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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A convenient time for a vacation, indeed

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

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

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

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

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

BALTHROP: “One-vehicle fleets.”

FREIGHTWAVES: OK, that’s interesting.

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

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

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

How a truck driver gets stopped for inspection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time to start inspecting in the winter

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

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

FREIGHTWAVES: That makes sense.

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

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

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

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

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

Why the Northeast is quietly running out of diesel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s a breakdown:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ‘everything shortage’ endures

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

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

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

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

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

Exclusive: Central Freight Lines to shut down after 96 years

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

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

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

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

Kalem agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch: Central Freight Lines’ impact on the LTL market

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

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

Central Freight Lines statement

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

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

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

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

Brief history of Central Freight Lines

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

Source: Central Freight Lines

Warehouse cramming is about to begin — Freightonomics

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

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

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

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

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

Seasonality pushing rejections and rates higher ahead of the Fourth

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

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

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

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

The Pricing Power Index is based on the following indicators:

Load volumes: Absolute levels positive for carriers, momentum neutral

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tender rejections: Absolute level and momentum positive for carriers

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

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

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

SONAR: Capacity Trend Market Score (Carriers – VAN)

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

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

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

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

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

Freight rates: Absolute level and momentum positive for carriers

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

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

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

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

Economic stats: Momentum and absolute level neutral

Several economic releases this week are worth noting.

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

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

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

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

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

SONAR: IJC.USA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Project44 acquires ClearMetal to strengthen predictive tools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here for more articles by Grace Sharkey.

Project44 expands real-time visibility into China

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

‘Project44’s vision has always been global’

House votes to overturn Trump’s tariffs on imports from Canada

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to terminate the national emergency President Donald Trump declared to justify sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports, marking a rare bipartisan rebuke of the president’s trade policy.

The resolution passed 219-211, with six Republicans joining Democrats in support of overturning the emergency declaration.

Largely symbolic without veto-proof margin

Although the resolution cleared the House, it did not pass with the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto, and Trump is expected to reject the measure if it reaches his desk.

The Senate has previously approved similar resolutions challenging Trump’s Canada tariffs, but lawmakers would still need veto-proof majorities in both chambers to block the administration’s policy.

Shortly before the vote concluded, Trump warned on Truth Social that any Republican who opposed his tariffs would “seriously suffer the consequences come Election time,” including potential primary challenges.

As of February 2026, U.S.-Canada trade is marked by high tariffs, with the U.S. imposing 35% duties on many Canadian goods (increasing to 50% on certain steel/aluminum) and threatening up to 100% tariffs.

Canada maintains targeted retaliatory tariffs on U.S. steel, aluminum, and autos, though most other retaliatory duties were removed in late 2025.

Canada was the second largest trading partner of the U.S. in November at $53.7 billion in two-way commerce, according to the latest Census Bureau data analyzed by WorldCity. Mexico was the top U.S. trade partner at $71.1 billion.

Lawmakers cite costs, constitutional authority

Supporters of the resolution argued the tariffs have increased costs for consumers and disrupted businesses and agricultural producers.

In a statement following the vote, Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas said the tariffs were raising costs for families, farmers and small businesses in her state.

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher of Texas said the House vote represents an effort to reassert congressional authority over trade policy and roll back what she described as unauthorized tariff action.

Broader trade tensions, USMCA uncertainty

The House vote comes amid broader uncertainty in North American trade policy.

The Trump administration has continued to threaten or impose tariffs on multiple trading partners and has publicly weighed withdrawing the United States from the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the trade pact Trump signed into law in 2020 to replace NAFTA.

SONAR Delivers Elevated Global Ocean Intelligence with New Supply/Demand & Commodity Dashboards — Plus Faster, Smarter Rate Tools

Global ocean markets don’t move in isolation. Booking behavior in Asia today becomes capacity pressure in U.S. truckload networks weeks later. Port delays ripple into intermodal congestion. Commodity shifts reshape inland demand patterns.

To help supply chain leaders stay ahead of those shifts, SONAR has officially replaced Container Atlas with two powerful, purpose-built dashboards: Ocean Supply/Demand and Ocean Commodity Details.

At the same time, SONAR has enhanced Batch Rate Intelligence and Coverage Guide to make them faster, cleaner, and more intuitive for high-velocity decision environments.

This is more than a UI refresh. It’s a structural upgrade to how upstream maritime data connects to downstream freight strategy.

Ocean Supply/Demand: Upstream Insights with Downstream Impacts:

The new Ocean Supply/Demand dashboard delivers a consolidated view of booking volumes, carrier behavior, lead times, transit performance, and port-pair reliability — all in one console.

Instead of stitching together disparate booking, capacity, and delay data, users can now evaluate how global conditions are evolving across lanes in real time.

Data can be viewed as daily snapshots or smoothed using 7-day or 14-day rolling averages to reduce noise and highlight trends.

Why It Matters:

Ocean demand shifts don’t just affect drayage — they impact warehouse throughput, truckload tender volumes, contract negotiations, and procurement timing.

With Ocean Supply/Demand, SONAR users can anticipate capacity tightening before it hits domestic modes, validate rate direction against booking and rejection trends, and identify trade lane stress before it manifests in inland freight.

It transforms maritime signals into forward-looking freight intelligence.

