A trade group is suing to strip California and New York of the power to issue commercial driver's licenses entirely. Plus: $3/mi is now breakeven, DOT wants to rate every carrier, routing guides are falling apart, and more.
Shippers want the same things they’ve always wanted: reliable execution, fair pricing, and a partner who shows up prepared.
"We're basically in the center of the United States. As middle as you can get. Every class one railroad comes through Kansas City. It makes it very unique."
Motor oil shortages are emerging amid supply chain disruptions. Plus: freight prices hit an 8-year high, broker bonds and nuclear verdicts under the microscope, a trucking company pays $5.5M for refusing to hire women, and more.
Happy Monday. Motor oil is facing a shortage caused by supply chain disruptions. We break it down in today's feature.
Plus:
📉 Freight prices just hit an 8-year high. Brokers and carriers have felt the rate surge for weeks. Now it's hitting the data. The LMI Transportation Prices Index hit 95.0 in April, the highest reading since April 2018 and the third-highest since the index launched in 2016. Producer price indexes for both truckload and LTL jumped roughly 20% year over year in the same month. Flatbed rates hit an all-time high going into Roadcheck week, and tender rejections east of the Rockies are cooking. The capacity that left during the freight recession isn't coming back, and the carriers still standing know it. Contract rates that looked reasonable in Q1 are aging poorly.
⚖️ Brokers: $75,000 bond, $36 million verdicts. The Montgomery conversation has focused on carrier vetting, but the number that actually matters is this: the only federal financial requirement for a freight broker is a $75,000 surety bond. That bond doesn't cover personal injury judgments or tort liability. It exists to ensure carriers are paid when a broker defaults on freight payments. Nothing more. Meanwhile, the median nuclear verdict in trucking cases has hit $36 million and is still climbing. A surety bond got brokers through last week's legal environment. This week, contingent auto liability coverage deserves the same attention.
🚚 Trucking company pays $5.5M for refusing to hire women. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued Warren, Michigan-based Central Transport in March, and the company settled within a month. The charge: systematically refusing to hire qualified female truck drivers for at least a decade across terminals nationwide. Women with 15 and 21 years of experience were passed over while less-qualified male drivers got hired the same week. At a Dunbar, West Virginia, terminal, a dispatcher told a female applicant that corporate had instructed him not to hire women. At a Detroit terminal, employees were seen retrieving a woman's application from the trash when she returned to make corrections — her male cousin, who had applied alongside her, had been hired.
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Flatbed rates are at multi-year highs, tender rejections are scorching east of the Rockies, and now a quiet supply crisis is slamming the one consumable every fleet, dealer, and owner-operator buys without a second thought: motor oil and lubricants.
The core issue is Group III base oil. The highly refined feedstock that underpins nearly all modern synthetic and semi-synthetic engine oils, plus a growing share of heavy-duty formulations, transmission fluids, and hydraulic oils. When Group III tightens, the pain spreads fast across the entire finished lubricant chain.
Industry sources report roughly 40-44% of U.S. Group III supply is under severe pressure or offline, driven by Middle East disruptions (refinery outages in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to normal traffic). There are some reports of Group III base oil exceeding $10/gallon. Analysts don’t expect normalization until mid-2027.
Heavy-duty engines increasingly spec synthetic or synthetic-blend oils for extended drains, fuel economy, and emissions compliance. A prolonged squeeze means:
BK30 on X replied to Adam Wingfield's tweet on the matter, saying this had been a big problem for 6 weeks but had eased a bit in the last 2 weeks.
Earlier today, IEA head Fatih Birol warned that global commercial oil inventories are depleting rapidly due to the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and that they have only weeks left.
A U.S. shipping insurance program to encourage traffic has seen zero payouts so far. The lubricant chain has minimal buffer left after years of just-in-time inventory.
This doesn’t have the sexy headlines of autonomous trucks or tariffs, but it runs through the veins of every diesel on the road.
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🚨 $7M theft ring busted. A Florida-based cargo theft ring was accused of moving $7 million in stolen goods across multiple states.
🌎 $84 billion crossed the US-Mexico border in March alone. Cross-border trade hit $84B in March as USMCA renegotiation talks heat up. Mexican exports to the US are up roughly 15% in recent months.
💸 Scammers are charging for free government services. Lawmakers introduced a bill targeting fraudsters who charge truck drivers for free FMCSA and USDOT services. Drivers are being billed for registrations, updates, and filings that cost nothing through official government channels.
🔧 Deferred maintenance is coming due. Trucks that skipped the shop to survive the freight recession are now running hard in the strongest rate environment in years. FreightWaves flags a massive accumulation of deferred maintenance across the industry and post-Roadcheck, with OOS rates running nearly double last year's benchmark.
🚛 DOL targets foreign CDL driver English proficiency. The Department of Labor is cracking down on English-proficiency standards for employers hiring foreign commercial-vehicle drivers. It's not just a driver compliance issue anymore; carriers who hired around the requirement are now in the crosshairs, too.
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A trade group is suing to strip California and New York of the power to issue commercial driver's licenses entirely. Plus: $3/mi is now breakeven, DOT wants to rate every carrier, routing guides are falling apart, and more.
"We're basically in the center of the United States. As middle as you can get. Every class one railroad comes through Kansas City. It makes it very unique."
S&P is cautiously optimistic about the freight recovery, but it still kept RXO's rating below investment grade. Plus: the Strait is set to reopen, Volvo pulls the safety driver, the U.S. goes after cheap trailers, and more.
The World Cup kicked off, and Amazon decided to become forklift certified. Plus: the Fed could spoil freight's party, C.H. Robinson in crosshairs again, the World Cup is a freight problem, and more.
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