Newsletters Contact Us

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

truck fallen over

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:

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.

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

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

Related Articles:

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’

Freight Fraud Gets More Strategic Heading Into Peak Season

As the freight industry heads into its highest-volume stretch of the year, the cargo theft numbers tell a deceptively reassuring story. Reported incidents fell sharply in the second quarter of 2026, down roughly a quarter from the year before. But losses over that same period more than doubled, to $304.6 million, with the average theft now running about $564,000. Industry estimates suggest only about 10% of incidents ever get reported at all.

Those numbers tell a story about the state of the industry. Ahead of his presentations at this year’s F3: Future of Freight Festival, we sat down with Aqil Naeem, co-founder and CEO of E3 Group, to hear his perspective on the situation. “There are fewer thefts, but each one costs a lot more,” Naeem said. The drop, he explained, is due to a shift in tactics as bad actors adjust to the industry’s defenses. 

“Fictitious pickups barely moved while overall theft events fell,” Naeem said. “Criminals are stealing less often and choosing their loads more carefully.” The takeaway for brokers and shippers heading into Q4, he said, is that a quieter quarter on paper isn’t a safer quarter.

What’s driving the shift, according to Naeem, is how cheap and accessible the tools of impersonation have become. 

“A thief can order fake license plates or carrier decals and have them tomorrow, then stick a magnetic carrier name over the real one on the truck door,” Naeem said. “They can buy a carrier’s email login on the dark web and send pickup instructions from the real inbox. They can generate a photo of a truck or a CDL with AI in seconds.” It’s a pattern E3 Group sees repeating across the industry: phishing campaigns and remote-access malware used to take over business emails and carrier accounts.

The transition from smash-and-grab theft to deception-based fraud is why E3 Group built its platform around verifying the person behind the wheel rather than just the paperwork behind the load. Naeem said the economics of organized freight crime have simply gotten too easy. 

“The tools of organized crime have never been easier to get,” Naeem said of the shift toward strategic theft. “A fake CDL with barcodes that actually scan can be ordered online. A carrier’s email password can be bought on the dark web. A convincing photo of a truck or a document takes seconds with AI.” Put together, he said, a fictitious pickup can be run from anywhere with a laptop. “It pays better than breaking into a trailer, and the thief never has to set foot in the yard,” he said.

Naeem described impersonation as having matured into “systematic business,” with criminal groups taking over carrier email and compliance accounts. In some cases, they simply buy real carrier companies outright. “The weak point has moved from the trailer lock to identity,” he said. “Most vetting still checks the carrier on paper and never checks the person who actually shows up for the freight.”

Verifying the driver, not just the paperwork

That gap is exactly what E3 Driver Authentication, the company’s driver verification product, is designed to close. Naeem walked through how the process works in practice: “When a driver is assigned to a load, they get a text with a link. There’s no app to download.” From there, he said, they take a few live photos: their CDL, the side of the truck, the cab card, and a selfie, and the system runs those inputs against more than 50 signals in seconds, returning what Naeem called “a clear go or no-go with the recorded proof behind it.” Through it all, the broker always makes the final call.

[Credit: E3 Group]

Among the fraud patterns the platform has caught, Naeem pointed to magnetic decals stuck over a truck’s real carrier markings, AI-generated or edited CDL and truck images, and driver switch-outs between authentication and arrival. The system also cross-references the barcode on the back of a CDL against the front of the card, controls the phone’s camera so nobody can upload a recycled photo (Naeem said the platform once flagged a CDL that had been photographed off a tablet screen), and checks VINs across the cab card, door-jamb sticker,and the broker’s own records, alongside location data pulled from cell tower, GPS and IP sources. 

The timing matters as much as the checks themselves. “It happens hours before pickup, not at the dock,” Naeem said. “If something’s off, the broker or shipper has time to put a different carrier on the load before the truck ever shows up.”

E3’s answer to the newest wave of fraud tactics is a layered approach that can catch out AI voice cloning and spoofed motor carrier numbers. Caleb Sirak, the company’s co-founder and president, said the platform can distinguish human speech from generated audio, but added that the company doesn’t lean on phone verification in the first place. 

“A cloned voice can get through a call,” Sirak said. “It can’t produce a live photo of a real CDL whose barcode matches its front, a face that matches that CDL, or a truck whose VINs match across three sources.” The same skepticism applies to carrier credentials. “Owning the MC is only the starting point,” Sirak said. “We don’t take anything at face value.” Even geography gets checked. If a verification link is sent for a Texas pickup and opened in Kentucky, for instance, E3 Group flags it right away.

The most common vetting mistake

Much of what makes fictitious pickups work, Sirak said, comes down to a basic conflation in how carriers get vetted in the first place. Treating a carrier check as a driver check”is the most common mistake he sees. A broker confirms a motor carrier number, operating authority and insurance, and all of it checks out clean, but a thief who has taken over a real carrier’s account passes every one of those checks. 

Identity verification, meanwhile, often gets reduced to the weakest link, such as a phone call or a photo texted in. 

“A $25 fake CDL with working barcodes will pass a visual check,” Naeem said, adding that asking for ID over the phone or by email creates legal exposure without making anyone safer. The result, as he put it: “You end up with proof of the carrier and no proof of who’s actually behind the wheel.”

Preparing for peak season

Heading into the holiday stretch, Naeem pointed to a combination of pressures. 

