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The freight broker’s weekly intelligence brief
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Coming June 1st
FreightWaves Today
The supply chain moves fast. Now your news does too. Craig Fuller and Julie Van De Kamp bring you a daily live show — real-time market analysis and interviews with the leading executives shaping freight & logistics. Live every weekday at Noon ET on FreightWaves socials and tv.freightwaves.com/today.
On the Desk
🔥 Market Pulse
Spot rates just hit all-time highs. A 9-0 Supreme Court ruling is a big reason why — and Craig Fuller says this is only the beginning.
One week after the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, the freight market has already started to reprice. Truckload spot rates are at record levels, and Fuller’s read is that the ruling — which reshaped broker liability standards industry-wide — is accelerating a capacity crunch that was already building. Carriers who were on the fence about which loads to take are now extremely selective. Brokers who built relationships when it was cheap to do so are in a very different position than those who didn’t. The cycle isn’t arriving — it’s here.
🚨 Compliance & Fraud
20 people hidden in a sleeper berth. Satisfactory rating. C-TPAT certified. Former TXTA Chairman at the helm. Every tool gave this carrier a pass.
A 250-truck Laredo carrier — C-TPAT certified, Satisfactory safety rating, run by a former Texas Trucking Association chairman — was stopped in Webb County with 20 undocumented people concealed in the sleeper berth. The carrier hauls for Tesla and C.H. Robinson. Rob Carpenter’s dispatch from today is the kind of story that should end up in every carrier vetting conversation your team has this week. The uncomfortable question it raises: if every standard screening tool cleared this company, what exactly are those tools actually measuring?
⚖️ Risk & Insurance
Commercial auto lost $4.9 billion in one year. Fourteen straight years of underwriting losses. Crash rates are actually falling. So what broke?
The trucking insurance market is in crisis — but not for the reasons most people cite. Rob Carpenter’s deep-dive published this morning traces the structural failures that turned commercial auto insurance into a money-losing product: nuclear verdicts, legislative inaction, and an industry that stopped doing the one thing insurance was designed to do. For brokers, this has direct operational consequences: carriers are getting dropped, coverage minimums are rising, and the vetting questions you haven’t been asking are the ones that are about to matter most.
⚠️ Legal
A $50 million nuclear verdict just dropped against a Texas trucking company that may not even exist anymore.
Almost $50 million in a single verdict against OPG Logistics — a Texas carrier that may no longer be in business. John Kingston’s report from yesterday raises the question that every broker placing loads with thin or unverifiable carriers should be sitting with: when a carrier dissolves after a crash and a nuclear verdict, who’s holding the exposure? Brokers are finding out that answer in discovery more often than they’d like. The post-SCOTUS landscape makes this calculation even more urgent.
🏛️ Regulation
FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs sat down with Craig Fuller. What he said about the freight market’s direction is worth your time.
Fuller brought FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs and Matt Leffler into the Chattanooga studio earlier this week for a live conversation on enforcement, capacity, and where the agency is heading. The market is already responding to a more engaged FMCSA posture — tighter enforcement, faster action on unsafe carriers, and a clearer regulatory voice than the industry has seen in years. If you want to understand the enforcement backdrop behind the rate environment, this is the conversation to watch.
📡 Shipper Radar
Stord just raised $250M to put AI inside e-commerce fulfillment. Total raised is now nearly $800M.
Stord closed a $250 million round to accelerate AI deployment across its e-commerce fulfillment centers, bringing its total fundraising to nearly $800 million since founding. The bet is that AI-optimized fulfillment becomes a competitive advantage for brands that can’t afford Amazon’s infrastructure but can’t afford to fall behind on speed and cost either. For shippers evaluating fulfillment partners heading into peak season planning, Stord’s scale and tech stack are worth a closer look — especially as truckload rates put pressure on total landed cost.
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Sponsored by Lanesurf
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Book any load in 10 minutes with an army of carrier reps. Lanesurf calls, texts, and emails carriers simultaneously to book loads instantly. Watch it speak to 96 carriers simultaneously and book a load.
FreightWaves Events
Supply Chain AI Symposium
Past the hype. Join FreightWaves in the heart of Chicago for a high-impact symposium on the real-world application of AI in global supply chains. From seed-stage founders to global enterprise providers — one roof, one conversation about where freight and AI actually meet. Learn about the latest developments and network with the operators building it in real time.
