THE DAILY

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

The five minutes that makes you the most informed person in freight today

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The Daily

10,000 merchant mariners trapped as Hormuz blockade enters second week

The Strait of Hormuz is closed, the U.S. Navy won’t provide escorts, and diesel just posted the largest single-week price increase in 32 years. The freight industry’s defining crisis of 2026 is at a breaking point.

More than 10,000 merchant mariners on hundreds of vessels are trapped inside the Persian Gulf, unable to safely attempt a Hormuz crossing, shipping executives meeting in Stamford, Conn., told FreightWaves reporter Stuart Chirls. Overnight Tuesday, three more cargo ships in the strait area were struck by projectiles of unknown origin. One vessel north of Oman caught fire before the crew evacuated; a bulk carrier and a container vessel reported separate hits. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations has now recorded 10 suspected attacks on merchant shipping since U.S. and Israeli forces struck Iran on Feb. 28, making this the first closure of the strait to global shipping since the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

The scale of the closure is becoming measurable. S&P Global Energy tracked just four ships transiting the strait on March 8, compared with 91 on Feb. 28. Goldman Sachs put traffic at 10% of normal. Persian Gulf oil loadings, which typically run about 20 million barrels per day, dropped to 3 million barrels on Sunday. S&P Global Energy estimated that roughly 17 million barrels per day of crude and petroleum products failed to sail out of the Gulf last week alone — a volume that is straining storage capacity across Iraq and Kuwait and forcing production shutdowns. Shut-in wells don’t restart quickly; the recovery timeline for some fields is measured in weeks or months, not days.

That supply compression arrived in fuel surcharge tables this week. The DOE/EIA average weekly retail diesel price surged 96.2 cents per gallon to $4.859 — the largest one-week increase in the series’ 32-year history, surpassing the 74.5-cent spike that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in March 2022. Bunker operations at Fujairah, the world’s third-busiest vessel fueling center on the Gulf of Oman, have shut down entirely. Eight maritime workers have died in attacks since the war began. The Navy has declined shipping industry requests for military escorts in the strait, citing attack risk too high to mitigate. Tim Wilkins, managing director of tanker trade group Intertanko, told the Stamford gathering that reports of ships forming convoys to exit are false. "There have been some individual vessels that have turned off AIS and transited at night," he said, "but no convoys."

So What? Diesel surcharges reset off the DOE/EIA benchmark; a 96-cent weekly jump is the largest recalculation most carrier cost models have ever had to absorb. Carriers on indexed fuel surcharge agreements need to recalculate exposure before Friday. For shippers with cargo aboard vessels currently trapped in the Gulf, the operational answer is the same one it was last week: those ships are not moving until the security situation changes, and there is no military escort option available. Bunkering at Fujairah is offline, which means vessels that do transit will face fuel supply constraints on the other side. The disruption is open-ended, the downstream effects are compounding, and the next data point to watch is whether Iran’s stated threats against Dubai’s banking and port infrastructure materialize.

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Top Stories

U.S. Navy declines Hormuz escort requests, citing attack risk

Despite near-daily requests from the shipping industry, the U.S. Navy has declined to provide military escorts through the Strait of Hormuz, telling Reuters the risk of attacks is "too high" for escorts to be viable at this time. The Navy has held regular briefings with shipping and oil industry representatives as the crisis deepens. American and EU naval forces escorted merchant ships through the Red Sea during the height of Houthi attacks in 2024 and 2025, but that protection framework is not being repeated here. Global carriers had only recently restarted Suez Canal rotations before abandoning them again after the Iran war began.

So What? Without military escort, every vessel in the Gulf is making its own risk calculation. The majority of operators are choosing to wait. That calculus won’t change until either the threat environment shifts or a Navy reversal comes, and there is no public signal of either.