“Peak season combines high-value freight, heavy volume and thin staffing,” Naeem said, calling November and December the highest-risk months of the year. With teams stretched thin, he said, “no one has time to double check a carrier, so a thief posing as one gets waived through.”

According to Naeem, there are two steps that cost nothing to implement, even without dedicated fraud technology in place. “Don’t release the pickup number until you know who’s coming,” he said, describing the most reliable manual workaround E3 has encountered in the field: “a FaceTime call with the driver, standing at the truck, on every high-value or theft-prone load before the pickup number goes out.” 

The second step is sourcing discipline. Pull insurance and authority records directly from issuing bodies rather than trusting uploaded documents, and call back only on numbers already on file, not numbers you just got from an email signature. Formalizing those habits matters just as much as the habits themselves, according to Naeem, who recommended writing identity checks into a standing SOP and naming, in advance, who has authority to approve last-minute changes to pickup or delivery instructions.

E3’s own platform, Naeem said, is designed to take the manual version of that work off a team’s plate. “E3 driver authentication automates the first step on every load,” he said, noting it integrates with existing transportation management systems and can be running in a day.

A widening gap between targeted freight and everyday loads

The numbers show that criminals are increasingly selective about what they target. It changes the math for shippers when it comes to high-value goods like electronics and copper. 

“Criminals operate on a tradeoff between the value of the freight compared to the effort of stealing it,” Naeem said, pointing to shippers who have seen their driver rejection rate fall after adopting E3’s verification process. “By elevating the cost of stealing your freight relative to the market, criminals are disincentivized from stealing your cargo,” he said.

Case in point, Naeem told us about a high-value automotive shipper that, before implementing E3 Shield, had lost multiple loads to fraud. After onboarding, the platform caught a cluster of repeated attempts from the same region using doctored CDLs with falsified expiration dates and misrepresented domicile status, including one case where a fraudster submitted a doctored CDL front paired with a real CDL back in an attempt to beat the system. 

“After a month of these attempts being thwarted, we stopped seeing them attempt to get our customer’s freight,” Naeem said. Company-wide, he added, “there has not been a single theft on an E3-verified load,” a claim the company backs with a full fee-refund guarantee.

Where fraud prevention goes from here

The fight against freight fraud is shifting from document-based checks toward continuous identity verification across a shipment’s entire life cycle. 

“Technology can keep pace, but only if it stops relying on documents and phone calls,” Naeem said. “The industry needs identity checks throughout the life of a shipment, not just at tender.” He outlined three changes he expects to take hold industry-wide: authentication at every handoff rather than just the first one, clear pass/fail decisions instead of ambiguous risk scores, and audit trails detailed enough for legal teams to rely on in place of today’s ad hoc verification calls.

The technology itself improves with scale. “E3 driver authentication gets better the more drivers we  see,” Naeem said. “We’ve done more than 700,000 driver authentications, and every one makes the next check sharper.” Given that individual companies can’t stop crime or fraud as a whole, the goal is to make a given shipper’s freight a harder target. “We stop fictitious pickups before the truck reaches the dock,” Naeem said. “Every load gets the same check, every result is logged, and the broker gets proof of who picked up the freight. That makes your freight harder to steal than the next load, so the thieves move on.”

Click here to learn more about E3 Group.

Click here to catch Aqil during his fire side chat: Verified or Vulnerable at F3: Future of Freight Festival 2026.

Failed CDL exams, $3,000 payments and Bluetooth cheating scheme lead to federal charges

A Massachusetts man who repeatedly failed commercial driving exams now faces federal charges involving a Bluetooth cheating scheme. Investigators accuse Rudy Romero Nolasco, 42, of receiving answers through a concealed earpiece during his commercial learner’s permit examination. Phone records connected his testing activity to Frank Castro, who later received a federal conviction. Prosecutors announced the charges on October 15, 2026, nearly five years after the alleged misconduct.

Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles records show Nolasco failed three sets of commercial driving examinations in January 2016. Those tests covered general knowledge, combination vehicles and air brake requirements. On November 23, 2021, he passed all three subjects. The following month, he returned for additional examinations covering tanker trucks and double or triple trailers.

Undercover investigation uncovers $3,000 cheating arrangement

The investigation began taking shape in October 2021 when Castro contacted an undercover Homeland Security Investigations agent. Castro offered to help the agent obtain a commercial learner’s permit for $3,000. He requested identification documents, partial Social Security information and medical certification records to schedule the examination. Castro also indicated he had previously helped other applicants obtain permits.

On November 23, 2021, Nolasco began his examination at 10:58 a.m. Castro called him one minute later, according to T-Mobile records. The test ended at 11:36 a.m., but their conversation continued until 11:38 a.m. Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Timothy Taber documented the overlapping times in a 10-page federal affidavit.

On December 10, 2021, Castro explained the cheating method to the undercover investigator. Applicants would conceal Bluetooth earpieces beneath headphones provided at Registry of Motor Vehicles testing centers. Someone outside the testing facility could hear examination questions and provide answers through the hidden equipment. Investigators recorded conversations describing how the arrangement worked.

Nolasco returns for additional endorsement exams

On December 16, 2021, Nolasco returned for additional commercial driving qualifications. He passed the tanker endorsement examination but failed the test covering double and triple trailers. Investigators also identified a $1,800 withdrawal from his account and matching deposit into Castro’s account. Authorities could not determine the exact transfer method.