Ocean Commodity Details: From Booking to Berth, With Full Trade Transparency

While Ocean Supply/Demand focuses on macro conditions, Ocean Commodity Details delivers shipment-level clarity.

The Ocean Commodity dashboard unifies booking, vessel, and U.S. Customs manifest data into a single, intuitive view — giving supply chain leaders unmatched visibility into global ocean trade.

Strategic Applications of SONAR’s Ocean Commodity Dashboard:

For shippers:

-Identify sourcing risk by commodity and port
-Benchmark supplier and carrier performance
-Prepare for seasonal surges or geopolitical disruption

For brokers:

-Align inland capacity strategy with commodity flows
-Target growth verticals before demand spikes

For financial professionals:

-Detect trade inflections at the product level
-Track exposure to specific commodities or regions

Ocean Commodity Details turn fragmented maritime data into decision-ready intelligence — from booking to berth.

Faster, Cleaner, More Intuitive: Batch Rate Intelligence & Coverage Guide Upgrades

SONAR has also enhanced two core workflow tools: Batch Rate Intelligence (BRI) and Coverage Guide.

These upgrades focus on speed, usability, and clarity — critical for teams running high-volume pricing, RFP strategy, and margin prioritization.

SONAR has added performance enhancements allowing for faster data loading and lane processing, a cleaner interface with streamlined views, clearer signal prioritization and more intuitive decision logic for easier interpretation.

For enterprise users evaluating hundreds or thousands of lanes, speed and clarity translate directly into:

-Faster quote turnaround
-Better margin discipline
-Stronger bid strategy alignment

Combined with ocean intelligence, these tools now allow organizations to move from global trade signals to lane-level execution without leaving the platform.

The Bigger Picture: End-to-End Visibility in One System

The shift from Container Atlas to Ocean Supply/Demand and Ocean Commodity Details reflects a broader strategic evolution.

Ocean data is no longer an isolated dataset — it’s an upstream indicator feeding directly into domestic freight strategy.

As global trade volatility increases and supply chains become more dynamic, organizations need: earlier warning signals, cleaner workflows, faster decision times and integrated visibility across modes.

With these upgrades, SONAR delivers a unified intelligence layer across ocean, intermodal, and truckload markets — built for speed, clarity, and strategic execution.

For teams that need to move from insight to action quickly, this is the next evolution of maritime intelligence inside SONAR.

Click here to request a SONAR demo.

FedEx targets 14% profit growth in 3-year strategy

Side view of a FedEx van parked on a street.

FedEx Corp. on Thursday announced fiscal year 2029 financial targets of 4% annual revenue and $8 billion in adjusted operating income,continuing to prioritize premium growth in high-margin verticals in the industrial economy, scaling digital and AI capabilities, further transforming its shipping network, and making efficiency gains permanent.

Compared to the midpoint outlook for the current fiscal year, FedEx expects to achieve $98 billion in annual revenue with a 14% growth in compounded adjusted operating profit by 2029. In the fiscal year ended in May, FedEx had $87.9 billion of revenue and the company is guiding to an adjusted income of $5 billion for fiscal year 2026.

FedEx said it plans to achieve an operating margin of 8%, an increase of 200 basis points, return on invested capital of 11%, and adjusted free cash flow of $6 billion.

The three-year outlook was released as part of an Investor Day event held at its headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee. On Monday, Fedex announced it is investing about $2.6 billion to take a 37% stake in European parcel delivery specialist InPost.

The integrated parcel and logistics giant also anticipates improved performance for the domestic and international businesses, targeting a 10% operating margin, up 1.1% vs. the baseline, for the U.S. operation and an 8% international margin, up 4.4%.

The financial goals exclude FedEx Freight, which the company is scheduled to spin off as a separate company this summer.

The company said it will keep capital expenditures near all-time lows, with aircraft spending not to exceed $1 billion through 2029.

It also raised guidance for third quarter adjusted earnings per share due to strong results and a positive peak season during the holiday period.

Strategic pillars

FedEx’s growth strategy is based on four focus areas. The company continues to target premium B2C and specialized B2C segments, such as healthcare, automotive, aerospace, data centers and premium e-commerce. The company recently emphasized that nearly half of its revenue growth was from higher weight, higher margin B2B business.

Management also reiterated plans to build on FedEx’s data and technology advantages, leveraging the company’s two petabytes of data and advanced AI capabilities to better support customers and drive new lines of revenue.

FedEx continues to modernize and consolidate its air and surface networks, part of a multi-year initiative to gain efficiency, drive up profits and improve service levels.

An important part of reaching the financial targets, FedEx said, involves making sure that new operational savings are formalized so they can be permanently sustained.

“FedEx remains one of our top transport picks in 2026. We see momentum with its network integration, cost cutting strategy, profitable share gains, yield discipline, upcoming June 1, 2026, spin of FedEx Freight, and benefits from the potential end of the nearly four-year freight recession,” said Bank of America equity analyst Ken Hoexstra in a recent client note.
FedEx recorded $23.5 billion in fiscal second quarter revenue, up 7% year over year, while adjusted operating income grew 17% to $1.6 billion. The adjusted earnings per share of $4.82 was up 19% year over year.

(Correction: The fiscal year 2026 to 2029 strategy unveiled by FedEx covers three years, not four.)

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

Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.

