THE DAILY

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

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The Daily

BMO sells its transportation lending group to Stonepeak, closing one of trucking’s best credit windows

BMO Financial’s transportation lending group, widely considered one of the largest lenders to the trucking industry, is heading to private equity, and the quarterly credit transparency it provided to the market will go with it.

Stonepeak, the New York-based infrastructure-focused private equity firm with $88 billion in assets under management, announced Monday it is acquiring BMO’s transportation segment and vendor finance business. BMO will retain a 19.9% minority stake. The combined book of business stood at approximately $14.5 billion as of March 31. No sale price was disclosed. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Stonepeak is not new to freight infrastructure. The firm already owns TRAC Intermodal, one of the largest chassis providers in North America, giving it an established footprint across the logistics stack. BMO’s transportation group, which the bank acquired from GE Capital in 2015, is believed to be roughly 90% trucking-focused, making it a critical capital source for carriers through the freight boom and the grueling two-year slump that followed. The head of the group, Gary Kempsinski, will remain in his position. "We could not have envisioned a better partner to lead BMO Transportation and Vendor Finance into its next chapter," Kempsinski said in the joint statement.

The deal’s timing has drawn scrutiny. The sale process is believed to have begun around the time Bloomberg first reported on it last year when the freight market was near its cyclical bottom. The transaction is closing as freight is rapidly strengthening. BMO mitigates the optics through its nearly 20% stake, which captures recovery upside while freeing the bank of the capital requirements that come with majority ownership of a large specialty lender. For Stonepeak, acquiring a large trucking loan book near the bottom of the cycle looks like a well-timed entry. The book peaked at CA$15.62 billion in Q4 2023; it sat at CA$12.42 billion at BMO’s January 31 quarter close.

The less-discussed consequence is the data loss. BMO’s quarterly earnings supplementals have been one of the clearest public windows into trucking credit conditions, breaking out gross impaired loans, writeoffs, and forward-looking provisions for the transportation sector specifically. That data will no longer be available once BMO is a minority shareholder. The most recent quarter showed solid improvement across every metric. The trend line will continue, but the numbers just won’t be visible anymore.

So What? Stonepeak’s ownership frees the group from bank-regulated capital requirements, which could mean more flexible lending terms as the freight recovery builds. But the quarterly credit window was one of the only public proxies for trucking financial health at scale. Carriers seeking capital and analysts tracking credit conditions will need to build new benchmarks.

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Top Stories

House passes organized retail crime bill 348-60, with Senate action next

The bipartisan Combating Organized Retail Crime Act (H.R. 2853) cleared the House Tuesday with a 348-60 vote. The Association of American Railroads, which reported 75,000 cargo theft incidents in 2025 costing more than $200 million — a 50%-plus jump year-over-year — called the bill a win for every business that depends on reliable goods movement. CORCA creates a national coordination center within Homeland Security Investigations and strengthens federal enforcement tools against transnational cargo theft networks. "Only about one in 10 theft attempts lead to an arrest," AAR president Ian Jefferies said. The Intermodal Association of North America urged the Senate to act quickly.

So What? The House vote is the easy part. Senate passage converts CORCA from a resolution into operational enforcement capacity, making it a national coordination center with real investigative authority to cut across the jurisdictional fragmentation that currently protects cargo theft networks. Rail theft up 50% in a year is not a problem that local law enforcement can solve in isolation.

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DOJ charges Dali ship operators in Baltimore bridge collapse that killed six

Federal prosecutors charged Singapore-based Synergy Marine, Chennai-based Synergy Maritime, and technical superintendent Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair in the March 2024 Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, which killed six highway workers. The indictment alleges an improper fuel pump system left the Dali unable to maintain power, and that the operators knew about two power failures before departure but did not investigate or report them as required. Charges include conspiracy, willful failure to notify the Coast Guard, obstruction of the NTSB investigation, and making false statements. Maryland separately finalized a $2.25 billion settlement with the Dali’s owner and Synergy.