On December 17, 2021, he passed the double and triple trailer test in nine minutes. The examination began at 9:42 a.m. and ended at 9:51 a.m. Telephone records show Castro called five minutes before testing began. Their conversation ended at the exact time Nolasco completed the examination.

Later that day, Castro directed the undercover agent toward Nolasco for help with the cheating equipment. On December 21, 2021, both men met at a McDonald’s restaurant in Lynn, Massachusetts. Nolasco demonstrated how to conceal the earpiece, communicate with Castro and avoid detection. He supplied the equipment and acknowledged paying for assistance during his own examinations.

On December 22, 2021, the undercover agent deposited $3,000 into Castro’s Eastern Bank account. Investigators then conducted a controlled examination at the Danvers Registry of Motor Vehicles. Castro instructed the agent to sit in the far-right corner, away from the testing center’s camera view. The agent received answers remotely, passed the examination and obtained a commercial learner’s permit.

A technical problem prevented investigators from recording the telephone conversation during the controlled examination. However, authorities had previously recorded discussions explaining the cheating arrangement. Financial records and undercover observations provided additional evidence. Investigators used those findings to support the federal case.

Federal prosecution raises additional questions

A federal grand jury indicted Castro in April 2024 for his role in the scheme. A jury convicted him in January 2026. On May 1, 2026, a federal judge sentenced Castro to time served, approximately 23 months in custody. Federal prosecutors subsequently brought charges against Nolasco.

Nolasco appeared in federal court in Boston on October 13, 2026, and received conditional release. The charge of unlawfully producing an identification document carries up to 15 years in prison. Federal law also permits three years of supervised release and a fine reaching $250,000.

Homeland Security Investigations conducted the investigation with assistance from the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Tobin of the Major Crimes Unit is prosecuting the case. Investigators have not established how many other applicants participated in Castro’s operation. Available court records also leave unanswered whether Nolasco eventually obtained a full commercial driver’s license. The records do not establish whether other participants drove commercial trucks after obtaining permits through the scheme. Nolasco remains presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Why It Matters

Commercial driving examinations establish mandatory knowledge requirements before applicants can advance toward operating heavy vehicles. This investigation documents how concealed communications equipment allowed an undercover applicant to bypass that testing process.

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

25 charged after drug ring used unsuspecting truckers to haul cocaine from California to Florida – FreightWaves

California trucking owner pleads guilty in $2.1M identity theft scheme – FreightWaves

25 charged after drug ring used unsuspecting truckers to haul cocaine from California to Florida – FreightWaves

What Happens to Tribal Knowledge When Dispatchers Retire?

Article brought to you by Evolutionary Operating System, Inc.

For decades, the freight industry’s biggest technology investments have gone to the biggest freight companies. Enterprise carriers and mega-brokerages with dedicated engineering teams have adopted increasingly sophisticated transportation management systems and software integrations. Meanwhile, many small-to-medium-sized businesses are running TMS platforms that are sometimes a decade or more old. Even if not, they’re typically paying enterprise prices for software that wasn’t built around how a smaller operation actually runs.

This imbalance is the starting point for Evolutionary Operating System, Inc. (Evos), an autonomous AI operations company launching to the public on October 14. The reasoning, according to founder and CEO Urav Shah, runs in a fairly straight line: decades of technology investment have gone almost entirely to the enterprise end of the market, leaving small and mid-size logistics companies running on aging systems that were never built around how differently each of those businesses actually operates. 

Those systems can handle the routine, predictable share of the work, but not the edge cases, such as the judgment calls that don’t fit a standard workflow. That work falls back on a person to notice, decide and process by hand. Shah argues that’s created a structural capacity problem for small and mid-size logistics companies, one that’s compounding as the industry’s most experienced operators retire and take tacit knowledge with them.

“There’s been twenty to thirty years of big tech ignoring the small and mid-market,” Shah said. “That’s created a real capacity gap. Evos is the only company that does the work instead of just showing you the work.”

What Shah describes is a platform that configures itself around a given business, learning how that company’s own team uses judgment to work through its edge cases, then handling that work on their behalf rather than simply flagging it for a person to finish. 

That’s the execution layer, and it’s how Shah draws the line between Evos and the wave of AI copilots and assistants now built into most major TMS platforms. Those tools still need someone to drive them, and they’re largely unequipped to handle the edge cases that make up a vast portion of day-to-day tasks in smaller operations. Some AI agents might suggest a status update or flag an exception, but a person still has to act on it.

Because Evos was designed to be an execution layer, it can help run entire desks, such as dispatch, track-and-trace, or billing, end to end, on top of an organization’s existing systems. 

The biggest challenge, according to Shah, is not just building software that can act. It’s building software that acts the way a specific company would. Every logistics operation runs a little differently, and that variation shows up constantly in the edge cases that consume an ops team’s day. 

Shah gave an example of the kind of interrogation Evos runs during onboarding to capture that logic. Why did a given load go on one truck instead of another available one? Because that customer gets priority service. Why not the newer truck? Because it was already committed to a spot load with tighter lead time. Multiply that by every recurring judgment call a dispatcher makes, and the pattern of behavior is the configuration data that lets Evos’ autonomous operator match the specific execution needs of that one company rather than applying a generic workflow across every customer.

In a deliberate architectural choice, Evos runs what it calls large action models rather than large language models. The system is trained on patterns of decisions and behavior rather than on text. Every customer has its own model, trained solely on that company’s own historical data, with no shared central model pooling information across customers. Reinforcement learning happens on anonymized behavioral patterns specific to that one operation. 