FedEx preparing major sort center expansion at Memphis air hub

Investors halt deals with DP World over CEO’s Epstein ties

Quebec’s La Caisse, the country’s second-largest pension fund, which holds a 45% stake in DP World Canada, in a statement said it expects the global logistics company to “take necessary actions” after the Dubai firm’s chief executive, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, was identified in the latest release of Epstein files.

La Caisse told Bloomberg in a statement that it is pausing further investment with DP World.

Development agency British International Investment (BII) of the United Kingdom also said it is suspending investment with DP World.

The company, owned by the government of Dubai, operates in more than 60 ports and through hundreds of business units on six continents, with container handling capacity of around 100 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs). Its U.S. logistics network includes facilities in Miami, Fla.; Middletown, Pa.; Perris, Calif. and Olive Branch, MIss., providing forwarding, contract logistics, warehousing, and multimodal transport services.

Sulayem was one of a half-dozen men whose names were redacted from the Epstein files by the Trump administration. They were revealed this week by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna.

Sulayem in disclosed correspondence with Epstein from 2007 bragged about his sexual exploits with multiple women. He was also seen in at least one photo with Epstein.

Massie in a post on X shared an exchange of emails in which a sender identified by the Justice Department as Sulayem sent a “torture” video to Epstein.

(Image: Scan of Epstein email via Department of Justice)

Sulayem was among dozens of powerful individuals who stayed in contact with Epstein for more than a decade after the financier was convicted in 2008 of child sex trafficking.

La Caisse beginning in 2016 planned to invest $3.7 billion with DP World, including the Port of Jebel Ali in Dubai, the largest port in the Middle East.

In September DP World announced a joint venture to develop the Contreceur container terminal at the Port of Montreal. FreightWaves has contacted the Montreal Port Authority for comment.

Epstein had a cozy relationship with the jet-setting Sulayem, which is illustrated in hundreds of email exchanges where they discussed everything from women and business to travel and penthouse apartments. In one exchange Sulayem asks whether an individual is close to President Donald Trump, Epstein replies that “Donald is close to no one”:

Epstein also connected the Sultan to powerful figures, including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2018:

Sulayem consulted on various business deals with Epstein, including a possible investment in Carbyne, an Israeli security tech company that had U.S. ties:

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

New MOL executive team to succeed CEO

Asia-U.S. ocean freight rates give up 2026 gains

Red Sea torpedoes Hapag-Lloyd rates

Port of New York-New Jersey box gains shake off trade reset

Yard management technology moves out of the shadows as supply chains push for end-to-end visibility

While supply chains have poured investment into transportation and warehouse technology, yard and dock operations remain one of the most manual and least visible parts of the network, a gap that is increasingly difficult to manage as volumes fluctuate and labor tightens.

While the C3 State of Yard and Dock Management 2026 survey is underway, the findings from the 2025 report are likely to be echoed. Heavy reliance on manual processes, limited real-time visibility and congestion that ripples into warehouse and transportation performance. Respondents consistently cited outdated workflows and a lack of system integration as core obstacles to improving throughput and service levels.

Those findings reflect what operators encounter daily in the field, according to Greg Braun, co-founder of dock scheduling and yard management technology provider C3 Solutions. “The yard is where everything meets, but it’s also where visibility often stops,” Braun said. “Companies can have advanced systems across transportation and warehousing, but once freight hits the gate, it frequently goes into a black hole.”

Many organizations still rely on paper logs, phone calls and radio communication to manage yard activity. That approach becomes fragile as networks grow more complex. When inbound schedules shift or outbound priorities change, manual coordination struggles to keep up, leading to congestion even when physical capacity exists.

“A congested yard usually isn’t caused by a lack of space,” Braun said. “It’s a lack of planning and visibility. Business practices upstream show up physically in the yard.”

Yard congestion and labor constraints are persistent pain points. Without clear insight into where trailers are located or what inventory they contain, yard drivers spend time searching instead of executing moves. Gatehouses become choke points as drivers wait for instructions or paperwork, slowing inbound and outbound flow.

Those inefficiencies rarely stay contained. Missed yard moves delay dock turns, outbound shipments slip, and transportation planners make decisions without knowing what equipment is actually available on-site. Several respondents noted that a lack of yard visibility complicates appointment scheduling and exception management, particularly when carriers arrive early or late.

Historically, yard management has lagged behind TMS and WMS adoption for both organizational and technical reasons. The yard sits between functions, and ownership is often unclear. For years, technology options also required heavy infrastructure investments, leading many companies to postpone adoption or wait for a single “silver bullet,” such as RFID, to solve the problem without changing processes.

“The yard has been caught in the middle for decades,” Braun said. “No one really wanted to own it, and the technology just wasn’t there yet.”

That perception is beginning to shift. Real-time visibility has become a priority, along with easier integration into existing systems. Advances in mobile technology, cloud platforms and vision-based tracking have lowered the cost and complexity of yard digitization, making it more accessible to a wider range of facilities.

According to Braun, “Visibility is often where companies see the fastest impact. Once organizations know where trailers are and what inventory is sitting in them, they frequently discover that equipment shortages are utilization issues rather than capacity problems. Some operators begin treating trailers as mobile inventory, effectively extending the warehouse beyond its four walls.”

Gate operations are another area where there is early gains. Digital check-in and automated communication reduce manual coordination and help smooth traffic flow, particularly during peak periods. Labor efficiency follows closely behind. Yard drivers are one of the most visible cost centers in yard operations, and clearer priorities reduce unnecessary moves and idle time.