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DOE/EIA diesel benchmark posts record one-week gain, reaches $4.859 a gallon

The DOE/EIA average weekly retail diesel price jumped 96.2 cents per gallon to $4.859, the largest single-week increase in the 32-year history of the series, according to FreightWaves reporter John Kingston. The prior record was a 74.5-cent move in March 2022, immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine. ULSD futures on the CME swung more than $1.17 between Monday’s intraday high of $4.4715 and Tuesday morning’s low of $3.3047, reflecting extreme volatility tied to Hormuz transit uncertainty and mixed signals from President Trump about the war’s duration. S&P Global Energy data shows Persian Gulf loadings at 3 million barrels Sunday against a normal daily level near 20 million, with roughly 17 million b/d failing to sail last week as Iraq and Kuwait shut in production with filling storage.

So What? Most fuel surcharge tables index directly to this benchmark. A 96-cent jump will recalibrate carrier surcharges significantly when tables refresh this week. Shippers on indexed contracts should run the math now, before their next freight invoice arrives.

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Connecticut man pleads guilty in $3.5M trailer movement fraud against Amazon

Ameer Nasir, 25, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to wire fraud charges, admitting he defrauded Amazon Logistics of more than $3.5 million by submitting false invoices for trailer movements that never occurred. The scheme ran from December 2019 through February 2021 and involved 23 fictitious trucking companies, several built using misappropriated DOT numbers from legitimate carriers. Nasir exploited a "manual override" in Amazon Relay’s TMS to falsely check trailers in and out of locations, successfully executing the scam more than 1,000 times. He faces up to 20 years at sentencing on May 29 and must pay $3,547,090.93 in restitution.

So What? The case is a clear signal that carrier onboarding fraud can be executed at scale when TMS platforms have exploitable overrides. Logistics operators and shippers using digital freight networks should audit carrier verification protocols, particularly around DOT number validation and geo-fence integrity.

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Sponsored By The Express Carriers Association

Mexico heavy truck production falls 49% in February as domestic demand weakens

Mexico produced 6,974 heavy vehicles in February, a 49.1% year-over-year decline, while exports fell 32% and domestic retail sales dropped 38.9%, according to INEGI data reported by FreightWaves’ Noi Mahoney. For the first two months of 2026, total production is down 50.5% and exports are down 42.6% from the same period in 2025, extending what AMDA’s Cristina Vázquez called "14 consecutive months of decline." Industry officials tied the slump to weak capital investment signals: "The fixed gross investment indicator — particularly machinery and equipment — has been in negative territory for more than a year," Vázquez said. Used truck imports from the U.S. are compounding the damage, entering Mexico at a rate of roughly 64 units for every 100 new heavy vehicles sold.

So What? Mexico produces most of the tractor-trailers running U.S.-Mexico cross-border freight. A sustained 50% production decline tightens future fleet replacement supply into the North American market at the same time cross-border freight demand is navigating tariff volatility. Fleet managers planning 2026 equipment acquisitions should factor in tightening new-unit availability.

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Sponsored Insight

From the Research Desk

What We’re Watching

▸ Whether the Navy reverses on Hormuz escorts. The Navy’s current position, that attack risk is "too high" to provide escorts, leaves every vessel operator making a solo risk call. If the threat picture shifts or political pressure mounts, watch for a Navy posture change. Without one, the blockade calculus stays exactly as it is.

▸ Diesel surcharge resets this week. The 96.2-cent DOE/EIA benchmark jump is the largest on record. Fuel surcharge tables that index to this benchmark will recalculate Friday. Carriers and shippers on indexed agreements should run their cost models now, before invoices reflect the new number.

▸ Gulf production shut-in recovery timelines. Iraq and Kuwait cut production last week as storage filled with nowhere to export. S&P Global Energy reports 17 million b/d failed to move. Shut-in wells don’t restart quickly; the recovery timeline for some fields runs weeks to months. Watch for production-side signals from both countries as the primary leading indicator for when Gulf oil supply can normalize.

That’s your Daily for today. See you tomorrow.

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