Shah said the approach is a direct response to a hesitation he hears constantly from smaller operators: reluctance to hand over proprietary operational knowledge to an external AI platform. Keeping each customer’s model self-contained means that tribal knowledge stays tribal. It’s neither contaminated by the way other companies behave nor at risk of any IP infringements.

Shah also points to how Evos builds those models as a further differentiator from other point-solution automations. Most of those tools run on top of frontier large language models from major AI labs, which ties their underlying costs to whatever those labs are charging at any given time. Because Evos trains and runs its own models rather than routing requests through a frontier model, Shah argues its cost structure stays fixed instead of exposed to that volatility, which he expects to matter more as frontier-model pricing eventually shifts to reflect what those labs actually spend on compute.

Tacit knowledge retention extends to how Evos is addressing the industry’s aging workforce. As ops teams around the country struggle to replace experienced talent, Evos has built a way to preserve what a retiring dispatcher or fleet manager knows before it disappears from the business entirely, and expanded the capacity of existing teams in the process. That includes things like the escalation logic, the workarounds, and the decision criteria that were never written down for a new hire to learn.

None of that works, though, if deployment takes the months typical of an enterprise software rollout. Evos says a new autonomous operator can go live in under 24 hours from first conversation, without migrating a customer’s existing data, using a library of more than 150 pre-built integrations with common freight systems. 

Shah described a graduated-autonomy model for how those operators earn trust once deployed: a new operator starts by handling a portion of a workflow autonomously while routing judgment calls to a human for approval, rejection, or revision, and the system reasons from those revisions going forward. If it’s told once to avoid an older truck that needs more frequent fuel stops on a tight-deadline load, it can start weighing that same tradeoff on future loads without being told again.

As an illustration of the kind of problem Evos is building toward for smaller carriers specifically, Shah pointed to an operator currently in development that scans a carrier’s planned routes for backhaul opportunities (a truck headed from Chicago to New York with nothing booked for the return leg, for example) and surfaces a set of matching loads for a dispatcher to confirm. Today, he said, that kind of open capacity is usually found manually, often scrambled together at the last minute, if it’s found at all.

Most AI tools still need constant prompting: someone has to ask, review, and act on every answer. An Evos operator is given a function, not a prompt, so the team ends up managing outcomes instead of inputs.

One freight brokerage, MyFreightWorld, runs an Evos operator that audits every LTL carrier invoice against its TMS. In its first two months, the operator made nearly 3,500 audit decisions at 97% accuracy, and in the last five weeks alone it has closed out more than $600,000 of invoice value.

“Evos has helped us revolutionize our billing process with zero upfront investment, and also at an impressively fast speed measured in days and weeks,” said Mike Chalfant, president of MyFreightWorld. “It’s increased our accuracy and dramatically increased efficiency, which has ultimately led to a better experience for our customer base. The performance of the operator has given us confidence and excitement to continue to add to the functionality and explore new possibilities. Adding Evos to the stack has been a terrific thing for our company, and we’re excited to continue to grow our partnership.”

Those numbers point back to the same argument, according to Shah. The technology gap in freight software is largely the result of who enterprise vendors built for. 

“We’re the only company that does the work instead of just showing you the work,” Shah said. While the largest carriers are already investing heavily in automation, the small and mid-size operators need a tailored solution they won’t find elsewhere. 

That’s why, according to Shah, Evos’ autonomous operators are designed to help the logistics businesses most exposed to the industry’s capacity gap and the most likely to lose institutional knowledge as their veteran staff retire.

Click here to learn more about Evos. 

Volvo folds powertrain repairs into its service contract

A man in a work uniform gestures toward a Volvo semitruck at the open door of a dealer service bay

Volvo Trucks North America launched the Silver Service Contract on Monday at the American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition in Charlotte, North Carolina. The plan adds repair coverage for the engine, aftertreatment system, transmission, and clutch to the connected preventive maintenance in Volvo’s Blue Service Contract.

Truck repair and maintenance costs rose 8.6% in 2025, according to the American Transportation Research Institute’s 2026 Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking. The category reached 21.5 cents per mile, up from 19.8 cents in 2024. Peter Voorhoeve, president of Volvo Trucks North America, called maintenance and powertrain repairs the least predictable costs a fleet carries and said Silver puts them inside a single monthly payment.

Silver is sold through Volvo’s network of nearly 400 authorized dealers in the United States and Canada and is available for the all-new VNL and all-new VNR.

What Silver adds to Blue

Blue covers preventive maintenance. It uses connected-vehicle data and artificial intelligence to set each truck’s service schedule from its powertrain operating conditions. Those conditions include fuel consumption, transport cycle, gross combination weight, topography, and idle time, according to Volvo’s sales sheet for Silver.

Silver keeps those Blue benefits. Its powertrain coverage also extends to other select driveline components and includes the wearable clutch lining kit. When a truck comes in for an unplanned repair, any preventive maintenance that is due can be done on the same visit. Scheduled work includes valve adjustments, diesel particulate filter cleaning, diesel exhaust fluid tank flushes, and transmission and rear axle oil changes. The list varies by contract mileage.

Volvo’s third contract level, Gold, is a full-service plan sold with the VNR Electric.

Price and terms not disclosed

Volvo did not disclose what Silver costs, how long contracts run, or whether mileage caps apply. The release also does not say how Silver coverage works alongside Volvo’s standard truck warranty. Optional add-ons, including annual Department of Transportation inspections, truck washes, on-site maintenance, and pickup and delivery, vary by location.

