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This week’s top stories in trucking

C.H. Robinson Hit With $604M Nuclear Verdict in a Post-Montgomery World

A Dallas County jury handed down roughly $604 million Thursday over a March 2021 pileup in Jackson, Mississippi, that killed three people, one of the largest nuclear verdicts ever against trucking interests. The case, Lipe v. Lupus Superior, landed in Texas because the carrier is based there; C.H. Robinson was named as a co-defendant after being hauled in on the freight it brokered from Arizona Beverages. The jury split fault 45% to the deceased driver, 32% to Lupus Superior and 23% to C.H. Robinson — but with the driver dead and the carrier thin on assets, legal sources expect the broker to shoulder most of the bill. Two findings alarm the brokerage sector: the jury rejected C.H. Robinson’s reliance on Lupus Superior’s satisfactory FMCSA rating, and it found the carrier’s driver was effectively working under Robinson’s control. Robinson said it will appeal.

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UPS Shift Away From Amazon Shows Bigger Payoff

UPS posted $22.8 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 7.6% year over year, with adjusted operating profit up 12% to $2.1 billion, or $1.76 a share, as it finished phasing out low-margin Amazon volume. The carrier stripped out 2 million Amazon pieces per day and $4.5 billion in related expense, part of a reconfiguration that closes 150 sort facilities and eliminates 30,000 positions. Domestic revenue per piece rose 9.3% even as volume fell 3.3%; adjusted for the Amazon exit, average daily volume actually grew. By late June, 68.5% of U.S. volume moved through automated facilities, where cost per piece runs about 28% lower. Healthcare logistics topped $3 billion for a second straight quarter. Management raised full-year revenue guidance to $91.2 billion, but shares fell 6.25% on cautious second-half guidance heading into peak.

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Banana Shipment From Ecuador to Europe Concealed $290 Million in Cocaine

Italian authorities seized nearly 1,700 pounds of cocaine hidden inside a refrigerated container of bananas at the Port of Vado Ligure, about 30 miles southwest of Genoa on the Mediterranean coast. Officers found 650 brick-shaped packages tucked among banana pallets in a container that originated in Ecuador, one of the world’s largest banana exporters. Italy’s Guardia di Finanza announced the bust Tuesday after working with the Customs and Monopolies Agency on a cargo inspection, with preliminary testing confirming high-purity cocaine. Officials pegged the street value near 250 million euros, roughly $290 million, and said the haul ranked among the largest recent seizures at the port. Investigators had zeroed in on the South America-to-Europe lane, a busy corridor for fresh produce that traffickers increasingly exploit to move product inside legitimate shipments.

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Texas Police Recover $272K in Precious Metal Cargo, 2 Face Possible Life Sentences

Sealy, Texas, police stopped two men leaving a business with 32,000 pounds of precious metal, recovering a shipment valued near $272,000 and linking the 18-wheeler to an earlier theft at the same location. Both defendants — Rahual Phore, 25, and Virender Phore, 36 — face first-degree felony cargo-theft charges, announced in a July 27 release. Sealy sits about 50 miles west of Houston at the intersection of Interstate 10 and Texas Highway 36, a heavily traveled freight corridor. Officers intercepted the pair as they tried to leave the property, unloaded and documented the metal, and returned it to its owner while placing the truck and trailer in storage pending seizure. Police credited automated license plate reader technology with helping crack the case. Under Texas law, cargo theft of $200,000 or more is a first-degree felony carrying five to 99 years, or life. Both remain presumed innocent.

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Trucking Safety Blitzes Uncover Broad Violations in Maryland, Florida, Kentucky and Illinois

Enforcement agencies in four states stepped up roadside inspections and traffic campaigns in June and July, sidelining scores of trucks and drivers. In Maryland, FMCSA’s state division partnered with Maryland State Police and the Department of the Environment along the I-81 corridor, running 37 inspections that turned up 78 equipment violations, 15 vehicles and nine drivers out of service. Kentucky State Police’s East Region logged the heaviest haul: 792 inspections across 25 counties in June, 587 violations and 92 vehicles out of service, plus 84 hazmat checks. Illinois State Police ran a two-day hazmat blitz June 30-July 1 on Interstates 55 and 70, completing 488 inspections and uncovering 584 federal violations while pulling 61 vehicles and 38 drivers. In Florida, Operation Southern Slowdown put Ocala officers among agencies that made 29 arrests across Marion County, citing suspended licenses, DUI and super-speeder violations.

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Spot rates log a third straight weekly slide

(Source: SONAR)

Summary: The National Truckload Index (Linehaul Only), NTIL.USA, sits at $2.64 per mile, off 0.38% — about a penny — on the day and down another 7 cents from a week ago. That makes three straight weekly declines, and the index has now surrendered about 41 cents from the early-July peak just above $3.05. It still runs 49 cents above the $2.13 trailing-year average, but the summer’s story has clearly turned: the June run-up is unwinding at a steady, unhurried pace.

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 methodical — $2.78, then $2.71, now $2.64 — stepping down roughly 7 cents a week with no bounce to speak of. What looked like post-holiday cooling a month ago now reads as a genuine repricing.

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 underneath the spring rally hasn’t reversed — Cass still shows shipments falling year over year on shrinking capacity, and enforcement keeps pulling noncompliant trucks off the road. What the chart says is that June overshot, and spot is hunting for a level the market can hold. Watch $2.60 as the next line in the sand; a break there puts the mid-$2.50s in play. Contract rates lag spot by a couple of weeks, so carriers repricing off the July high are negotiating against a number that keeps sliding out from under them.