Supply Chain Intelligence Brief

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TRUCKING

Shippers will see rates climb as truckload capacity tightens: Knight Swift

Journal of Commerce Ari Ashe January 22, 2026 $Subscription Based

Truckload shippers should expect their annual contract rates to rise by low-to mid-single-digit percentages due to the likelihood of tighter capacity this year, according to Knight-Swift Transportation. 

Link: Knight Swift Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Presentation  (LTL Data Slides 3,7)

Knight-Swift eyeing margin improvement in 2026

Freight Waves Todd Maiden January 22, 2026

Knight-Swift Transportation missed fourth-quarter expectations but said it is continuing to attack costs and believes it can improve margins in the new year even without a lift in volume and rate. However, the multimodal transportation provider acknowledged it would likely take better demand and pricing to get back to longer-term margin ranges.

Trucking capacity reached a bottom; 2026 just needs better freight demand

Fleet Owner Jeremy Wolfe January 22, 2026

With capacity near its bottom, shippers with new freight demands will have a much lower chance of finding underutilized carriers willing to accept hauls at low rates. “As the year progresses, we would expect that any strengthening in freight demand will turn into stronger utilization and stronger rates,” Vise said. “The question is, when are we going to get that increase in freight demand?”

December Freight Tonnage Inched Up Against Sluggish Market

Transport Topics Connor D. Wolf  January 22, 2026

The ATA For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index increased 0.4% sequentially to 112.9 from 112.4 the previous month. The results also marked a 0.9% increase from the prior year. Not adjusting for seasonality, the numbers increased 4.3% from the prior month to 111.9. The index also showed that tonnage throughout the year was 0.1% above where it was by the end of 2024.

Link: American Trucking Associations ATA Truck Tonnage Index Rose 0.4% in December

Federal Crackdown Pulls Thousands of Foreign Truckers Off Roads

The Wall Street Journal Liz Young January 22, 2026 $Subscription Based

A Trump administration crackdown on foreign truck drivers threatens to take tens of thousands of truckers off the road.

Some of the country’s largest trucking companies say the measures could help reverse a prolonged downturn in the trucking industry by reducing the number of drivers and pushing up rates.

California Adopts Law Enforcing ELP Mandate

Transport Topics Noël Fletcher January 22, 2026

Law enforcement in California has begun enforcing English-language proficiency standards for commercial drivers, a shift made after the state lost $40 million in federal transportation funds amid a battle with the U.S. Department of Transportation over rule compliance issues.

SHIPPERS / 3PLs

Trump administration backing C.H. Robinson on broker liability before SCOTUS

Freight Waves John Kingston January 22, 2026

The list of amicus briefs filed in support of C.H. Robinson in the pending Supreme Court case over broker liability had a surprising entrant: the Trump administration.

Not only that, it’s going beyond just filing a brief (which it did).

INDUSTRY

Transflo Unveils Workflow AI for LTL: The Freight Audit and Invoice Resolution Engine for Brokers and Carriers

Transflo Press Release January 22, 2026

Less-Than-Truckload freight operations are drowning in complexity. With invoice error rates between 30% and 40%, manual exception handling strains back offices and slows cash flow across the supply chain. Workflow AI for LTL delivers a new industry standard: a unified, intelligent platform that automates invoice matching and validation, eliminates manual efforts, and expedites resolution of invoice exceptions for both brokers and carriers. 

Port of Los Angeles forging ahead with aggressive construction program

Journal of Commerce Bill Mongelluzzo January 22, 2026 $Subscription Based

The Port of Los Angeles will expand two existing container terminals and develop an 89-acre chassis operations facility, it announced Thursday. That’s in addition to building a new 200-acre container terminal, a project that was announced last year.

POLA posts strong 2025 cargo performance, highlights major infrastructure push for future growth

Logistics Management Jeff Berman January 22, 2026

For calendar year 2025, POLA handled 10.2 million TEU (Twenty-Foot Equivalent) TEU containers, marking the third highest total in the port’s 118 years of operation, and also only the third year in which total yearly volume topped the 10 million TEU mark. The 2025 tally was off 0.56% annually.

