The Playbook

The benchmark price used for most fuel surcharges rose for a 4th straight week.

The sheriff’s office linked the tractor-trailer to an ongoing criminal investigation and valued the drugs at about $4 million.

Applicants paid about $5,000 each as a restaurant owner, training operator and test examiner helped bypass federal licensing requirements.

Customs and Border Protection officers found 366 cocaine packages after an X-ray scan showed trailer-floor anomalies and a drug dog alerted investigators. The driver faces a federal importation charge carrying a possible life sentence.

An Erie commercial driver faces 22 charges after police claim his semi-truck struck nine vehicles at West 12th and Myrtle streets. Court records show bail was denied, and a preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug. 7.

Authorities recovered 18 vehicles worth more than $1 million while investigating nine reported thefts valued at $876,500.

A Business That Did Not Exist Yet In 1997, if a fleet needed a repair, the truck went to a shop. That was the entire menu. That was the year Bob Dickinson started what became Dickinson Fleet Services out of a small operation in Indianapolis, and his grandsons Kyle and Kevin Coltrain grew up around […]

What Was Announced U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced Freedom Haulers, describing it as a patriotic hiring campaign to move veterans into trucking careers. The Department of Transportation leads it, with contributions from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Labor and the Department of War. The launch package included a digital ad, […]

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) A Dallas County jury last week hit freight broker C.H. Robinson with a share of a $604 million verdict in Peyton Lipe et al. v. Lupus Superior, LLC et al. The case stems […]

Senators Todd Young and Andy Kim introduced legislation targeting operators that return under new names, ownership structures, or USDOT numbers.

The benchmark diesel price rose though futures markets have reversed for now.

Georgia is moving ahead with an idea that most of the country has only talked about: a stretch of interstate where the trucks get their own road. The Georgia Department of Transportation has released a construction timeline for its I-75 Commercial Vehicle Lanes project, and the plan is concrete. Design work will be finalized and […]

Here is how a person becomes a federally authorized motor carrier today. You apply for a USDOT number. As part of that application, you certify on a form, the MCS-150, that you are knowledgeable about the applicable federal motor carrier safety regulations and, where relevant, the hazardous materials regulations. You check the box. You get […]

BasicBlock has acquired TrueNorth in a move signaling a significant expansion of services for independent carriers.

Sixty-five owner-operators is not the same thing as sixty-five trucks. That distinction sits underneath everything Christian Martinez does. As director of operations at Voyager Nation in Mulberry, Florida, he manages a fleet that is 100% owner-operator, which means he manages 65 independent business owners who have no obligation to stay and every other option available […]

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) The Supreme Court’s Montgomery decision changed the litigation landscape for the trucking industry. Although the case addressed a negligent selection claim against a freight broker, plaintiffs will not limit their investigations to the […]

The regulation at the center of this fight is not new. It has been sitting in the Code of Federal Regulations since 1980. 49 CFR 371.3 requires property brokers to keep a record of each transaction, and it gives each party to that transaction the right to review the record. On paper, an owner-operator who […]

The benchmark price used for most fuel surcharges rose by the second-largest amount since the war’s start.

Congress is fast-tracking a bipartisan DEF relief bill. The half in the press release stops trucks from derating to 5 mph over a false sensor code. The half you have to read the text to find suspends the 2027 emissions rule for 10 years

Law enforcement agencies across the U.S. are stepping up commercial vehicle enforcement, with recent cases ranging from unlicensed hotshot drivers to impaired truckers and dangerous equipment violations.

That’s where chargebacks come into play—and if not handled carefully, they can quietly erode your profits and hurt your business. In this guide, we’ll explain what chargebacks are, how they influence your factoring costs, and what steps you can take to reduce your risk and choose a partner who truly protects you. What Are Chargebacks […]

If you’re a carrier operating in today’s freight market, with tight margins, rate volatility, and rising operating costs, the real issue isn’t the tool. It’s whether the financing actually fits how your trucking business runs day to day. Because in trucking, survival comes down to one thing: keeping cash moving at the same speed as […]

I have known Jerry Murphy for almost two years. We talk every couple of weeks. And I can tell you there is no version of him for the cameras. The man you hear on this episode is the same man I get on those calls. He did not have a driver’s license when he started […]

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association is urging Congress to strengthen commercial driver licensing standards by passing Dalilah’s Law.

Arizona DPS recently cited a a hotshot driver for operating a commercial vehicle without a CDL.

It isn’t just what is going on in the Middle East that it starting to propel diesel prices higher.

