THE DAILY

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

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The Daily

Columbus corridor probe maps 195 carriers, four fatal crashes, 97 never inspected

A FreightWaves investigation along one stretch of road in Columbus, Ohio mapped 195 active motor carriers clustered into 19 address groups, with 29 of them sharing a single building.

Working off a Daily Wire investigation into Ohio Medicaid fraud, FreightWaves’ Rob Carpenter pulled FMCSA registration data and built carrier-network maps for the East Dublin Granville Road corridor. The cluster at 2700 East Dublin Granville Road alone houses 29 active USDOT carriers, each in a different suite. Five of those registrations reference variants of suite 300 — Suite 300, Suite 300F, Unit 300P, Unit 300U, Suite 300D — under different individuals. The pattern repeats down the road: 15 carriers at 1933 East Dublin Granville, nine at 2021, nine at 5900 Roche Drive.

The safety record is uglier than the address density. Across the 98 corridor carriers with inspection history, FreightWaves logged 1,333 inspections, 2,457 violations, 275 reportable crashes, four fatal crashes and 74 injury crashes. Columbus Logistics Inc accounts for 46 crashes by itself. Smart Truck Express LLC posted 23 crashes and 10 injuries in 10 inspections, drew a $16,290 federal fine for failing to drug-test a driver after a wreck and carries a TEA crash-prediction score of 50. Leep Trucking LLC has one inspection on file. That single stop returned a 100% out-of-service rate. The carrier also has 15 crashes, including one fatality.

The other 97 corridor carriers have never been inspected. They hold active USDOT numbers and, in some cases, MC authority, but no roadside enforcement record exists. Some report zero power units. Some report zero drivers. Some report both. "Dormant USDOT numbers are a known component of the reincarnation cycle," Carpenter wrote, citing the chameleon-carrier pattern he’s covered on CBS’ "60 Minutes." Federal investigators look for it. FMCSA’s current systems do not flag it automatically.

The shipper exposure is the part every broker and procurement leader should read twice. The world’s largest retailer appears in 175 inspections across 44 corridor carriers, with a 20.6% out-of-service rate and 282 violations. Manaal Trucking LLC alone hauled freight for that retailer 25 times, was placed out of service in eight of those stops and settled a $21,770 enforcement action. According to former FMCSA chief safety officer Jack Van Steenburg, only about 19,000 of roughly 750,000 carriers with active authority hold a satisfactory safety rating — about 3%. Total federal penalties across seven enforcement cases on the corridor: $63,330. Less than the cost of one tractor-trailer.

So What? If your procurement screen still ends at "satisfactory rating," you’re hiring out of the same 97% pool the corridor uses. Cross-reference VIN history, principal and phone-number overlap, address density and OOS rate against your active carrier list before the next bid cycle. The Caribe Transport case at the Supreme Court will decide how much of this risk lands on the broker. Operate as if it already does.

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Top Stories

April LMI logs record gap between freight capacity and prices

The Logistics Managers’ Index hit a 67-point spread between transportation capacity and pricing in April — the widest in the index’s nearly 10-year history. Capacity contracted at a 28.4 reading, the second-fastest decline ever recorded behind September 2020. Pricing jumped 5.6 points to 95. "We have never before tracked the transportation metric getting simultaneously tighter or more expensive," the LMI report said, citing the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting fuel-cost surge. Logistics managers expect the squeeze to persist, projecting 33.2 for capacity, 74.5 for utilization and 93.9 for pricing over the next 12 months.

So What? Bid cycles built on 2025 contract math are obsolete. Utilization is at the highest reading since November 2021 and upstream firms are running 21 points hotter than retailers. Lock long-haul capacity now or pay spot the rest of the quarter.

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Missile strike on CMA CGM ship halts U.S. naval escorts in Hormuz

The 2,800-TEU CMA CGM San Antonio took a missile hit while transiting the Strait of Hormuz from Dubai. The crew was injured and evacuated, and CMA CGM said it is monitoring the situation. Reports indicate the Malta-flagged ship had switched off its identification system before transit. Within hours, President Donald Trump announced on social media that the U.S. would pause Project Freedom merchant-ship escorts to pursue negotiations with Iran. The reversal landed the same day Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the escort program "a powerful red, white and blue dome over the strait."

So What? The escort pause means insurance markets reprice Gulf transit overnight. Container lines that resumed Hormuz rotations after the April ceasefire will rerun the math on Cape diversions and accessorial surcharges. Boxes booked into Jebel Ali this month should be expected to roll, rebook or rebill.

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Diesel jumps 28.9 cents toward postwar high as S&P warns of reckoning

The DOE/EIA benchmark retail diesel price surged 28.9 cents/gallon to $5.64, three-tenths of a cent below the postwar high set April 6. Ultra-low-sulfur futures for June delivery climbed 27.8 cents in five sessions to $4.0723 as the early-April ceasefire frayed and Strait of Hormuz blockages persisted. S&P Global Energy is calling the underlying setup unprecedented: a record decline in global crude inventories alongside the largest demand drop since COVID. "That the cumulative supply loss is now approaching 1 billion barrels is a staggering figure that inventories cannot cover indefinitely," said Jim Burkhard, S&P Global Energy’s vice president and global head of crude oil research. "An inevitable market reckoning is coming."

So What? Even if the strait reopens tomorrow, S&P estimates seven months minimum to restore upstream production. Fuel surcharges set off this week’s settle will not unwind on schedule. Model Q3 transportation costs against a $5+ floor and budget for another retail leg up if Hormuz stays closed.

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Amazon opens supply chain network, threatens intermodal incumbents

Amazon launched Amazon Supply Chain Services, opening its freight, distribution, fulfillment and parcel network to third-party shippers. Procter & Gamble, 3M, Lands’ End and American Eagle Outfitters are already on the platform. Amazon’s domestic container fleet now stands at 24,000 boxes — fourth-largest in the country, behind J.B. Hunt, Hub Group and Schneider — up from 5,000 in 2022. Class I rails see a near-term tailwind, with BNSF the likely first beneficiary on the Transcon. The blow lands on the intermodal marketing companies. "I see them becoming a full-fledged channel competing with the existing big dogs," said intermodal analyst Larry Gross. "They bring scale, just like they did with Amazon Web Services and their parcel network."

So What? If ASCS scales the way AWS did, J.B. Hunt, Hub Group, Schneider Intermodal and Knight-Swift face a structurally advantaged competitor with captive demand and an integrated fulfillment bundle. The data layer also weakens the operational case for the UP-NS merger before the STB.

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From Our Library

What We’re Watching

▸ Hormuz escort policy after the CMA CGM strike. Trump’s pause on Project Freedom resets risk pricing for every box moving through the strait. Watch for war-risk insurance updates and CMA CGM’s next surcharge action this week.

▸ FMCSA’s MOTUS rollout and the corridor playbook. Administrator Derek Barrs has flagged identity verification and automated cross-referencing as the system’s first wins. Whether MOTUS catches 29 carriers in one suite cluster will tell you how much the registration backbone is actually changing.

▸ Class I response to ASCS. BNSF gets the first benefit on the Transcon, but Norfolk Southern and CSX are the longer-term Amazon-volume question. Watch their Q2 intermodal commentary for the first formal acknowledgment that ASCS is now a customer of consequence, not just a forecast.

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

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