Braun goes on to say, “The yard is where transportation and warehousing either synchronize or collide. When everyone is working off the same picture, the whole operation runs differently. It’s not the most exciting part of the operation, but it’s where a lot of inefficiency hides and where a lot of value can be unlocked.”

Crabs, cologne and contraband: Cargo crimes spike across freight lanes

A wave of recent enforcement announcements in the U.S. and Canada illustrates how cargo crime now spans cyber-facilitated freight fraud, bulk narcotics concealment inside commercial trailers, and export smuggling schemes embedded within legitimate logistics flows.

From stolen truckloads of frozen seafood and blueberries to record-setting methamphetamine seizures at the border, authorities say increasingly sophisticated criminal networks are targeting North America’s freight system at multiple points.

Cargo theft scheme nets seafood, blueberries and cologne

Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts charged a New York man in what officials describe as a coordinated, cyber-assisted cargo theft conspiracy, according to a news release.

Romoy Forbes, 31, allegedly participated in a scheme that involved hacking into legitimate trucking carrier email accounts, impersonating carriers to book loads, and diverting freight for resale.

According to charging documents, the thefts included:

33,750 pounds of frozen snow crab valued at $325,000 stolen from a Worcester, Massachusetts, warehouse.
A shipment of blueberries taken in Winslow Junction, New Jersey.
Approximately $433,830 worth of designer cologne stolen in Ronkonkama, New York.

Authorities allege that instead of completing deliveries, the goods were diverted and offered for illicit resale to a contact saved in a phone as “My customer for everything.”

Record meth seizure at U.S.-Canadian border crossing

Canadian authorities announced what they described as the largest narcotics seizure ever at the Abbotsford-Huntingdon port of entry in British Columbia.

On Nov. 22, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers, supported by a detector dog team, examined a commercial truck returning to Canada from the U.S. and discovered 12 boxes containing 692-pounds of methamphetamine concealed inside the truck and trailer, according to a news release.

Officials said the seizure represents the largest narcotics interception in the port’s history. The driver, identified as Satnam Singh, was arrested and charged with:

Possession of methamphetamine for the purpose of importation into Canada.
Possession of methamphetamine for the purpose of trafficking.

Heroin seized from truck entering Ontario from U.S.

In a separate cross-border operation, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and CBSA seized 93-pounds of alleged heroin from a tractor-trailer attempting to enter Canada from Buffalo at the Peace Bridge port of entry.

With the assistance of a CBSA detector dog, officers located 93-pounds of heroin concealed in the trailer.

Authorities estimated the street value at $5.2 million. Officials also seized the tractor, trailer and two cellphones as offense-related property.

$2.4M marijuana shipment bound for UK intercepted

In Philadelphia, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers intercepted 481 pounds of marijuana concealed inside 80 boxes manifested as clothing and destined for Oxford, England.

Officers discovered 405 vacuum-sealed packages of marijuana across seven of the boxes.

The drugs carried an estimated U.S. street value of $2.4 million, with authorities noting it could fetch two to three times that amount in Europe.

Ketamine hidden in ethernet spool bound for Belgium

CBP officers in Louisville, Kentucky, also intercepted nearly seven pounds of ketamine hidden inside a spool of ethernet cable in a shipment manifested as “Ethernet Cable” and destined for Belgium.

A CBP canine alerted to the shipment, leading to the discovery of three concealed packages of ketamine valued at approximately $50,000.

$70K in unreported currency seized from Chinese ship captain

CBP officers in Baltimore seized$70,737 in unreported currency from the captain of the M/V Sheng Ning Hai, a China-flagged bulk carrier, after determining required currency reporting forms were not properly updated.

Officers discovered the money in the purser’s safe during a follow-up inspection. U.S. law requires amounts exceeding $10,000 to be reported when entering or departing the country.

Waiting game as U.S. rail freight falls in weekly data

A train of tank cars passes by a railroad crossing.

Total U.S. weekly rail traffic came to 486,854 carloads and intermodal units in the latest week’s data, trailing the year-ago period by 3.2%.

Total commodities for the week ending Feb. 7 were 208,408 carloads, weaker by 4.8% compared with the same week in 2025, according to Association of American Railroads data. Intermodal volume was 278,446 containers and trailers, off 2% y/y. Import demand hit an earlier-than-usual lull mirrored by falling container rates on the trans-Pacific.

Oil led gains by three of the 10 carload commodity groups tracked by AAR. Petroleum and petroleum products finished ahead by 10.2%, followed by grain, 3.2%, and motor vehicles and parts, 2.6%.

Forest products, off 16%, bottomed out among commodity groups that posted decreases from a year ago. Nonmetallic minerals fell 11.7%, followed by metallic ores and metals, 6.8%, and coal, 6.2%.

Coal’s decline coincided with the Washington Coal Club this week presenting President Donald Trump with its inaugural “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal” award.

Through the first five weeks of 2026, U.S. railroads saw cumulative volume of 1,071,966 carloads, up 2.5% y/y, and 1,346,799 intermodal units, lower by 3.2%. Total combined U.S. traffic year-to-date was 2,418,765 carloads and intermodal units, down 0.7%.

