THE DAILY

Thursday, May 7, 2026

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

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The Daily

Court denies stay on FMCSA non-domiciled CDL rule; arguments set for September

FMCSA’s non-domiciled CDL rule will keep operating through the spring and summer hiring season after a federal appellate court denied two requests to halt it.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied the stay Tuesday, with the court noting in a footnote that Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins would have granted it. The two motions came from King County, Washington, and a coalition led by AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Public Citizen Litigation Group, with truck driver Jorge Rivera Lujan as the primary named defendant. Both sought to put FMCSA’s final rule on the shelf.

The rule itself, effective March 16, narrows the pool of drivers eligible for non-domiciled CDLs to H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 visa holders. Asylum seekers, asylees, DACA recipients, refugees, and people with temporary protected status are excluded. The Lujan plaintiffs argue FMCSA “first decided on the outcome of the rulemaking and only then looked for reasons to support it,” calling it arbitrary and capricious.

The court released the briefing schedule with the order: petitioners file by June 15, FMCSA replies a month later, and final briefs are due August 5. Oral arguments are expected in September. The Teamsters and the Sikh Coalition were granted leave to join as amicus curiae, broadening the labor and civil-rights footprint of the case ahead of arguments.

For carriers, this is the second procedural inflection point in seven months. FMCSA’s interim final rule was stayed in October. The agency rewrote it, reissued in February, and the new version now sits unblocked through the appellate process.

So What? If your hiring or orientation pipeline relies on non-domiciled drivers outside the H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 categories, treat the current rule as binding through at least September. Recruiters need clean documentation on every non-domiciled hire, and any program built around DACA, asylum, refugee, or TPS drivers needs a contingency that doesn’t depend on a stay landing before fall.

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Top Stories

CBP’s CAPE refund portal moves billions, but readiness divides importers

Early refunds are flowing through CBP’s Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries portal, launched April 20 inside ACE for invalidated IEEPA tariff claims. GEODIS’ Erin Williamson told FreightWaves payouts are tracking well ahead of the original 60-to-90-day guidance, with some hitting in early May. The split isn’t big-versus-small importers; it’s ready-versus-not. CBP estimates roughly $46 billion in refunds is stalled because importers haven’t completed ACH authorization. Phase 1 covers unliquidated entries and those within 80 days of liquidation, with later phases adding finally liquidated entries.

So What? Operational readiness is the ticket to early refund money. Importers without ACE enrollment, ACH setup, and a designated Trade Account Owner risk falling another phase behind as eligibility expands.

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Aurora goes driverless with McLane on Dallas-Houston as Volvo route extends to Oklahoma City

Aurora Innovation and McLane have moved from supervised pilots to fully driverless commercial hauls between Dallas and Houston for the Berkshire Hathaway-owned distributor, after a three-year program logged more than 280,000 autonomous miles, 1,400 loads, and 100% on-time performance. Aurora plans to expand the network across the U.S. Sun Belt by year-end. Separately, Aurora and Volvo Autonomous Solutions launched a 200-mile Dallas-Oklahoma City route running supervised autonomy five days a week using the Volvo VNL Autonomous integrated with the Aurora Driver. McLane’s drivers stay on local last-mile work; the autonomous trucks handle the middle mile.

So What? Driverless commercial freight on a real shipper’s daily lane is no longer a pilot story. Watch how quickly Aurora’s Sun Belt expansion converts middle-mile capacity for grocery, foodservice, and convenience networks.

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Trimble beats Q1 expectations as transportation revenue grows 7%

Trimble posted Q1 revenue of $939.9 million, up 12% year over year, and adjusted EPS of 79 cents, lifting full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $3.835 billion to $3.915 billion. Transportation and logistics revenue rose 7% to $140 million, with annual recurring revenue for the segment up 9% to $525 million and segment operating margins up 300 basis points to 24.2%. CEO Rob Painter said the North American freight market is “beginning to show some signs of market recovery,” and called out AI-driven products like autonomous procurement and autonomous quotation for growing at higher rates than legacy software. Transportation new-logo growth jumped more than 50% year over year.

So What? A 50% jump in transportation new-logo growth at one of the larger TMS vendors is a real demand signal. Procurement teams renewing or replacing systems this year are walking into a market where AI-priced modules are becoming the baseline, not the upsell.

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Uber Freight posts first year-over-year revenue gain since 2024

Uber Freight reported Q1 revenue of $1.34 billion, up from $1.26 billion a year earlier, the first year-on-year quarterly gain in two years. The segment posted a $30 million operating loss under Uber’s newly disclosed reporting basis, narrower than the $40 million loss in Q3 2025. CEO Rebecca Tinucci said new enterprise customers brought roughly $165 million in “new addressable spend” in Q1 alone, equal to all new customer spend in 2025. Tinucci credited “continued strength in enterprise demand and Managed Transportation,” the latter rooted in the 2021 Transplace acquisition.

So What? A digital broker compounding TMS-driven enterprise spend with brokerage volume is the integrated model peers have been promising for years. If Tinucci’s $165 million addressable-spend number holds through Q2, Uber Freight is taking enterprise share, not just riding a market turn.

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From Our Library

What We’re Watching

▸ The June 15 petitioners’ brief in the non-domiciled CDL case. The argument that FMCSA acted arbitrarily is the heart of the appeal. How the plaintiffs frame the rulemaking record will set the tone heading into September oral arguments.

▸ Aurora’s Sun Belt expansion timeline. The Dallas-Houston driverless launch and Volvo’s Dallas-Oklahoma City extension came in the same week. Watch for the next named McLane lane and any additional V.A.S. customer endpoints by quarter-end.

▸ CAPE Phase 2 eligibility. CBP has signaled finally liquidated entries are coming into scope. The $46 billion in stalled refunds will move only as fast as importers complete ACH and TAO setup, so expect a readiness scramble through May.

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

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