A big rig crash closed eastbound Interstate 80 near Donner Pass early Tuesday morning, causing major traffic delays in California’s Sierra Nevada. According to CBS News, the crash happened shortly after 3:30 a.m. near the Donner Pass Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Facility, east of Truckee. According to reporting from CBS News Sacramento, the crash happened shortly […]

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) C.H. Robinson is having an AI moment. Its CEO, Dave Bozeman, has been publicly promoting the company’s Lean AI transformation, including AI agents, automation, productivity gains, appointment scheduling, quote responses, load tracking, and […]

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) Owner-operators and motor carriers are facing a fast-growing scam in the trucking world. While cargo theft and ghost trucks remain the top mind for many logistics professionals, fraudsters are using fake trailer rental […]

The pardons ended nine ordeals. The mandate that created them is still on the books, still in the field, and still pointed at the trucks that move America’s military freight.

One provider changed its name and lost a second device. Another lost two on the same afternoon. The registry doesn’t remember.

Progressive has ended new enrollments in its commercial trucking dashcam program with Motive, marking the end of a partnership that many fleets have used to improve safety and qualify for insurance discounts. The change became effective on July 1, 2026. While current customers will continue receiving benefits for now, trucking companies hoping to enroll in […]

The decision that changed Debon Sims’s life got made in a prison cell, over a pamphlet. That is where this story starts, and it is worth sitting with, because it frames everything that comes after. In 2015, Sims got into what he calls the only kind of trouble he had ever been in, his first […]

For any owner-operator who has ever been stranded on the shoulder of an interstate at 5 miles per hour because a sensor decided the diesel exhaust fluid system had a problem, the announcement PACCAR made on July 6, 2026 will read like overdue relief. The company is rolling out updated software for trucks equipped with […]

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) When I interviewed Michael Leizerman, the plaintiff attorney who won at the United States Supreme Court in the broker negligent selection case now reshaping freight litigation, I expected pushback from the audience. More […]

A $66.7 million judgment, a $38.8 million restitution order, and a sentencing date. What the court record says about trucking’s biggest insurance collapse, and who never got paid.

We’re auditing the people who write the laws MCSAP dollars enforce. We pulled every trucking bill in Congress, every name, and laid it against the crash data in their own states.

The SCOTUS decision stripped brokers of the federal preemption defense used for years to escape negligent carrier selection claims. Almost nobody is talking about the commercial leasing and rental companies that made the decision to hand a 33-ton vehicle to the carrier in the first place. Their legal shield was different and the Supreme Court published the map to it.

Federal immigration agents are now partnering with state truck weigh stations across the U.S. to crack down on illegal commercial truckers.

The benchmark diesel price used for most fuel surcharges fell for the 12th time 13 weeks.

Washington spent a year threatening states over truck safety enforcement. Here’s who we give millions to for trucking enforcement and how they spend it across million inspections.

The groundbreaking Montgomery case will head back to the federal district court where it began.

On July 3, 2026, President Trump pardoned early a dozen people who were convicted under the Clean Air Act for tampering with diesel emissions, months after the Justice Department stopped prosecuting diesel cases entirely. The technology is still bolted to every truck on the road, and nobody in Washington wants to discuss the “what now” of who pays for it.

A driver rounds a curve on a dark rural road and sees a woman standing near the fog line, head shaved, wearing nothing but a beach towel, no other car or person anywhere in sight. Something is wrong. He acts. That woman turns out to be a human trafficking victim, and because a truck driver […]

Idaho has become the latest U.S. state to eliminate non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses.

You can run loads consistently, work with solid brokers, and still feel pressure every week because most invoices take 30, 45, or even 60+ days to get paid. That delay is exactly why freight factoring has become one of the most widely used financial tools for owner-operators and small fleets. It’s the fastest way to […]

The bipartisan CORCA bill passed the House with overwhelming support, but a growing debate over cargo theft data has followed it to the Senate. Critics question whether documented losses justify a larger federal response, while supporters argue the current reporting system misses much of the problem.

Why Choosing the Right Insurance Agent Can Make or Break a Trucking Company Most trucking companies think about insurance only when the bill comes due or after an accident. But according to Jessica Howington of United Commercial Insurance, that way of thinking can cost carriers far more than money. “The biggest mistake people make is […]

The TQL-Pink Cheetah broker transparency case will hear oral arguments in September.

If you’re running loads consistently but waiting 30, 45, or 60 days to get paid, freight factoring becomes less of a luxury and more of an operational necessity. But before using it, there’s a straightforward question every carrier asks: What does freight factoring actually cost—in real dollars? This guide breaks it down without fluff. No vague […]

Indiana police arrested a California truck driver after recovering nearly $2.9 million worth of tungsten oxide powder that authorities say was stolen in Pennsylvania. Police allege the driver used fraudulent documents to obtain the shipment, which was headed to Japan.

Some carriers see it as a practical tool to keep cash flow moving. Others associate it with high costs, confusing agreements, chargebacks, or bad experiences with companies that were not clear from the beginning. And that is the real issue. In many cases, the problem is not factoring itself. The problem is how factoring has […]

The benchmark price used for most fuel surcharges fell for the eighth straight week.

