| Enterprise trucking insights delivered — the week’s biggest stories in trucking, freight law, safety and the spot market. |
| ● ON THE WIRE |
FRI · AUG 28 · 2026 |
5 STORIES |
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Whether you’re booking loads or hauling them, Truckstop gives you the tools, the rates and the network to keep moving.
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TRUCKING · SPOT RATES
BY TODD MAIDEN · LOADED AND ROLLING · AUG 25, 2026
RXO says its truckload spot rate index posted its largest sequential Q2 gain in five years, with spot rates up 32.4% year-over-year (versus 16.5% in Q1) and now running 43% higher through Q3. The broker’s chief strategy officer says carrier operating costs are up 29% ex-fuel from the prior cycle peak, meaning further rate gains may be needed just to restore margins.
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THE TAKE —
Spot rates outrunning contract rates this consistently is unusual this far into a cycle — shippers still locked into older contract pricing should expect carriers to push hard for increases at renewal, especially heading into peak season with capacity already tight.
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TRUCKING · REEFER / INTERMODAL
Refrigerated tender rejections remain elevated at 20%-20.5% even as other truckload modes cool, because reefer freight can’t easily shift to intermodal — it needs continuously-running specialized containers. Meanwhile intermodal’s cost advantage over the road has widened to 33%, a three-year high, driving record dry-freight rail container volumes.
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THE TAKE —
Reefer shippers shouldn’t expect the relief other truckload segments are seeing — capacity for temperature-controlled freight stays structurally tighter than dry van, so budgeting for continued elevated reefer rates makes sense even as intermodal keeps siphoning dry freight off the highway.
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TRADE · CROSS-BORDER
A shortage of B-1 visa drivers is choking northbound freight out of Mexico, especially through Nuevo Laredo, as stricter visa enforcement collides with rising demand. Uber Freight says trailers are plentiful — roughly nine per driver — but qualified drivers aren’t, and Mexican carriers are now recruiting and training drivers from southern Mexico to fill the gap.
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THE TAKE —
Uber Freight expects the bottleneck to worsen before it improves and is steering shippers toward transloading as a workaround — anyone moving freight across the southern border should build in schedule buffer and consider transload options now rather than waiting for the driver shortage to ease.
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TECHNOLOGY · AUTONOMOUS TRUCKING
Autonomous freight company Gatik raised $200 million in a Series D led by the Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies, with backing from Millennium Management, ARK Invest and Intact Private Capital. The company has run 85,000 fully driverless deliveries at 99% on-time performance across Texas, Arizona, Arkansas and Canada for customers like PepsiCo, and plans to scale from dozens of trucks to thousands with Isuzu-built vehicles entering production in late 2027.
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THE TAKE —
Gatik’s model — short, repeatable middle-mile routes rather than long-haul autonomy — is proving out commercially, with over $600 million in contracted revenue already on the books. Shippers running distribution-center-to-retail lanes similar to Gatik’s routes should watch this space closely as capacity scales from a novelty to a real procurement option.
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TRUCKING · BROKERAGE / M&A
Mubadala Capital is taking a majority stake in Austin-based freight brokerage Arrive Logistics, with terms undisclosed. Arrive plans to hire 1,000 people in 2026 and grow further in 2027, funneling the investment into produce, cross-border and LTL service expansion along with its transportation management system, with the deal expected to close in Q4 2026.
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THE TAKE —
A brokerage this size adding 1,000 heads while a well-capitalized investor takes majority control signals real confidence in freight brokerage economics right now — shippers working with Arrive should expect expanded service offerings (LTL, cross-border, produce) to roll out over the next year as that hiring ramps.
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SONAR MARKET DATA
SONAR Spotlight: Spot rates grind toward the spring plateau
The National Truckload Index (Linehaul Only), NTIL.USA, sits at $2.39 per mile, off 0.42% — about a penny — on the day and down 6 cents from a week ago. That’s a seventh straight weekly decline, though the pace eased from last week’s 8-cent drop. The index has now given back roughly 66 cents from the early-July peak just above $3.05 and holds just 18 cents above the $2.21 trailing-year average — the thinnest that cushion has been since the spring breakout. Diving into the data, the NTIL sat near $1.75 from August into late November before its first real climb, reaching roughly $2.20 by mid-January. It chopped between $2.00 and $2.25 through winter and spring, then broke hard in May, adding about 80 cents in six weeks to crest above $3.00 in late June. The retreat since has been relentless — $2.78, $2.71, $2.64, $2.55, $2.53, $2.45, now $2.39 — seven weeks down with only one real pause. The index has retraced better than three-quarters of the spring run-up and is closing in on the $2.25 shelf it launched from in May. To calculate the NTIL, fuel costs are based on the average retail price of diesel and an assumed fuel efficiency of 6.5 miles per gallon. The formula is NTID – (DTS.USA / 6.5). Looking ahead, the supply story that drove the rally hasn’t reversed — Cass still shows shipments down year over year on tighter capacity, and enforcement continues to thin noncompliant trucks from the market — but seven weeks of declines make clear that whatever tightness pushed rates to $3 has loosened. The $2.25 spring plateau is the level that matters now: it held as a ceiling from February through April, and how the index behaves as it approaches from above will say whether that old range becomes a floor or just another marker on the way down. Contract rates lag spot by a couple of weeks, so shippers renewing now are negotiating against the softest spot market since early spring.
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PODCAST
Loaded and Rolling, the podcast
Catch the newest episode of the Loaded and Rolling podcast, where the editorial team breaks down automating gate technology and yard operations.
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LABOR DAY SALE
OCT 27–28, 2026 · THE SIGNAL AT CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO · CHATTANOOGA, TN
Your team works hard every day to keep supply chains moving. This Labor Day, invest in their growth — and your company’s bottom line — by sending them to F3. Get ahead of market trends and regulatory shifts, experience the latest FreightTech insights that directly impact your margins, and expand high-value relationships with supply chain leaders spanning the industry.
1,000+ supply chain leaders in attendance
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LOADED AND ROLLING — ENTERPRISE TRUCKING INSIGHTS DELIVERED — PUBLISHED WEEKLY
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