🎣 Freight X Goes Digging

Happy Thursday. A deadly crash in Lodi, the Supreme Court ruling, a 1,000-page bill, and a Reddit thread were trending across freight's social channels this week.

Trending on X: Deadly Lodi Crash Involving Amritsar Trans Inc Goes Viral

A fatal hit-and-run crash on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, around 12:20 p.m. on northbound Highway 99 in Lodi, CA, has freight X digging deep. Manvir Singh, a 24-year-old Indian national who entered illegally in 2023 and got a CA CDL in 2025, faces vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and hit-and-run charges after allegedly killing two people and fleeing on foot.

• The rig is tied to Amritsar Trans Inc (USDOT 3369665, MC-1080161) out of Manteca, CA — a small fleet (5 power units) linked to Baljeet Singh. A Swift-branded trailer was at the scene.
• Swift replied: “The Swift trailer was being hauled by a third-party motor carrier, & the driver in question was not an employee of Swift Transportation.”
• No safety rating on file. Limited inspections and zero prior reportable crashes listed for the carrier.

Broker vetting questions exploded: Who booked the load, and what checks were done? With the Montgomery v. Caribe ruling last week, you can be sure that any broker involved in booking this load will be questioned on exactly how they vetted this carrier.

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Trending on LinkedIn: Montgomery v. Caribe Isn't the End of Brokerage

Matt Silver, CEO & Co-founder of Cargado, posted his take on the Supreme Court's Montgomery v. Caribe ruling this week. His read: this isn't a liability bomb, it's a process mandate.

• The shift isn't "brokers are liable for everything." It's "show me your process." Carrier selection now has to be defensible, not just documented.
• "We checked SAFER" is no longer enough. The question is what you checked, when you checked it, what you saw, and why the decision was reasonable.
• His prediction: this crushes sloppy brokers, not small brokers. Carriers with real compliance operations win more freight.
• WhatsApp is now a legal liability.

The comment section largely agreed. The brokers who are doing it right are mostly unbothered. The ones cutting corners on carrier vetting now have a real problem.

Trending on Reddit: Nobody Actually Knows If Their Carrier Is Safe

The Armchair Attorney posted a simple question on r/FreightBrokers this week in the wake of Montgomery v. Caribe: how do you actually know if a motor carrier is safe? He answered it himself with an image macro: "THAT'S THE NEAT PART. YOU DON'T."

• Only about 6% of eligible carriers have a DOT safety rating. The other 94% are unrated, which doesn't mean unsafe; it just means the DOT hasn't had a reason to look at them yet.
• Carriers with authority since 1996 and 1997 chimed in to confirm they're still unrated after decades of clean operation.
• One carrier pointed out the catch-22: if brokers start demanding driver qualification files and maintenance records for every load, carriers will price that friction into their rates. "Ask for all that shit and watch your load sit on the dock."
• The most upvoted practical answer: request CSA scores directly from the carrier's safety/compliance team, since they're not public, but carriers can share them.

The question the ruling created doesn't yet have a clear answer. What counts as reasonable vetting is going to get decided in courtrooms, not compliance manuals.

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Trending on YouTube: The 1,000-Page Bill Nobody Is Talking About

We covered the Build America 250 Act in Wednesday's newsletter, but Trucking Made Successful put out a video breakdown that hit 30,000 views in three days, which tells you the carrier side of the audience is paying close attention.

• Predatory lease purchase agreements would require carriers to disclose how many drivers actually complete the lease term. That number, if carriers are forced to be honest about it, is going to be ugly.
• Drivers would be legally entitled to restroom access at any facility where they deliver or wait to be loaded. The comment section was split between "finally" and "they'll just put a disgusting porta-potty outside and call it done."
• Hair testing gets a one-year clock for DOT to develop guidelines. In one comparison of 17 drivers who passed a urine test, 7 failed a hair test the same day. 41% miss rate on the current federally required method.

The bill markup is this morning. We'll see what comes out of it.

Freight Meme of the Week