In the span of five days, three tractor-trailers were struck by CSX freight trains in metro Atlanta. The trucks were destroyed. Fires broke out in each case. By something close to luck, no one was killed. That cluster is worth every owner-operator’s attention, not because Atlanta is uniquely dangerous, but because the same scenario repeated […]

From July 12 to July 18, 2026, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance runs Operation Safe Driver Week across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and for those seven days the number of officers watching for unsafe driving goes up sharply. CVSA announced the dates and the focus on April 30. The official area of emphasis […]

C.H. Robinson has been removed as a defendant in a case that might have been key post-Montgomery litigation.

A Montana man received a 41-month federal prison sentence after admitting he transported more than $181,000 in stolen construction equipment from Montana to Idaho.

When most people think about transportation collections, they picture an agency making phone calls to recover overdue freight invoices. While recovering unpaid invoices remains the foundation of the business, today’s transportation collections industry has evolved into something much larger. Fraud, broker failures, double brokering, compliance issues and increasingly complex legal disputes have transformed collections into […]

For years, commercial trucking insurers have encouraged fleets to participate in telematics programs by offering premium discounts in exchange for access to electronic driving data. Programs that once focused primarily on rewarding safe driving have gradually become an increasingly important part of commercial underwriting. Progressive Commercial’s Smart Haul program has been one of those initiatives, […]

A claim is circulating that stops you mid-scroll: a California small fleet can now buy a Tesla Semi for as little as $50,000. The Tesla Semi carries a $290,000 sticker. The post lays out how two California incentive programs stack to knock $240,000 off that price, leaving a net cost of roughly $50,000, which it […]

A reefer unit burns its own diesel. Anyone who runs refrigerated freight knows this, because they are paying for two fuel burns on every load: the diesel that moves the truck down the road, and the separate diesel that runs the refrigeration unit on the trailer keeping the freight cold. Both come out of the […]

What Actually Happened During Blitz Week and What the Numbers Mean The 2026 CVSA International Roadcheck ran May 12 through May 14, a 72-hour enforcement initiative across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The surrounding DOT Blitz Week extended from May 10 through May 17, producing 15,952 total inspections and the 32.8 percent out-of-service rate […]

Now the market turns. Spot rates in mid-2026 are running roughly 15% above where they sat a year ago, the strongest year-over-year comparison since early 2022. That load that paid $2,200 last year is paying $2,500 or $2,600 now. Good. Real money. But there is a caveat, because this is where operators fool themselves. The […]

FMCSA is stripping out compliance noise with one hand and chasing chameleon carriers with the other. The trick is keeping the two in balance.

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) Snap-on Incorporated just bought Diesel Laptops for $100 million in cash. The deal closed on June 8, 2026. The move gives Snap-on a stronger foothold in the world of big truck and heavy […]

North Carolina trucking companies are seeking answers after veteran motor carriers were reportedly identified as new entrants following an FMCSA SafeSpect update.

The Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program is an option for small carriers looking to raise capital and scale effectively.

Why This Argument Never Ends Go search “factoring” in any trucking group on Facebook. Doesn’t matter which one. What you’ll find looks less like a conversation and more like a street fight. One driver swears it kept his business alive through the freight recession. The driver next to him says it quietly ate his margins […]

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) On May 22, 2026, the United States Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that removed a legal shield freight brokers have relied on for decades. Eleven […]

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) A broker has a load and three carriers willing to haul it. Which one is safe? For all the data our industry supposedly drowns in, there is still no dependable way to answer […]

Excerpt: The benchmark used for most fuel surcharges is below $5 for the first time since early March.

How maintenance frequency maps to violation patterns, and why the carriers stretching their service intervals are the same ones showing up with brake and hub seal failures at roadside.

The benchmark diesel price fell more than 15 cts/g as the market ponders what happens post peace deal.

To hold a hazardous materials endorsement, a driver must pass a written knowledge exam on regulations, packaging, and emergency procedures, administered in English. So, how does a driver cited 98 times for being unable to read or speak English still hold that endorsement?

H.R. 5408 gives employers 120 days to reach a first union contract or a government arbitrator writes one for them. The House passed it 230-193 on June 9. The Senate is the last wall. If you run trucks, this is not someone else’s problem.

There is a version of trucking that lives on YouTube. Somebody stands next to a box truck and explains how they made six figures in their first year, and the comments fill up with people saying they are about to quit their jobs and do the same thing. Some of them actually do it. Victor […]

On June 6, a trailer full of fireworks burned and detonated for 25 minutes on I-75 outside Chattanooga. The driver had no hazmat endorsement, no placards, no shipping papers.