One payment and a dealer fleet manager

Customers financing a truck through Volvo Financial Services can bundle Silver into the truck payment and spread its cost over the financing period interest-free.

Each customer works with a Volvo Fleet Manager at a certified dealer. The fleet manager plans maintenance from data the trucks send and handles service campaigns, recalls, and over-the-air software updates. More than 80% of connected Volvo trucks were running the latest software as of June.

If a truck breaks down away from its home dealer, the fleet manager coordinates with the servicing dealer through Volvo Action Service, the company’s 24/7 roadside assistance and service coordination network.

“The Volvo Fleet Manager becomes part of the customer’s team,” Voorhoeve said. “They know the fleet, they know what preventive service is due, and they handle it.”

Why it matters: Silver shifts the cost of a major powertrain failure from the fleet to Volvo for a monthly payment, bundled with financing and a dealer fleet manager. With repair and maintenance costs up 8.6% in 2025, pricing will decide whether that trade makes sense.

New Mexico jury awards $47M in tanker truck crash lawsuit

A New Mexico jury has awarded $47 million to a pick up truck driver and his mother in a lawsuit against Pilot Thomas Logistics LLC and Maxum Petroleum Operating Company stemming from a 2022 head-on collision involving a commercial tanker truck.

The verdict followed a jury trial in the First Judicial District Court in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico, involving Austin Drewry Jackson, who was 21 at the time of the crash, and his mother, Crystal Gayle Drewry.

The $47 million verdict is among the largest reported trucking accident awards in New Mexico in recent years.

The New Mexico verdict follows a separate $104 million jury award in July against Mesilla Valley Transportation in a fatal truck crash lawsuit in Texas.

The award also comes amid growing concerns about so-called nuclear verdicts — jury awards exceeding $10 million — and their impact on trucking companies’ insurance costs and financial stability. 

According to an Oct. 13 blog post from the plaintiffs’ attorneys at Tawney, Acosta & Chaparro P.C., the November 2022 crash occurred on a two-lane highway near Carlsbad, New Mexico.

The law firm alleged that the commercial tanker truck driver was traveling too fast for weather conditions and failed to see or react to Drewry’s approaching vehicle before the head-on collision.

A 2025 American Transportation Research Institute study found that allegations of speeding and other pre-crash negligence can significantly increase jury awards against trucking companies.

Drewry suffered severe traumatic brain injuries, along with extensive damage to his spine, bones and internal organs, according to the firm.

Drewry, a Louisiana native who joined the Louisiana National Guard at age 18 and served on two deployments, was working on an oil rig in New Mexico when the collision occurred. He had planned to return home for Thanksgiving.

“The defense’s first pretrial offer of $100,000 did not come close to acknowledging the harm Austin suffered or the care he will need,” James Tawney, a partner at Tawney, Acosta & Chaparro, said in a statement.

Court records reviewed by FreightWaves confirm that the lawsuit, Austin Drewry Jackson et al. v. Pilot Thomas Logistics LLC et al., was filed April 26, 2024, under Case No. D-117-CV-2024-00161.

The case was heard before District Judge Francis J. Mathew. Jury selection began Oct. 5, and the court docket lists a special verdict form filed Oct. 13.

The court also granted a motion Oct. 7 dismissing claims against truck driver Marcos Alejandro Romero in his individual capacity, with prejudice. The case proceeded against the corporate defendants.

The docket shows that the defendants filed motions Oct. 9 challenging the plaintiffs’ claims involving punitive damages, direct negligence, proximate cause and loss of consortium.

The publicly available docket does not specify how the $47 million verdict was allocated among damages categories or whether punitive damages were included.

As of Oct. 19, the docket did not list a separately entered final judgment or notice of appeal.

Why it matters: The New Mexico verdict highlights the potentially enormous financial exposure facing trucking companies in injury lawsuits.

CBP seizes $30.4M in meth hidden in commercial salt load at Laredo World Trade Bridge

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers discovered nearly $30.4 million in suspected methamphetamine inside a commercial salt shipment in Texas. The October 12 seizure occurred at Laredo’s World Trade Bridge along the U.S.-Mexico border. Officers recovered 3,395.91 pounds of suspected methamphetamine from a 2020 International LT625 tractor-trailer. Authorities subsequently released the driver and equipment while federal investigators continued examining the case.

Officers discovered 76 bags containing suspected methamphetamine inside a trailer manifested as salt. The agency referred the investigation to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Officials have not publicly established whether the driver or trucking company knew about the concealed drugs.

Commercial shipment leads to multimillion-dollar seizure

A CBP officer selected the commercial vehicle for additional examination during the crossing. Officers conducted a secondary inspection using nonintrusive imaging technology before uncovering the concealed narcotics.

An HSI officer examines bags associated with the methamphetamine seizure at Laredo’s World Trade Bridge. (Photos courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

Laredo is the nation’s busiest commercial land port, handling 2.95 million inbound truck crossings from Mexico in 2025, according to federal transportation data. In September, federal investigators uncovered more than 2,000 pounds of methamphetamine concealed inside a commercial cabbage shipment in South Texas.

Driver and tractor-trailer released

FreightWaves asked why authorities released the driver and equipment. Questions also included the carrier’s identity and country of registration, importer of record and shipment destination. CBP and HSI declined to provide those details, citing the ongoing investigation.