So What? Criminal charges alongside a $2.25 billion civil settlement set a hard precedent: falsifying safety reports to federal regulators is its own exposure, separate from the underlying incident. Port operators and maritime carriers running vessels through U.S. waters should review how they document and disclose mechanical issues before departure.

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International Roadcheck is underway. The national security case for it gets too little attention.

International Roadcheck 2026 runs May 12-14, with roughly 15 commercial vehicles per minute moving through 37-step Level I inspections. FreightWaves’ Rob Carpenter makes a case the industry rarely makes publicly: trucking enforcement is a national security operation. Commercial vehicles have been used in terror attacks that killed hundreds across Nice, Berlin, Manhattan, and New Orleans. In November 2025, ICE arrested a wanted jihadist recruiter who had obtained a Pennsylvania CDL and was actively driving commercially. The FBI’s Highway Serial Killings Initiative links 850-plus murders to long-haul truck drivers. FMCSA under Administrator Derek Barrs has a 28% increase in enforcement activity versus a year ago.

So What? Carriers who park trucks during Roadcheck week are self-identifying as operators who can’t pass a 37-step inspection, and that’s a security signal, not just a compliance one. The tens of thousands of law enforcement contacts generated in 72 hours are interdiction infrastructure. FMCSA’s most aggressive enforcement posture in the agency’s history is the right context for understanding why this week matters beyond brake adjustments.

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Fighting Distracted Driving Starts with Leadership Travelers’ Mike Fackler argues the fix for distracted driving doesn’t start with the driver — it starts with who’s running the fleet. When leaders take calls behind the wheel and dispatchers fire off texts during drives, they’re writing the unwritten rules. Accountability has to be universal to be meaningful, and the small daily decisions made before anyone gets behind the wheel are what determine safety culture across the fleet. Read the full story →

UP and NS defend revised merger application ahead of May 30 STB deadline

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern filed a 46-page response Tuesday defending their revised merger application as "comprehensive and complete," directly addressing the three deficiencies that caused the STB to reject the initial filing. The railroads pushed back on objections from BNSF, CN, CPKC, and CSX — arguing that several rival concerns address merger merits rather than application completeness and can be addressed in the formal review phase. A key unresolved dispute involves control of the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis; UP-NS say they’ve made divestiture an unconditional condition of approval. The STB has until May 30 to accept or reject the revised application. A merger application has never been rejected twice.

So What? May 30 is the gate. STB acceptance opens the formal merits review, which is where BNSF, CSX, CN, and CPKC have signaled they’ll mount their real opposition. A second rejection would be historically unprecedented and reset the timeline by months. Watch for the STB ruling before end of month.

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Sponsored By Truckstop

The Fraudsters Are Collaborating. It’s Time the Good Guys Did Too. Freight fraud networks own warehouses, share drivers, and coordinate across platforms. The vetting companies trying to stop them are still working alone. Dale Prax of FreightValidate.com and Truckstop outlines a first-ever collaboration between competing vetting platforms and the FMCSA, with a meeting on the calendar for May 14. If one platform has done the investigative legwork to identify a fraudulent operator, every other platform should benefit from that finding. Read the full story →

Sponsored Insight

From the Research Desk

From Our Partners

What We’re Watching

▸ The STB’s May 30 deadline on the UP-NS merger application. Accept means the formal merits review begins — where rival railroads have signaled their real opposition. Reject would be historically unprecedented. The decision is the most consequential rail regulatory gate of 2026.

▸ The May 14 FMCSA-vetting platform collaboration meeting. Private-sector fraud prevention companies and federal regulators are meeting for the first time to align on what each side can and can’t do. If that meeting produces a shared intelligence framework, it changes how fraudulent operators get flagged across the ecosystem.

▸ What happens to BMO’s quarterly trucking credit data. The last report showed solid Q1 improvement across impaired loans, writeoffs, and provisions. That data will stop flowing as BMO becomes a minority shareholder. Watch for analysts to start building alternate proxies for trucking credit conditions as the freight recovery builds.

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

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