North American freight turned in narrow, and identical, positive indicators for the week on 9 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads as total 309,723 carloads were up 0.1% y/y, and 361,789 intermodal units were also ahead 0.1%. Total combined traffic in North America was 671,512 carloads and intermodal units, an increase of 0.1%. Volume for the first five weeks of this year was 3,338,702 carloads and intermodal units, up 0.1% from 2025.

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Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

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The Non-Domicile CDL Final Rule Isn’t Perfect. It’s Still a Win.

Yesterday I wrote about the final rule Secretary Duffy signed restricting non-domiciled CDL issuance. I said it was a win. Many people disagreed with me. Some of them loudly. Some of them personally. I expected that. I also expected that most of the people telling me I was wrong had never been hit by an illegal truck driver. I have.

On a two-lane highway in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, I was struck by a driver named “GD” Gonzalez operating an unmarked, unregistered 1989 Ford farm truck with no plates and no lights on a Virginia state route. The vehicle weighed over 26,000 pounds and was hauling more than 1,500 gallons of liquid fertilizer. The driver had no license. Not an expired license. Not a suspended license. No license at all. He was brought to this country under agricultural exemptions and put behind the wheel of a commercial vehicle under a V-6 farm use exemption that Virginia has long allowed to exist without meaningful oversight. It cost more than two million dollars in insurance just to put me back together.

I could not walk for eight months. I could not control basic bodily functions. My body is full of metal. That is not a metaphor. That is titanium and surgical steel holding together what a fertilizer truck tore apart. The rest of my life will be shaped by what happened on that road, and every time someone tells me I should be angrier about yesterday’s rule not going far enough, I want them to understand something. I am angry. I have been angry for years. Anger without strategy is just noise, and noise does not get rules signed.

So let me explain what actually happened yesterday and why it matters, because a lot of people are reacting to what they wish had happened instead of understanding what did happen and why it happened the way it did.

The final rule eliminates Employment Authorization Documents as a pathway to a non-domiciled CDL. That is done. Over. If you show up at a DMV with an EAD and nothing else, you are not getting a commercial license. The rule restricts non-domiciled CDL eligibility to three specific visa categories. H-2A, which covers temporary agricultural workers. H-2B, which covers temporary non-agricultural workers. And E-2, which covers treaty investors. These are visa classes that already go through enhanced federal vetting before the person ever sets foot in this country. That is the critical piece. The problem was never that foreign nationals were driving trucks. The problem was that foreign nationals with completely unverifiable backgrounds were driving trucks because nobody checked anything about them beyond a work permit that was never designed for transportation safety screening.

The rule also requires every state to run applicants through the SAVE system, which is the federal immigration status verification database operated by USCIS. If SAVE cannot confirm your lawful status, you will not get a CDL. No workaround. No state discretion. Hard stop. Applicants must present an unexpired foreign passport and their I-94 documentation. Not a photocopy. Not an expired document. The real thing.

The part that bothers people, and I understand why. There are roughly 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders currently operating in the United States. FMCSA’s own analysis suggests that 97 percent of them will not qualify under the new requirements. That means roughly 194,000 drivers will age out of the system when their current licenses expire. They are not being pulled off the road tomorrow. They will continue driving until their credentials expire. Most of these licenses will expire within the next five years, but the decline is uneven. We expect to lose between 30,000 and 40,000 non-domiciled drivers from the commercial driver pool each year as licenses come up for renewal and those drivers cannot meet the new standard.

That means, for the next several years, there will be drivers on the highway who will not qualify for a CDL under the rule signed yesterday. Some of those drivers will be involved in crashes. Some of those crashes will be fatal. That is the reality, and I am not going to pretend it is not a concern because it absolutely is. If I had my way, every single one of them would be off the road right now. But I do not get to have my way. None of us do. That is not how this works.

We live in a country that is more politically divided than at any point in my lifetime, and I am in my mid-forties. I have seen political disagreement. I grew up with it. But what we have now is not disagreement. It is two fundamentally different ideologies operating on two fundamentally different sets of assumptions about what this country should be, and those ideologies are so entrenched and so hostile to each other that compromise on anything has become nearly impossible. The center is gone. There is no moderate position that both sides can live with on most issues, and immigration policy tied to commercial transportation is one of those issues.

We watched this play out in real time. Last year, Secretary Duffy issued an emergency declaration to end non-domiciled CDL issuance entirely. It was the right call. It was also immediately challenged in court. States sued. Advocacy groups sued. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay in November that prevented the interim final rule from taking effect. The administration’s own lawyers could not produce the crash data tying immigration status directly to crash causation because that data does not exist in any form that satisfies a federal court. We all know from the frontline that unvetted drivers with unknown backgrounds are dangerous. We know it because we see it every day. But knowing something and proving it in court with data that meets evidentiary standards are two completely different things, and we spent six months and millions of dollars learning that lesson the hard way.

So what did the administration do? They regrouped. They went through the proper rulemaking process. They built a record. They collected public comments. They documented the audit findings from California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, North Carolina, and every other state where systemic noncompliance was identified. They cataloged the fatal crashes. They built the legal foundation that the emergency declaration lacked. And they got a final rule signed that will survive judicial review because it was done correctly.

That is a strategy. That is how you win battles in a system that requires legal justification for regulatory action. You do not get to just declare something an emergency and expect it to stick when the other side has lawyers and judges and a political apparatus designed to challenge everything you do. You build your case. You follow the process. You get it done right, so it doesn’t get thrown out six months later.