In a statement to FreightWaves, HSI outlined its ongoing investigation. “HSI continues to investigate the matter and pursue all available leads to identify those responsible for bringing this significant quantity of methamphetamine into the United States and prevent it from reaching communities across South Texas,” the agency stated. FreightWaves will update this article as new information becomes available.

Why it matters

Commercial freight shipments can conceal substantial quantities of narcotics, placing trucking companies and drivers within federal investigations. The driver’s reported release makes the circumstances surrounding this particular shipment especially relevant to transportation professionals.

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

California trucking owner pleads guilty in $2.1M identity theft scheme – FreightWaves

25 charged after drug ring used unsuspecting truckers to haul cocaine from California to Florida – FreightWaves

Nebraska deputies recover $250K stolen copper load 50 miles past Iowa destination – FreightWaves

Air Canada adds freighter destinations for winter season

Close-up of red maple leaf logo on an Air Canada Cargo jet and another cargo jet in the background.

Air Canada on Monday announced the expansion of its freighter network for the upcoming winter season, adding new service from its Toronto global hub to Amsterdam, Monterrey, Mexico, and Panama City, Panama. 

The additions provide customers with dedicated, large-pallet capacity on key transatlantic and Latin American trade lanes, and create additional routing options between Europe, Canada and Latin America.

The twice-weekly service to Amsterdam begins Oct. 29, Air Canada Cargo (TSX: AC) said in a news release.

Service to Amsterdam complements Air Canada’s passenger flights to the city, while Monterrey and Panama City deepen freighter connectivity to important manufacturing and distribution markets in Mexico and Central America.

Air Canada operates six Boeing 767-300 freighter aircraft and manages cargo shipped on passenger aircraft. In the second quarter, ended June 30, cargo revenue increased 28.4% to $229.8 million. Cargo revenue was up 16% for the first half to $413 million.

Management said the increases were primarily driven by higher cargo yields and favorable freight pricing conditions, particularly on international routes, in part, due to higher carrier surcharges. Airlines like Air Canada have significantly increased fuel surcharges on cargo shipments to cope with the skyrocketing price of jet fuel in the wake of hostilities between the U.S., Israel and Iran in late February.

By comparison, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, which don’t have freighter aircraft, recorded second-quarter cargo revenue of $294 million and $571 million, respectively. But the two American majors also have much larger global widebody networks than Air Canada.

Why It Matters: Freighter aircraft allow Air Canada to cover gaps in its widebody passenger network to cities that cargo shippers frequent.

“The introduction of our freighters in Amsterdam is an important step in strengthening our European network. This gives us dedicated main-deck capacity at a time of year when transatlantic capacity is more constrained, helping us better serve customers in the Netherlands and across Europe while creating opportunities to connect their cargo through our global network,” said Matthieu Casey, managing director, commercial – cargo, at Air Canada. Together with new freighter service to Monterrey and Panama City, these additions enhance two-way connectivity between Europe and our growing Latin American network, creating more opportunities to reach key markets such as Quito, Lima, Bogotá and Mexico City.”

Air Canada’s new freighter service to Monterrey begins Oct. 26, operating three times per week. Panama City service begins Oct. 25, with up to two flights per week, the company said.

In Mexico, the airline’s cargo jets also fly to Mexico City and Guadalajara. 

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

Amerijet to repair aging 767 freighter aircraft damaged in hard landing

Air Canada leases surplus Boeing 767 freighter aircraft to Ethiopian Airlines

Pump price is trucking’s #1 concern: ATRI survey

This year’s study of the top issues facing trucking undertaken by the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) had a number one concern that didn’t even crack the top 10 in the prior two years: fuel prices.

That issue was number one in the responses submitted by drivers and number two for carriers, finishing in the top slot overall. 

The carriers’ rating is particularly notable, because it undercuts the idea that fuel surcharges are able to effectively move the cost of fuel on to the shipper with little impact on the carrier, or that higher prices and the fuel surcharges that come with are a positive for carriers. The results in the survey suggest otherwise, at least to some degree.

Although fuel prices didn’t make the list the last two years, ATRI, the research arm of the American Trucking Associations (ATA), said 2026 was the fourth time in the 22 years of its top 10 survey that fuel prices were the number one overall concern.

ATRI revealed its top 10 list Sunday at the ATA’s annual Management Conference & Exhibition meeting in Charlotte. 

Not since 2023

Prior to appearing again on the ATRI list of “critical concerns in the trucking industry,” which is what the group calls its annual survey, fuel prices were most recently number 3 on the list for drivers in 2023, when diesel at that point had set an all-time record for prices. It was number five on the list that year for carriers. But the issue was nowhere to be found in 2024 and 2025.

The highest average weekly retail diesel price reported by the Energy Information Administration in 2022 was $5.341/g on October 24. While the price was down in 2023, it remained above $4/gallon until May and then climbed back above $5 for most of August into November. 

The highest EIA weekly level this year was $6.529 on September 22, which also was the highest in the data series’ history. The AAA’s daily average fuel price hit a record in September as well. 

Best practices post-Montgomery

The case of Montgomery vs. Caribe Transport II could be seen in the high rankings for several categories.

For example, motor carrier Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA) scores were fourth in 2025 and fifth this year for motor carriers, third overall. 