Related: Freight Waves Port of Los Angeles tops 10M containers for third time

December intermodal volumes see slight decline, while CY 2025 volumes sees annual growth, reports IANA

Logistics Management Jeff Berman January 22, 2026

Trailers, at 44,980, were down 14.6% annually, faring better than November’s 26.9% annual decrease. Domestic containers, at 742,647, rose 4.3% annually, and all domestic equipment, which is comprised of trailers and domestic containers, at 787,627, headed up 3.0%. ISO, or international containers, at 738,453, were off 3.1% annually.

TECHNOLOGY

We Have No Idea How to Code. So We Got Claude to Code This Article for Us.

The Wall Street Journal Joanna Stern and Ben Cohen January 23, 2026 $Subscription Based

This is a breakout moment for Anthropic’s coding tool, which has spread far beyond the tech nerds of Silicon Valley to normies everywhere. Not since OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022 have so many people become so obsessed with an artificial-intelligence product.

Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft

The Verge Tom Warren January 22, 2026

Developers have been comparing the strengths and weaknesses of Anthropic’s Claude Code, Anysphere’s Cursor, and Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot for months now, looking for a winner. While no individual AI coding tool manages to be the best at every task that software developers do each day, Claude Code is increasingly coming out on top for its ease of use, both for developers and nontechnical users.

Are AI agents ready for the workplace? A new benchmark raises doubts.

TechCrunch Russell Brandom January 22, 2026

But despite the huge progress made by foundation models, the change in knowledge work has been slow to arrive. Models have mastered in-depth research and agentic planning, but for whatever reason, most white-collar work has been relatively unaffected.

According to Mercor CEO Brendan Foody, who worked on the paper, the models’ biggest stumbling point was tracking down information across multiple domains — something that’s integral to most of the knowledge work performed by humans.

SUSTAINABILITY / SAFETY / SECURITY

Why Fleets Are Learning More From Near Misses Than Crashes

Supply Chain 24/7 January 22, 2026

The report shows that for every one collision, fleets saw seven near-collisions, defined as situations where something almost went wrong but didn’t result in real damage. That pattern suggests fleets can now see danger early and act before a crash happens.

Link: Motive 2026 Motive AI Road Safety Report.

Cargo Theft Losses Jump 60% in 2025 as Criminals Target Higher-Value Freight

Heavy Duty Trucking Deborah Lockridge January 22, 2026

According to new analysis from Verisk CargoNet, estimated cargo theft losses surged to nearly $725 million last year. That is a 60% increase from 2024. In comparison, confirmed cargo theft incidents rose 18%, climbing from 2,243 to 2,646.

Link: Verisk Cargo Theft Losses Surge to Estimated $725 Million in 2025, Verisk CargoNet Analysis Reveals

ATA Outlines Threat of Fraudulent CDL Mills

Transport Topics Eugene Mulero January 22, 2026

During a Jan. 21 hearing on Capitol Hill, ATA’s chief executive pointed to legislative and administrative efforts that would further enhance guidelines for the licensing of commercial drivers. The safety of motorists and commercial drivers is the group’s operating principle.

Link: The U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight Embedded Threats: Foreign Ownership, Hidden Hardware, and Licensing Failures in America’s Transportation Systems

Most companies are staying the course on ESG — just talking about it less

ESG Dive Zoya Mirza January 22, 2026

Ben Carr, a director at public relations and communications agency MHP Group, told ESG Dive that most companies are “holding the course on sustainability and continuing to innovate,” and incorporating strategic changes within business operations. Carr advises clients on sustainability and corporate messaging.

BUSINESS AND THE ECONOMY

U.S. economy grew 4.4% in the third quarter, GDP shows. It showed little sign of slowing.

MarketWatch Jeffry Bartash January 22, 2026

The economy expanded at zippy 4.4% annual pace in the third quarter of 2025, an updated estimate showed, to keep the U.S. on track to score the fifth straight year of above-average growth.

Link: Bureau of Economic Analysis Gross Domestic Product

On the move: U.S. migration patterns

Bank of America Institute Joe Wadford January 22, 2026

• Fewer Americans are packing up each year, yet when they do move, they overwhelmingly stay in their home region, according to Bank of America account data. The big story isn’t a national reshuffle — it’s people trading one nearby city for another that fits their budget and lifestyle a little better.
• Austin and Denver keep pulling in newcomers, especially from other Sunbelt metros, while LA, NYC, and Miami continue to see more people heading for cheaper pastures. Affordability and climate remain the two biggest magnets — and the two biggest push factors.

INDUSTRY EVENTS

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