🎣 Carriers Are Done Being Nice

TGIF. Q1 earnings season is in full swing, and every major carrier is telling the same story: ugly quarter, better exit rate, and rates are moving.

Plus:

• Cabless Truck. No Driver. $24M.
• Non-Dom CDLs Are Back?
• CSX Profits Up 26%, One Eye on Rail Merger

Correction: Ryan Transportation and Spot Inc. were erroneously placed in the 2026 New Faces section of Wednesday's brokerage rankings feature. To be clear, both are well-established brokerages that have appeared on the list for multiple consecutive years. We regret the error.

🍳 What's Cookin' In Freight

🤖 Humble's Cabless Autonomous Truck. Humble Robotics just emerged from stealth with a $24 million seed round and a fully electric, cabless autonomous freight vehicle called the Humble Hauler, designed from the ground up for a world without drivers. Unlike Aurora and Kodiak, which operate hub-to-hub and hand off to human drivers at city limits, Humble is going all the way to the loading dock. Whether Humble's $24M is enough to prove it out against Aurora's 250,000 driverless miles is the real question, but the cab was always for the human. Remove the human, remove the cab.

🚨 Non-Dom CDLs Are Back? Overdrive's Alex Lockie posted a story Thursday that caught the trucking internet off guard: the U.S. State Department has reversed its ban on visas for commercial truck drivers, and nine states previously put on enforcement pause, including Texas, Minnesota, and New Jersey, have been recertified to issue non-domiciled CDLs again. North Dakota issued 132 Class A CDLs in just 10 days after getting cleared. But this isn't a rollback. The old loophole of getting a CDL with just an Employment Authorization Document and no verified driving history is gone. Now only H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 visa holders qualify, CDLs are capped at one year, and all transactions must be done in person. FMCSA estimates the eligible pool drops from roughly 200,000 non-dom CDL holders to about 6,000 nationwide.

🚂 CSX Posted a 26% Profit Jump and Watches Its Back. CSX earned $807 million in Q1 2026, up from $646 million a year ago, hauling 3% more shipments while cutting expenses 6% to $2.2 billion. Intermodal volume led the way, up 6%, with CSX citing tighter trucking supply and direct truck conversion as the driver. The railroad raised its full-year outlook to mid-single digit revenue growth. But on the earnings call, analysts pressed CEO Steve Angel directly on what happens to CSX if the UP-NS merger creates a coast-to-coast railroad controlling roughly 43% of U.S. rail freight. Angel's answer: stay focused, keep executing, mergers take years.

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Knight-Swift Lost Money Last Quarter. Here's Why Brokers Should Be Excited.

Knight-Swift just posted a net loss of $1.3 million for Q1 2026. Adjusted EPS came in at $0.09, a 64% miss against the original Wall Street consensus of $0.25, before the company pre-announced a guidance cut last week.

And that's good news for the freight market. Here's why.