🎣 The End is Nigh

FreightCaviar Weekly Recap. From prestigious trucking companies shutting down, to the current CDL purge, here are this week’s most talked-about freight stories.

😔 Will It Get Any Better?

A post on r/FreightBrokers, a broker shared what amounted to a brutal week, a situation many in today’s market can relate to. Volatility is the norm right now, not the exception.

A few pieces of advice to weather the storm:

• Work niche lanes where competition is thinner and consistency is easier to build.
• Develop long-term carrier and shipper relationships rather than chasing one-off opportunities. Reliable partners can steady your book when the market swings.
• Focus on rapport and repeat touchpoints. Even small wins can grow into bigger loads once trust develops.
• Stay patient. The market is uneven and will likely remain that way — surviving the downturn positions you to benefit when conditions improve.

Tough weeks happen, but strategic focus and steady relationship-building are what carry brokers through this turbulent cycle.

Together With Augment

The fastest-growing brokerages aren’t adding overhead—they’re adding AI with Augie.

Augie is the AI teammate that automates freight’s daily chaos—building, booking, tracking, collecting, repeating—and learns from every load. Augie connects across every workflow and system so your team can focus on growth, not grind.

Built for logistics by Augment, Augie helps ambitious brokerages move faster, scale smarter, and become harder to catch.

😔 A Legacy Comes To An End

A 70-year legacy came to an end as James R. Smith Trucking, a 50-truck family fleet in Alabama, shut down operations after severe financial strain. The closure, marked by aging equipment, rising costs, and a freight market oversaturated with capacity, reflects current wave of trucking failures hitting long-established carriers.

50 truck fleet shuts down

The closure of James R. Smith Trucking, Inc., a family-owned operation based in Cullman, Alabama, that marked its 70th year in 2025, underscores the dire

FreightWavesCraig Fuller, CEO at FreightWaves

This follows our report last week on 10 Roads Express, one of USPS’s largest haulers with more than 2,400 power units and 2,600 drivers, will shut down by January 30, 2026 after a 70% revenue drop tied to USPS shifting freight to brokers and in-house operations.

Together, these closures reflect a market where even large, established carriers are struggling to survive.

🎣 10 Roads Express Shutting Down

Plus: truck hangs off WV bridge, DOT going after CDL schools, and Lanesurf Emergences

FreightCaviarAdriana Pulley

💥 FreightCaviar Story of the Week: 2026 Freight Import Chaos

FreightCaviar’s feature this week looks at why 2026 may be one of the most unpredictable import years in recent memory. President Trump signaled he may let USMCA expire or push for a full renegotiation, a remark that immediately rattled sectors tied to the $1.7 trillion North American trade corridor. Any disruption to USMCA would hit freight quickly through new tariffs, shifting Mexico–U.S. volumes, and potential pull-forward surges.

Global pressures add to the uncertainty. A reset of Suez Canal routing could create fresh congestion and timing swings as carriers unwind a year of detours around Africa, while U.S.–China trade talks offer optimism without clarity. The result: volatility across ports, cross-border flows, and inland trucking networks.

If you move imports, 2026 won’t be a steady year, and preparing now will matter.

Read the full breakdown here.

Together With Epay Manager

Solvera Global Logistics managed +67% invoice growth seamlessly with Epay without having to add back-office headcount - and you could too.

Epay Manager’s latest case study highlights the impressive growth of Solvera Global Logistics throughout a difficult freight market as they onboarded to the Epay platform.

Notable KPI improvements:

• +67% invoice growth with no added headcount
• -4 days average DTI (Days to Invoice)
• -60 days average DSO (Days Sales Outstanding)
• -19 days average Invoice Dispute Resolution

🚨 The CDL Purge

A LinkedIn post from Matthew Leffler, The Armchair Attorney, offered a concise but impactful rundown of key regulatory shifts reshaping trucking. FMCSA has reinstated strict English Language Proficiency enforcement, placing non-compliant drivers out of service during roadside checks. The agency also moved to tighten non-domiciled CDL issuance after widespread state-level failures, though a federal court has temporarily paused enforcement.

Leffler highlighted FMCSA’s aggressive purge of fraudulent training schools, with more than 3,000 providers removed amid investigations into invalid CDLs, as well as stepped-up oversight of ELDs, with a record number of devices revoked this year. His roundup underscores a regulatory climate that is tightening across all fronts: licensing, training, and compliance, with more changes expected into 2026.

MEME OF THE WEEK

🎣 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR CORNER

• FreightCaviar Podcast: Is technology enough to fight freight fraud? What can the industry expect in the year ahead? OTR Solutions President Clayton Griffin answers your biggest questions. Catch the episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
• Manifest 2026: We're proud to be an Official Partner of Manifest: The Future of Supply Chain & Logistics conference, the premier event shaping what's next in freight and logistics. Save $200 on the current price with our link.