I deeply respect people like Shannon at American Truckers United who are pushing hard for more. They should push. We all should. But pushing for more and dismissing what we got are not the same thing, and treating yesterday’s rule as a total loss because it did not immediately remove 200,000 drivers from the road is not just inaccurate. It is counterproductive. It demoralizes the people fighting for us. It gives ammunition to the people fighting against us. It ignores the reality that getting anything done in this political environment is an accomplishment.

The ATA has been lobbying in Washington for decades. They have the ATRI data arm producing research to support their policy positions. They are as well-connected in government and in this industry as anyone. And they still do not get everything they want. Some of their initiatives have been stuck in legislative limbo for years. If the most powerful trade association in trucking cannot push through every policy it supports despite having the data, the relationships, and the money, what makes anyone think that a single executive action was going to eliminate non-domiciled CDLs overnight without a fight?

A war is not won overnight. You fight battles. You win some. You lose some. You regroup, and you fight the next one. That is what happened here. The emergency declaration was a battle we fought and lost on procedural grounds. The final rule is a battle we fought and won. We have three more years of this administration. There are more battles to fight. TPE fraud. CDL mills. Chameleon carriers. The Training Provider Registry. English language enforcement. These are all fronts in the same war, and if we burn ourselves out screaming about what we did not get instead of building on what we did, we are going to lose ground we cannot afford to lose.

I want to be clear about where I come from on this because people keep questioning my perspective. I have held a CDL for over 25 years. I have been a truck driver, a freight broker, a fleet owner, and a fleet manager. I have scaled private equity fleets with 20 DOT numbers and thousands of vehicles. I have helped Fortune 500 companies from here to Luxembourg build their safety systems and compliance processes. I am a trained crash reconstructionist and risk control consultant. My primary role right now is serving as an expert witness in highway accident litigation. I look at MCMIS data, NTSB records, and crash reports almost every day of my life. I have reported on crashes like Pruitt, Alabama, where eight children were burned alive. I get it. I get it personally because a truck driven by an illegal immigrant nearly killed me. I get it professionally because I see the data and the aftermath every single day.

I am probably one of the few American truck drivers who has been hit by an illegal truck driver and had his life permanently altered by it.

Every year, 30,000 to 40,000 non-domiciled drivers will be removed from the commercial driver pool under this rule. That is 30,000 to 40,000 drivers who will no longer be operating 80,000-pound vehicles on highways where your family drives. That is a win. It is not the whole win. It is not the win we wanted. But it is a win, and if you cannot see that, I would respectfully suggest you have never had to learn how to walk again because someone who should not have been behind the wheel put you in a hospital for the better part of a year.

Rome was not built in a day. This disaster in our trucking industry was not built in a day or in one administration. It has been decades in the making. Fixing it will take sustained effort, strategic thinking, and the willingness to accept progress even when it falls short of perfection. Yesterday was progress. Significant, meaningful, legally durable progress. We should build on it. Do not burn it down because it was not enough.

Keep up the good fight.

The Loophole That Killed 30 People Just Got Closed. Now What?

The photo is where this started. Today was the beginning of the end. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy signed a final rule that closes the door on one of the most dangerous regulatory failures in modern trucking history. The rule eliminates the use of Employment Authorization Documents as proof of CDL eligibility, restricts non-domiciled licenses to a narrow set of visa categories that actually involve interagency vetting, and requires states to run every applicant through the SAVE verification system. It is the right move. It is also years too late.

How We Got Here

The American CDL system was designed with a basic premise. You show up, you prove who you are, the state checks your driving history against national databases, and if you’re clean, you get your license. That system works reasonably well for U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents because the data exists. Your violations, DUIs, crash history, and suspensions are all stored in interconnected databases that every state DMV can query. For foreign nationals, the system had a massive blind spot. States were issuing what are called non-domiciled CDLs to people who presented Employment Authorization Documents. An EAD is a work permit. That is all it is. It tells you someone has authorization to be employed in the United States. It tells you absolutely nothing about whether that person has ever driven before, whether they have a history of reckless driving in their home country, whether they’ve been involved in fatal crashes overseas, or whether their foreign license was even legitimately obtained. More than 30 states were doing this. Not five. Not ten. More than 30 states were issuing commercial driver’s licenses to operate tractor-trailers, tankers, hazmat loads, and passenger buses, based on a document never designed for transportation safety screening. FMCSA knew about it. The states knew about it. The industry knew about it. Nobody did anything until the body count got high enough to make headlines. We covered the chameleon carrier networks that exploit these gaps. We covered the CDL mills churning out licenses to people who couldn’t pass a pre-trip inspection if their life depended on it. We covered government-funded workforce programs that were funneling individuals with no trucking experience into CDL programs with minimal oversight. We documented the Third-Party Examiner fraud pipeline in states such as California, New York, and Colorado. None of this is new information to anyone who has been paying attention. What is new is that we have an Administration in Washington that is acting on America First. On Trucking First. On American Drivers First.

