it matters: Mexico’s continued lead as America’s largest trading partner — coupled with Laredo’s position as the nation’s busiest trade gateway — highlights the growing importance of U.S.-Mexico supply chains and the central role cross-border freight plays in North American commerce.

Rail freight stretches lead over 2025

Weekly rail traffic on U.S. railroads totaled 526,410 carloads and intermodal units for the week ending Aug.1, up 2.4% y/y, the Association of American Railroads reported.

Commodity shipments were 233,171 carloads, down 0.4%, while intermodal volume of 293,239 containers and trailers was better by 4.8% compared to 2025.

Metallic ores and metals typically used in steelmaking led seven of 10 category gainers, by 9.1%, followed by petroleum and related products, 5.9%, and farm products excluding grain and food, 5.4%.

Seasonally-weak coal was off 7.7%, while chemicals struggled, weaker by 2.3% y/y.

Through the first 30 weeks of 2026, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 6,811,496 carloads, an increase of 2.7%, and 8,418,215 intermodal units, up 3.8% from a year ago. Total combined traffic was 15,229,711 carloads and intermodal units, better by 3.3%.

North American rail volume for the week on nine reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads totaled 335,697 carloads, up 0.5%, and 377,702 intermodal units, up 4.3% from the previous year. Combined traffic came to 713,399 carloads and intermodal units, a gain of 2.5%. Volume year-to-date was 20,931,511 carloads and intermodal units, up 2.9% y/y.

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