One observation made by brokers is that in the post-Montgomery world where they are more likely to be held liable in a crash, what constitutes a best practice that in any subsequent litigation they can cite as having proved they did adequate due diligence in hiring a carrier? For example, the nuclear verdict in Lipe vs. Lupus Superior involved a motor carrier with a Satisfactory rating from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. 

FMCSA officials have said they do not view their scores as a ratings tool.

But that did not appear to be acknowledged in the ATRI list of strategies to deal with CSA scores.

“Compliance Safety Accountability – FMCSA’s safety measurement system – has been a top 10 issue for 16 of the 17 years since CSA debuted on the list as the #2 overall concern in 2010,” the ATRI report said. “This year, driven in large part by the SCOTUS ruling, CSA is back up to the industry’s #3 overall concern, its highest ranking since 2015.”

From left to right at the ATA MCE meeting, revealing the ATRI top 10:

Rebecca Brewster, outgoing head of ATRI; Ben Banks, president of TCW;

Jason Damon, Convoy Systems; Gary Johnson, Motive

While the respondents want FMCSA to address “enforcement disparities” and “geographic variations” in its work, there seemed to be little question that the industry believes CSA scores will help them in a lawsuit. 

“Based on the (Montgomery) ruling, brokers will need documented evidence that they hired the safest carriers to avoid negligent hiring claims, and carrier CSA scores are one such form of documentation,” the ATRI report on its survey said.

While the two sides of the trucking industry, driver and carrier, may agree on the impact of fuel prices, the divide that shows up regularly in this annual survey by ATRI was present for other issues.

For drivers, parking is big; for carriers, not so much

For example, truck parking, even after various efforts to improve its availability, showed up as number 2 on the list of drivers. For carriers, it wasn’t even in the top 10.

Lawsuit abuse was number two overall for the second consecutive year. It was number one for carriers. It didn’t show up in the top 10 for drivers.

The divide between carriers and drivers was evident elsewhere. Driver shortage was number 3 for carriers, and not on the top 10 list for drivers. Broker issues: number 8 for drivers, not on the carriers list. Detention/delay at customer facilities was number 7 for drivers and didn’t make the top 10 cut for carriers.

Driver compensation between 2023 and 2026 for drivers was first, second, first and third. It popped up as number nine this year on the carriers’ list, but that is the first time in the last four years it has been in the top 10.

The ATRI survey also seeks input on solutions to the issues raised by the respondents. At the top of the list for lawsuit reform were state-level reforms “to cap non-economic and/or punitive damages paid to plaintiffs in truck-involved crashes.”

Another target strategy for fighting lawsuit abuse, according to the survey, would be to push for what are described as “phantom” medical damages. 

ATRI described them as payouts that are ordered “by claiming the original billed total for medical care rather than the amount actually paid for medical care. These inflated costs increase verdict and settlement amounts, and several states – including Florida and Georgia – have passed legislation to rein in plaintiff claims for phantom medical damages.”

Third party lawsuit funding

Another target for fixing the issue, according to the ATRI respondents, would be fighting third party litigation funding, where an outside attorney or group of attorneys provides upfront funding to power a lawsuit. 

Insurance cost/availability was fourth on the overall list. Commentary on that brought up Montgomery as well. 

“The impacts of the SCOTUS ruling in Montgomery v. Caribe are just now starting to be realized but one thing is certain: insurance rates are likely to increase for motor carriers and brokers,” ATRI said.

The top recommendation for dealing with that issue, according to ATRI, would be to develop a “framework” that could possibly lead insurance companies to reduce premiums “when drivers and carriers adopt proven safety technologies.”

More articles by John Kingston

English language rule’s comments bring criticism from Sikh organization

FMCSA split sleeper berth pilot program moves closer to launch

Texas judge upholds nuclear verdict against C.H. Robinson

No. 2 container line studying US-UK route for nuclear ships

A.P. Moller-Maersk is participating in industry studies examining what would be required for nuclear-powered container ships to make routine port calls, with the work centered on regulation, safety, security and port operations rather than an immediate vessel-ordering program.

The Danish carrier — the world’s second-largest by capacity — (OTC: AMKBY) joined Lloyd’s Register and reactor developer Core Power in 2024 to assess the regulatory feasibility of operating a containership using a fourth-generation nuclear reactor at a European port. The study focused on a feeder vessel, a smaller containership used to connect regional ports with major hub terminals.

A subsequent case study involving the Port of Rotterdam evaluated calls by a hypothetical 3,600-TEU Maersk feeder vessel. The participants concluded that the core obstacles were largely regulatory and governance-related rather than purely technical, including nuclear-specific port safety procedures, emergency preparedness, physical protection, liability, insurance and coordination between maritime and nuclear authorities.

Maersk has said the work should not be interpreted as a commitment to deploy nuclear propulsion. Instead, the carrier is assessing nuclear energy as one potential long-term zero-emission pathway while identifying the safety, waste-management, legal and public-acceptance issues that would need resolution before commercial operations could be considered.

The inquiry has since expanded beyond Europe. In September, Maersk and Lloyd’s Register announced a conceptual UK-U.S. “Pink Corridor” project involving the ports of Felixstowe and Charleston, S.C. The initiative is intended to study safeguards and security requirements for a potential transatlantic nuclear-powered containership service.

The first phase will consider ship security, nuclear safeguards, cyber resilience, emergency response, insurance and the alignment of maritime and nuclear regulations. Its findings could define a later phase examining engineering, legal, legislative and safeguards requirements in greater detail.