What the Rule Actually Does

First, Employment Authorization Documents are a pathway to a CDL. Gone. Over. If you present an EAD at a state DMV with nothing else, you will not receive a commercial license. Period. The EAD was never meant to serve as a transportation safety document, and it should never have been treated as one. Second, non-domiciled CDL eligibility is now limited to three specific visa categories. H-2A agricultural workers, H-2B temporary non-agricultural workers, and E-2 treaty investors. These are visa classes that already undergo enhanced interagency vetting, meaning the federal government has reviewed these individuals before they arrived. That is the critical distinction. The problem was never that foreign nationals were driving trucks. The problem was that foreign nationals with unknown backgrounds were driving trucks because no one verified any information about them. Third, applicants must now present an unexpired foreign passport and Form I-94. Not a photocopy. Not an expired document. The real thing. Fourth, and this is the enforcement teeth, every state is now required to run applicants through the SAVE system. That is the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database operated by USCIS. If SAVE cannot confirm your lawful immigration status, you do not get a CDL. There is no workaround. There is no state discretion. It is a hard stop. The rule goes into effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register.

The Human Cost That Forced Action

Let me put some faces on the data, because numbers alone don’t convey the actual cost of this failure. February 2025. A tunnel on I-80 in Wyoming. A non-domiciled driver triggers a multi-vehicle pileup. Three dead. Twenty injured. Imagine being trapped in a tunnel with burning vehicles, knowing the driver who caused the incident was someone the system never checked. August 2025. The Florida Turnpike. A non-domiciled driver attempts an illegal U-turn on a limited-access highway. Three Americans were killed. An illegal U-turn. On the Turnpike. In a commercial vehicle. That is not a momentary lapse in judgment. That is someone who fundamentally did not understand the rules of the road in this country. October 2025. A California highway. A non-domiciled driver fails to stop for traffic. Eight vehicles. Three dead. December 2025. Ontario, California. A non-domiciled driver runs a marked railroad crossing and collides with a train, killing a crew member. Those are just the ones DOT highlighted today. There are more. Behind each of those crashes is a State Driver’s Licensing Agency that issued a CDL without verifying whether the person behind the wheel had ever caused a fatal crash in their home country. Think about that. We require more verification to rent a car from Enterprise than we do to issue a license to drive an 80,000-pound vehicle through a school zone.

What This Means for Capacity and the Freight Market

This rule will remove drivers from the available workforce. There is no way to sugarcoat that. The estimates vary, but we are talking about tens of thousands of non-domiciled CDL holders who were issued licenses under the old system and will not qualify under the new one. Some of those drivers have been operating safely for years. Some of them are excellent drivers. But the system that credentialed them was broken, and this is the correction. For carriers, especially the mid-size and smaller fleets that rely heavily on non-domiciled drivers, this creates a real and immediate hiring challenge. If you have drivers on your roster holding non-domiciled CDLs issued on EADs, you need to speak with your compliance team immediately. Not next month. Now. Understand the transition timeline. Understand which of your drivers fall under the new eligible visa categories and which do not. Start building your contingency plans because 30 days go fast. For the larger fleets and the publicly traded carriers, this is a capacity-tightening event. A smaller available driver pool means upward pressure on driver compensation, which in turn puts upward pressure on rates. If you are a shipper reading this, understand that this rule, while absolutely necessary for safety, is going to have cost implications. The drivers who remain in the system are going to be better vetted and more qualified, but there will be fewer of them and they are going to cost more. For owner operators and independent drivers who have been playing by the rules their entire careers, this is vindication. You sat through the CDL process. You passed your tests. Your driving history is on file and verifiable. You have been competing for loads against carriers staffed with drivers who were never subjected to the same scrutiny. That competitive imbalance is being corrected.

What This Means for Trucking Companies and Hiring

If you run a trucking company, here is your action list. Audit your driver roster immediately. Identify every non-domiciled CDL holder on your payroll. Determine their visa status. If they hold H-2A, H-2B, or E-2 visas, they are in the clear under the new rule, assuming their documentation is current. If they were credentialed under an EAD, their CDL eligibility will expire. Review your hiring pipeline. If your recruiting operation has been sourcing drivers from communities that relied on EAD-based CDLs, that pipeline is about to dry up. You need alternative sourcing strategies yesterday. Talk to your insurance company. This rule fundamentally changes your risk profile, and it should change it for the better. Carriers that can demonstrate a fully vetted, properly credentialed driver force should be pushing their underwriters for rate recognition. If your insurer doesn’t understand the significance of this rule, find one that does. For the love of everything, stop relying on the warm-body theory in driver recruitment. This industry’s obsession with filling seats regardless of qualifications is exactly what created the conditions for 30 states to hand out CDLs like candy. A qualified driver is more expensive than a warm body. A qualified driver is also less likely to kill someone on the Florida Turnpike.

What This Means for Drivers

If you are a non-domiciled CDL holder reading this and you are here legally on an H-2A, H-2B, or E-2 visa, take a breath. You are fine. Make sure your documentation is current. Make sure your passport is not expired. Make sure you have your I-94. When it’s time to renew your CDL, SAVE verification will be part of the process. If your status checks out, you keep driving. If you are a non-domiciled CDL holder who obtained your license using an EAD and you do not hold one of the three qualifying visa types, this rule directly affects you. I am not going to tell you what to do legally because I am not an immigration attorney. I will tell you that you need to speak with one. Quickly. Understand your options. Understand the timeline. Understand that driving on a CDL that is no longer valid is not an option. The enforcement on this is going to be aggressive and the penalties are going to be severe. If you are an American CDL holder or a lawful permanent resident who has been following this situation, this rule means the playing field has just leveled. Your credentials carry weight. Your clean driving record has value. Carriers that need qualified, vetted drivers will compete more aggressively for your services. Leverage that.

