Iron Mike, FreightCTO

New public truck parking projects in Florida and Colorado show why safe parking is not a convenience issue. It is a freight mobility, compliance, and driver safety issue.

US container imports hit 2.4 million TEUs in May 2026, up 11.5% year-over-year. But port drayage truckers say conditions still feel like a freight recession — and the July 24 tariff cliff could make things more volatile before they get better.

The EPA issued guidance on July 1, 2026, telling manufacturers they're legally required under the Clean Air Act to share DEF and emissions repair data with independent shops — the same data they give their own dealers. For owner-operators, that could mean shorter waits, lower repair bills, and fewer 200-mile tows to the nearest authorized service center.

OPEC+ agreed to add 188,000 barrels per day in August, and Brent crude is down to under $72. But S&P Global Energy says Gulf oil production won't fully recover until Q1 2027 — meaning diesel relief for truckers is still a long way off.

The USMCA review formally triggered July 1, 2026 — and the US is already pushing a 50% domestic vehicle content rule that Canada and Mexico are calling a non-starter. With $5 billion in daily cross-border trade at stake, here's what owner-operators need to watch.

FMCSA's new Motus registration platform launched in May 2026 with widespread technical problems, prompting the agency to pause enforcement of biennial update requirements. The pause protects you from immediate action — but the underlying deadline hasn't gone away. Here's what to do now.

Highway is cutting off broker connections for any carrier without an active ELD hookup by July 5 — a direct response to the Supreme Court's *Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II* ruling that made brokers legally liable for carrier negligence. About 10% of Highway's carriers still need to connect. Here's what's at stake.

Two stolen trailers recovered near Chicago show why high-value freight is changing - and why carriers, brokers, and yards need to treat infrastructure cargo differently

Prime Inc. is fighting the IRS for more than $11 million in reefer fuel tax refunds. The case reveals a larger lesson for smaller carriers: serious money is already hiding inside most operations. It just takes the right records to find it.

Carriers don't order trucks when they're scared. A 104% year-over-year jump in Class 8 orders is part demand recovery, part a rush to buy ahead of EPA 2027 — and a useful read on where the market thinks it's headed.

He started in the hardest place to drive a truck in America. The lever that took Timothy Maddox from one truck to a 23-truck fleet wasn't the equipment — it was learning that dispatching, relationships, and discipline are the actual business.

Who better to tell you what inspectors look for than someone who used to be one? John Seidl breaks down CSA scores, ELD tampering, and crash investigations — and why treating compliance as leverage beats treating it as a chore.

The loads were real. The trucks were real. The 'carriers' were not. Prosecutors say the ring stole roughly $4.49M by impersonating legitimate trucking companies — and the method is one every small fleet and broker should understand.

Every industry has its founders, and trucking has fewer of them at the top every year. Kevin Knight's retirement is a marker — the generation that built some of today's biggest carriers from the seat is handing off.

Heavy haul looks like a capital game — expensive trailers, big trucks, oversize permits. Joe Gibson argues the real moat is knowledge: the permit process, the lanes, and the willingness to negotiate every charge.

A Supreme Court decision just turned billions in collected tariffs into refunds. When that much cash moves back to importers, it tends to show up in import volumes — and eventually on the docks and the lanes.

Plenty of people start a dispatch service. Brandon Johnson built one to 65 trucks by doing the unglamorous things: starting free to prove value, specializing, and actually understanding the math of profit.

Another nine-figure emissions settlement lands on a major OEM. The trucks in question are years old — which is exactly why operators running older equipment should keep one eye on enforcement.

Nuclear verdicts aren't just a big-carrier problem. A single unsafe maneuver, a serious injury, and the right courtroom can produce a number that no small fleet's insurance was built to absorb.

If you touch LTL, the rulebook just changed. The NMFC overhaul shifts how freight gets classified, which means re-rated shipments, new disputes, and a reason to double-check your numbers.

If you felt gouged on container costs during the pandemic, federal prosecutors now allege there may have been a reason. The defendants are presumed innocent — but the scale of the claim is enormous.

Big events are big logistics. The World Cup coming to the NY/NJ region means a temporary surge in people, goods, hospitality, and the freight that supports all of it — and surges like that create short windows of opportunity.

The world's largest truck stop didn't start large. Iowa 80 grew the same way the best trucking businesses do — by obsessing over what drivers actually need, decade after decade.

The Court didn't rule that C.H. Robinson lost — it ruled the case can proceed. But that alone reshapes how brokers think about who they hand a load to, and how carriers prove they're worth trusting.

Editing the log after the fact used to feel invisible. Inspectors are now grabbing the data early to catch the manipulation — and the enforcement is getting more sophisticated than the cheating.

After a long, brutal stretch, the rate environment is finally moving the right way. Flatbed has strung together 19 straight weeks of gains, and dry van is at a level it hasn't seen in years.

Everyone's watching the AI gold rush. Fewer people are watching the trucks that move the steel, transformers, and equipment that make it physical. Landstar's numbers say it's already a real lane.

Blitz week is a compliance test and a market event at the same time. Get your house in order — and understand why the carriers who park their trucks can move the rate needle.

When a giant starts handing out loads, everyone celebrates the volume. But volume isn't margin. Uber Freight proved that tech, capital, and shipper relationships don't automatically make the economics work for the truck.

A crackdown that removes tens of thousands of drivers sounds like it should tighten capacity and lift rates. It didn't — at least not yet. That gap between the headline and your rate sheet is the lesson.

Everyone asks whether the truck can drive itself. The better question is who's responsible when the load goes sideways. Driverless freight scatters liability across a new stack of parties — and the contracts will decide who's left holding the risk.

Amazon spent years building a logistics machine for itself. Now it's renting that machine to everyone and moving into LTL — which turns the biggest shipper in the country into a direct competitor of the carriers that haul for it.

Economists say International Roadcheck isn't just an inspection blitz — it's a deterrence strategy designed to change fleet behavior across the whole industry. Here's why it's built the way it is, and what it means for your trucks.

Another line just got crossed. A real load, a real payment, and no human anywhere in the loop. Whatever you think of the timeline, the technology keeps moving from demo to deployment.