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The Daily
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NEWSLETTER BROUGHT TO YOU BY — QUANTIX
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Announcement
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Alvys absorbs Optym’s LoadOps customer base
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$9B
Freight moved annually across Alvys’ platform
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60,000
Carrier drivers now on the unified system
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$77M
Alvys’ total funding, including a $40M Series B
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Alvys is absorbing the customer base of Optym’s LoadOps transportation management system, consolidating another slice of the freight tech market onto a single dispatch-to-compliance platform.
The move adds LoadOps’ carrier customers to a system that already moves roughly $9 billion in freight annually across 60,000 carrier drivers. Alvys, founded in 2020, has raised $77 million to date, including a $40 million Series B in September 2025 led by RTP Global. Financial terms of the LoadOps transition weren’t disclosed, and some accounts are already migrating, with the switch beginning within days of first contact for carriers ready to move.
Optym, which has spent more than 25 years applying operations research to freight planning, is keeping its LoadAi optimization software and handing the TMS side of the business to Alvys entirely. "Our LoadOps customers needed a TMS partner built for the long haul," Ahuja said. Alvys founder and CEO Nick Darman framed the appeal for carriers making the switch: "In Alvys, these companies are getting one platform for dispatch, accounting, compliance, and driver management."
For carriers running LoadOps, the practical question now is migration risk, not brand loyalty. Alvys inherits a mature customer base overnight, while Optym narrows its focus to the optimization engine it was built to sell in the first place.
Diesel export ban talk rattles fuel markets as White House weighs options
Ultra low sulfur diesel fell 16.57 cents a gallon, or 3.35%, to $4.7764 on Wednesday, a day after touching an all-time high of $5.2465, according to John Kingston’s reporting. RBOB gasoline moved the other way, up 9.95 cents, or 2.85%, to $3.587. The swings came as the White House weighs a 90-day ban on diesel exports, which are running 1.6 million to 1.7 million barrels a day against domestic consumption of 3.6 million to 3.8 million b/d. Energy Secretary Chris Wright pushed back on the idea, saying "the blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn’t work because the U.S. exports a lot of diesel," and refiners are modeling crude run cuts of up to 2 million b/d to manage a diesel surplus — a move S&P Global says "would inevitably lower the supply of gasoline and jet fuel."
A diesel export ban aimed at easing pump prices could just shift the shortage into gasoline and jet fuel instead, since refiners can’t cut diesel output without cutting everything else that comes off the same barrel.
UPS, West Coast port labor contracts both expire in 2028
The ILWU-Pacific Maritime Association contract expires July 1, 2028, the same year the UPS-Teamsters master contract runs out that August, setting up overlapping negotiations at two chokepoints of U.S. freight, according to Eric Kulisch’s reporting. West Coast ports handle 37.2% of U.S. containerized import tonnage and represent 9% of GDP; UPS delivers more than 17 million packages a day, or 18.6% of domestic parcel volume and 5-6% of GDP on its own. History offers little comfort — the 2002 West Coast lockout ran 10 days, the 2014 negotiations stretched 10 months while crane productivity fell from 25-27 moves an hour to eight, and the 2023 contract took more than 13 months to close. "Imagine us shutting down the largest logistics company in the country and also the ports on the West Coast," said Teamsters President Sean O’Brien.
Two years out is early to plan around, but shippers who lived through 2014’s West Coast slowdown know contingency routing takes months to build — and this time it may need to cover parcel networks too.
US imports fell 4.5% in first year after ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs
U.S. imports dropped 4.5% and ocean containerized imports fell 4.3% in the 12 months following the April 2025 "Liberation Day" tariff announcement, according to Stuart Chirls’ reporting on new trade data. The trade deficit swung sharply, falling to $20.4 billion in October 2025 (down 39% from September) before widening again to $73.3 billion by June 2026. Sourcing shifted hard away from China, whose import share fell 40.4% and dropped from the No. 2 to the No. 3 U.S. source, while Mexico rose 6.6%, Taiwan jumped 60.6% and Vietnam climbed 47.8%. China’s ocean TEU volume fell 18% even as it stayed the top origin by volume, while Vietnam and Thailand volumes rose 16% and 24%. Imports rebounded 9% year-over-year in April 2026 after the Supreme Court ended IEEPA tariffs in February.
The China-to-Southeast-Asia sourcing shift looks structural, not cyclical — Taiwan and Vietnam’s import gains held even as the broader tariff picture kept moving under the Supreme Court ruling and new duty programs.
Suez Canal transits rose 27% in August as carriers edge back
Vessel transits through the Suez Canal climbed 27% year over year in August, to 1,358 ships from 1,070 a year earlier, according to Stuart Chirls’ reporting on new Suez Canal Authority data. Net tonnage rose 51.1% to 68.3 million tons, canal revenue climbed 56.7% to $567.1 million, and the daily passage rate reached nearly 44 vessels a day, up from 35 a year ago. The rebound is still partial: the canal handled roughly 80 container vessels a week before Houthi attacks began in late 2023, and traffic bottomed out at just 26 container vessels weekly by mid-January 2026. Suez Canal Authority Chairman Osama Rabie said navigation "was operating normally" and called the waterway "safe," while Maersk described its own service changes as "a measured step" rather than a full return to the corridor. Hapag-Lloyd’s revised AE15 service would cut transit time by four weeks compared with routing around Africa.
The traffic is real but still half-built back. Carriers are testing the corridor route by route rather than committing fleets, so any capacity relief on Asia-Europe and trans-Pacific lanes shows up gradually, not as a sudden rate reset.
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| Time | Guest | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 12pm | Jim Filter | President & CEO, Schneider |
| 12:30pm | Craig Dickman | Managing Partner, TitletownTech |
| 1pm | Brian Figueroa | Managing Director, Transportation, KBX |
| 1:30pm | Kendra Phillips | VP, Global Transportation Management, Ryder System, Inc. |
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High-Stakes Freight Brokerage: Risk and Accountability
Shippers moving high-value freight say lower-cost brokerage is starting to carry higher risk. FreightWaves and Werner surveyed where compliance gaps and carrier performance issues are driving accountability higher.
New Research: Tariffs Didn’t Raise Costs. They Raised the Execution Standard.
Infios research shows the 2025 tariff overhaul turned transport mode, tariff exposure and trade-route selection into variables shippers now have to manage actively — a point today’s import data underscores as sourcing keeps shifting toward Southeast Asia.
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AI Saves Trucking Company $53,000 AnnuallyFreightWaves breaks down how one trucking company used AI tools to cut costs and save tens of thousands of dollars a year. |
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STB Board Member Calls Major Railroad Merger Plan "Shallow"A Surface Transportation Board member pushes back on the UP-NS merger case, calling the application thin on detail. |
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Trucking Lawsuits: Why Nuclear Verdicts Keep HittingFreightWaves examines why massive jury verdicts against trucking companies keep piling up and what carriers can do about it. |
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Whether the LoadOps-to-Alvys migration stays smoothSome accounts are already moving within days of first contact. Watch for service hiccups as carriers switch TMS platforms mid-quarter. |
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Whether the White House actually bans diesel exportsEnergy Secretary Wright is on record against it, but a 90-day ban is still on the table. Refiners are already modeling a 2 million b/d run cut if it happens. |
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Whether Southeast Asia’s import gains holdTaiwan and Vietnam grabbed share from China even as tariff policy kept shifting under a Supreme Court ruling. Watch whether that sourcing shift outlasts the next round of trade actions. |