Federal safety rules attach to the truck, not the driver. Get under the weight, the seats, or the license class, and some screening lifts. Here’s what the inspection data shows about who ends up behind the wheel of your delivery truck.

Pre-trip inspections are the first line of defense against mechanical failure on the highway. For most of the industry, they are a 30-second checkbox exercise completed in the cab. That gap between regulation and reality is showing up in courtrooms.

Under National Registry 2, the physician is now required to upload the results directly to the FMCSA, which then transmits the data to the state. The driver’s career and the carrier’s compliance both depend on a workflow that the physician may not understand exists.

Knight-Swift, Chubb telematics failures built a $130 million highway safety crisis. What Biden and Buttigieg missed on America’s roads.

FreightWaves SONAR will launch its first virtual Driver App Shortage Hackathon on June 15-22 to address the lack of software built primarily for truck drivers.

The benchmark used for most fuel surcharges fell for the fifth straight week.

Why the Monthly Payment Is the Wrong Number to Focus On The monthly payment is a cash flow number. It tells you whether you can keep the lights on week to week. It tells you almost nothing about what the truck actually costs. What the truck actually costs is the purchase price plus every dollar […]

Spend a day on any interstate in this country and you will lose count. Trucks rolling down the highway with the company name scrawled on the door in black marker. USDOT numbers handwritten so small you would have to be parked next to the truck to read them. Letters smeared, crooked, half peeled off, applied […]

(The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of FreightWaves or its affiliates.) Recently, a driver pulled into an Arizona scale house learned that an officer could reconstruct his entire multi-state trip from license plate readers and roadside cameras, matching the real timeline against paper logs […]

Why This Matters More Than It Did Two Years Ago Trucking insurance is expensive and getting more so. According to ATRI’s 2025 Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking, insurance premiums hit a record 10.2 cents per mile in 2024, following a 12.5 percent increase in 2023 and an additional 3 percent rise in 2024. […]

The Gap Is Bigger Than You Think Picture two owner-operators, both running a regular Midwest corridor. Same general freight, similar weights, comparable miles per week. One of them is averaging somewhere around 7.5 to 7.8 miles per gallon. The other is pulling 6.1 to 6.3. On a week where each truck burns 400 gallons of […]

The benchmark diesel price used for most fuel surcharges has fallen to its lowest level in several months.

A Note Before We Start Tax law is not a place for general advice to substitute for specific counsel. The concepts in this article are educational. The numbers used are illustrative. Your actual tax situation depends on your entity structure, your annual taxable income, your state’s conformity with federal law, and decisions that need to […]

As enforcement tightened on long-haul trucking, marginal operators did not leave the business. They moved into hotshot and auto transport, where the rigs are smaller, the inspections fewer, and the insurance cheaper.

Two weeks ago, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration flipped the switch on the biggest overhaul of its registration infrastructure in decades. The legacy systems carriers had used for years, including the Unified Registration System, the Licensing and Insurance public filing system, and the FMCSA Portal’s registration functions, were permanently retired at 8:00 PM Eastern […]

A notice has been going out to carriers in the C.H. Robinson network, and it is worth reading carefully because of what may sit behind it. The message, branded under C.H. Robinson and titled “Changes to carrier eligibility,” tells the recipient that their company “exceeds intervention thresholds for C.H. Robinson’s scoring model based on data […]

The benchmark diesel price used for most fuel surcharges fell for the sixth time in seven weeks.

Commercial auto has lost $4.9 billion in a single year. Fourteen consecutive years of underwriting losses. Crash rates are actually falling. So why is the industry bleeding? It stopped doing the one thing insurance was designed to do.

Pull up the import data on U.S. charcoal briquette shipments and you are looking at something that some people in trucking would not think to check heading into a holiday weekend. But that data, read against the consumer spending picture for Memorial Day 2026, tells you something specific about the supply chain, the retail freight […]

A Freightliner Cascadia operated by Amritsar Trans Inc., a five-truck carrier out of Manteca, California, rear-ended three vehicles on Highway 99 near Lodi on May 19, 2026, killing two young men. The driver fled on foot. The carrier sits inside a web of 267 carriers clustered across residential addresses in the same ZIP code, and 10 involuntary revocation actions.

FMCSA removed 12 more electronic logging devices from the registry today, bringing the total to 79 revocations since January 2025. The registered list is bleeding devices faster than the market is adding them. At this rate, the agency may be building a de facto third-party certification standard without ever formally adopting one.

On Monday, May 18, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced that FMCSA is deploying $217 million across four grant programs targeting trucking safety enforcement, CDL program modernization, technology deployment at roadside inspections, and career training for military veterans entering the trucking industry. This is not a future commitment. Applications are open right now. The […]

The benchmark price of diesel used fo most fuel surcharges declined this week.