State agency SC Ports said the work gives the hub an opportunity to study a potential nuclear-powered freight corridor, while Lloyd’s Register said the project is intended to establish the practical requirements and gaps that would need to be addressed before such a service could be considered.

The Charleston project arrives amid wider U.S. government interest in commercial maritime nuclear power. The U.S. Department of Energy and classification society ABS signed an agreement to examine nuclear-powered vessels, floating nuclear power applications, and the port, shipyard and industrial infrastructure needed to support them.

Separately, the U.S. Maritime Administration and Core Power have entered a cooperation agreement on maritime-nuclear frameworks for a prospective U.S.-flag fleet. Core Power has said the framework is aimed at accelerating the commercial, industrial and regulatory work needed for potential nuclear-powered merchant vessels.

The Port of Long Beach and Marad recently signed a first-of-its-kind partnership to develop small modular reactors for commercial vessels, port operations and other maritime uses. Bluecore Energy is developing a 10-megawatt floating reactor concept at the port, though no operating reactor or regulatory approval is in place.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

Trans-Pacific facing new booking risks as reliability sinks

Container ship attacks escalate in Strait of Hormuz

New Long Beach record as volume nears 1M containers

Houthi attacks add new geopolitical risk to softening container rates

New chief for DP World Americas

Trans-Pacific facing new booking risks as reliability sinks

Shippers moving cargo from Asia to North America face tighter vessel capacity and greater difficulty securing bookings in the weeks ahead, while deteriorating service reliability threatens delivery schedules across major east-west trades, according to WiseTech Global’s October Ocean Freight Risk Outlook.

Capacity remains comparatively plentiful on Asia-Europe and Europe-North America routes, but available slots do not necessarily translate into on-time arrivals. On the trans-Pacific, reduced planned carrier capacity is expected to compound already weak service performance.

“Capacity is forecast to tighten towards the end of the outlook period, driven by reduced planned carrier capacity rather than stronger demand,” WiseTech said of the Asia-North America trade. Its booking security risk indicator also is expected to rise and remain well above its historical average, signaling greater difficulty obtaining space on preferred sailings.

The four-week outlook combines forecast demand, planned carrier supply, booking responses, shipment arrival performance and port operating conditions. Its reliability measure tracks the share of shipments arriving at the discharge port on or before the carrier’s promised schedule.

Trans-Pacific faces booking and delivery pressure

Asia-North America on-time performance fell to 26.9% in September from 33.9% in August, a decline of 7 percentage points. The latest weekly reading was little better at 26.8%, while delays of eight days or more remained the largest arrival-outcome category.

WiseTech attributed increased waterside operating pressure in September to continuing disruption at Asian ports, with vessel delays reducing effective trans-Pacific capacity. China’s Golden Week holiday adds disruption to production and cargo flows, meaning a subsequent easing in demand may not immediately improve booking availability or schedule reliability, the report said.

Published schedules nevertheless show relatively short transit times. Planned Asia-North America transits range from 26.2 to 27.6 days during the outlook period, below the recent 28-day baseline. WiseTech cautioned that weak actual performance continues to create uncertainty around arrival dates despite those scheduled transit times.

The company advised forwarders and beneficial cargo owners to book early against contracted allocations and build additional time into delivery commitments, taking individual carriers’ reliability into account. Its analysis found substantial differences in service performance and booking acceptance risk among the trade’s top 10 carriers.

Asia-Europe reliability falls below 10%

The sharpest deterioration in monthly on-time performance occurred on Asia-Europe services, where the September reading fell to 9.9% from 22.9% in August. The latest weekly result improved modestly to 11.5%, but shipments delayed eight days or more accounted for 45.5% of volume that week.

Unlike the trans-Pacific, Asia-Europe is not expected to face a lane-wide capacity constraint during the forecast period. Planned carrier supply remains above projected demand, while booking security risk stays well below its historical average. Some tightening is expected late in the period as carriers reduce planned capacity, rather than because demand strengthens.

That leaves delivery execution, rather than securing vessel space, as the principal concern.

“Shorter published schedules do not indicate improved service reliability, with recent arrival performance continuing to show substantial delays,” WiseTech said. Planned transit times range from 37.8 to 39.9 days, below the recent 40.7-day baseline.

The report pointed to Asian port congestion and changes between Suez Canal-Red Sea and diverted Mideast routings around Africa as possible contributors to broader network disruption. Even the stronger-performing carriers have weak recent on-time results, limiting the protection that carrier selection alone can provide against shipment delays, WiseTech said.

Trans-Atlantic space remains available

Europe-North America presents a comparatively less constrained capacity outlook, with planned supply exceeding forecast demand throughout the period and booking security risk generally easing below its historical average. Increased planned capacity and softer demand initially improve conditions, followed by some tightening as planned capacity declines later in the outlook.

Reliability nevertheless weakened. Monthly on-time performance slipped to 39.2% in September from 42.8% in August. The latest weekly reading improved to 38.6%, with on-time arrivals representing the largest outcome category.

Carrier choice could make a substantial difference on the route: September on-time performance ranged from approximately 14% to 61% among carriers, according to WiseTech. Scheduled transit times remain broadly around the recent 19.1-day baseline, ranging from 17.7 to 19.5 days.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Read more:

Container ship attacks escalate in Strait of Hormuz

New Long Beach record as volume nears 1M containers

Houthi attacks add new geopolitical risk to softening container rates

New chief for DP World Americas

Philadelphia ports sets $837 million expansion, first new berth in 50 years