What This Means for Shippers

If you ship freight, safety costs money. It always has. The years of artificially cheap capacity that was partially built on an unvetted driver workforce were always going to have a correction, and this is it. In the short term, expect tightening in certain lanes and regions where non-domiciled drivers were heavily concentrated. Produce corridors. Agricultural hauling. Regional LTL in states like California, New York, and Texas. Drivers who leave the system are not distributed evenly geographically, so the impact will be felt more acutely in some markets than others. In the medium term, rates will reflect the true cost of a properly credentialed driver workforce. That is not a bad thing. You know what is more expensive than paying a legitimate per-mile rate? A nuclear verdict because your carrier put an unvetted driver behind the wheel and someone died. If you are a risk manager at a company that ships freight, you should be welcoming this rule with open arms. The carriers that survive this transition are going to be safer, better insured, and less likely to generate the kind of catastrophic liability that keeps general counsel up at night. Do your homework on your carrier partners. Ask questions. Verify credentials. The shippers who treated carrier selection like a commodity auction and just went with the cheapest rate are the ones most exposed right now.

Where Do We Go From Here

Secretary Duffy and Administrator Barrs deserve credit for getting this done. This administration has moved faster on CDL integrity than any administration in my memory, and I have been in this industry for over 25 years. The English language enforcement order. The nationwide state audits. The emergency action last summer. Now this final rule. That is a policy arc that demonstrates genuine commitment to fixing a broken system. This rule closes one loophole. There are others. The Third-Party Examiner system remains riddled with fraud. CDL mills are still operating in multiple states. The Training Provider Registry still has thousands of providers that have never been meaningfully audited. States like California continue to resist federal enforcement at every turn. The chameleon carrier networks we have been investigating are still operating, folding one DOT number and popping up under another the next day. This rule is a significant and necessary step. It is not the finish line. It is not even halftime. If DOT stops here and declares victory, the same systemic failures that created the non-domiciled CDL crisis will simply migrate to other parts of the system. They always do. Congress needs to codify this. Representative Rouzer’s Non-Domiciled CDL Integrity Act needs to pass so that this rule survives future administrations and future court challenges. Policy by executive action is policy on borrowed time. The industry needs to do its part too. Stop lobbying for lower standards because you can’t find enough drivers at the wages you want to pay. Stop pretending there is a driver shortage when what you really have is a retention and compensation problem. The non-domiciled CDL loophole existed in part because segments of this industry were perfectly happy with a pipeline of cheap labor that asked few questions. That era is over. Adjust accordingly. Thirty people are dead because the system failed. Today’s rule means the system is finally being repaired. The question is whether the industry and the government have the will to finish the job. I’m going to keep watching. I’m going to keep writing about it.

FMCSA finalizes new era for non-domiciled CDLs

WASHINGTON — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has finalized its sweeping overhaul of non-domiciled regulations by reaffirming the core intent of the 2025 Interim Final Rule (IFR) and introducing key refinements.

The final rule, which becomes effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register (expected on Friday) preserves the IFR’s most rigorous provisions:

Strict Eligibility: Eligibility is limited to H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 nonimmigrant status holders, who undergo enhanced interagency vetting.
Elimination of Employment Authorization Documents (EADs): EADs are no longer accepted as proof of eligibility due to systemic noncompliance at the state driver’s licensing agencies (SDLAs). Applicants must present an unexpired foreign passport and specific Form I-94 documentation.
Mandatory SAVE Verification: States must query the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system to confirm every applicant’s lawful immigration status.

However, while the IFR took effect immediately in 2025 – a move that contributed to a federal court stay – the final rule adopts a standard 30-day implementation window to allow states to finalize procedural adjustments.

New five-year timeline

Another difference between the IFR and the final rule is FMCSA’s adjusted economic modeling. After auditing thousands of credentials, FMCSA discovered that most properly issued non-domiciled CDLs had five-year terms rather than the two-year terms originally assumed, which has led to a staggered projection for driver exits.

Instead of an immediate capacity fallout, the industry expects a periodic attrition of approximately 40,000 drivers per year over the next five years as their credentials expire. While roughly 200,000 drivers remain impacted, only 6,000 annually are expected to qualify under the restricted H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 visa categories.

FMCSA argues this five-year timeline gives carriers ample time to adjust hiring strategies, and that excess capacity will absorb any sudden shocks to capacity.

“A critical safety gap allowed unqualified drivers with unknown driving histories to get behind the wheel of commercial vehicles,” said FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs. “We are closing that gap today to ensure that only qualified, vetted drivers are operating on our nation’s roadways. If we cannot verify your safe driving history, you cannot hold a CDL in this country.”

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, a major proponent of the administration’s crackdown on non-domiciled CDLs, asserted that closing gaps in trucker credentialing system is overdue.

“For too long, loopholes in this program have allowed unqualified drivers onto our highways, putting professional truckers and the motoring public at risk,” commented OOIDA President Todd Spencer in a press statement. “This final rule is a major step toward safer roads, stronger accountability, and a more professional trucking industry.”

Click for more FreightWaves articles by John Gallagher.