Should They Stay or Should They Go

Happy Friday. The White House wants to replace non-domiciled drivers with veterans. California's own crash data tells a very different story about who's actually safer on the road.

Plus:

• Winning Share, Losing Money

• FMCSA Might Finally Test New Carriers

• The Insurance Bill Comes Due

💡 QUESTION OF THE DAY:

California DMV crash data shows non-domiciled CDL holders have ____% fewer fatal crashes than U.S. citizen CDL holders.

🍳 WHAT’S COOKIN’ IN FREIGHT

📈 Winning Share, Losing Money. J.B. Hunt's over-the-road segment posted a Q2 loss even as spot rates jumped as much as 60% year-over-year in June, according to segment lead Josh Phelan. The gap driving the swing: trucking cost per mile is up 48% to 60% since 2019, while contract rates have risen only 5% to 6% over the same period. Phelan called the recovery "early innings" and said fixing contract pricing to match current costs will take another bid season. Driver pay is due for another jump in 2026 and into 2027, and rising financing costs are squeezing small carriers out of fleet growth entirely.

🛡️ FMCSA Might Finally Test New Carriers. FMCSA is reviving a "New Entrant Safety Assurance Process" rule that would require new carriers to pass a proficiency exam before obtaining operating authority, something Congress first directed the agency to consider in 1999, and that a trade group petitioned for again in 2009. The rule could also add English-language proficiency verification to the mix. A supplemental proposal is expected by November, part of a broader crackdown on what regulators call the industry's "front door problem," which already includes a new Motus registration system and the end of self-certification for ELD and training providers.

 🚨The Insurance Bill Comes Due. C.H. Robinson's Q2 earnings call turned into a referendum on its $604 million verdict in Lipe v. Lupus Superior, where a Dallas jury found the driver was effectively a "borrowed employee" of the broker, opening the door to full liability instead of a capped share. CFO Damon Lee confirmed the company is only insured through the end of 2026 and is just beginning talks with its underwriters about renewal terms, with costs expected to rise. TD Cowen warned the verdict could force an insurance charge before the appeal is even resolved.

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The Numbers Behind the Non-Domiciled CDL Fight

At the White House yesterday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and VA Secretary Doug Collins joined President Trump to expand the Freedom Haulers Initiative, a program fast-tracking veterans into commercial driving jobs.

They extended the Military Skills Test Waiver, which lets veterans skip the CDL road test, from one year to two years post-service, and added seven states to the separate Even Exchange program, bringing its total to 34.

The waiver alone has already been used by more than 40,000 veterans to skip the CDL road test. Werner Enterprises pledged to hire 1,400 veterans and military spouses in 2027, a 67% increase to its veteran workforce.

Duffy said the case for veterans was that immigrants "who can't speak our language have no business getting behind the wheel."

This same week, in a twist of comedic timing, California told a federal court that U.S.-citizen CDL holders, as a whole, crash more often than the non-domiciled drivers being pushed out.

The Study Nobody Asked For

California's DMV Research and Development Branch reviewed 2022-2024 crash records for 602,257 U.S. citizen CDL holders against 69,250 non-domiciled holders.

Result: 14.8 crashes per 100 citizen drivers versus 11.9 per 100 non-domiciled drivers — 20% fewer overall, 25% fewer fatal.

California filed the crash data as a part of a friend-of-the-court brief, backed by 21 states plus D.C., urging the D.C. Circuit to block FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL ban.

The brief notes some of the drivers losing eligibility have "decades of flawless records," and says fewer than 50 of California's 65,000 non-domiciled CDL holders could renew under the final rule as written.

The Capacity Crunch Underneath It

Werner CEO Derek Leathers told analysts the driver shakeout is only in the third inning, driven by regulatory pressure around non-domiciled CDLs, English-language proficiency, and cabotage enforcement.

He also pointed to FMCSA's pullback on ELD approvals, which he said is "dismantling shadow capacity and compounding structural supply contractions."

He tied the trend directly to Montgomery, saying that brokers and shippers being more cautious in carrier selection now works in Werner's favor. Werner's adjusted trucking operating margin rose to 4.6% from 2.5% a year earlier.

The Numbers Don't Agree

In its current court filings, FMCSA no longer argues non-domiciled drivers are less safe; the agency now calls its own crash examples "illustrative," not proof, and leans on a narrower claim: states aren't complying with vetting rules.

Twenty-one states plus D.C. oppose FMCSA's non-domiciled CDL ban; 23 states back the ban; and oral arguments are set for September before the D.C. Circuit.

Even the numbers behind each side don't agree: Florida's petition claims illegal immigrants hold "up to a third" of the nation's CDLs, six times higher than FMCSA's own 5% estimate.

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 🌎 AROUND THE FREIGHT WEB

📉 Good Quarter, Bad Timing. ArcBest folded three brands (MoLo, Panther, and ArcBest Technologies) into one, and the one-time cost of doing that wiped out an earnings beat and pushed the stock down over 9%.

💰 Fixing the Mess Behind Fleet Safety Data. Every truck's ELD, dash cam, and GPS tracker outputs data in a different format, and Terminal just raised $20M to normalize it into a single feed that insurers and fleet managers can actually use.

🤝 Rapido Joins Lean Solutions Group. Lean Solutions Group has acquired Rapido Solutions Group, the Chicago-based nearshore staffing firm that places bilingual teams in Mexico for carrier sales and back-office roles at freight brokerages.

⚖️ One in Four, Overweight. A one-day enforcement sweep checked 113 vehicles and found 23% running over the legal weight limit. The single day produced 64 total violations, 6 citations, and put 3 drivers and 9 vehicles out of service.

🏛️ The Fed Held, Barely. The Fed held interest rates steady, but three regional bank presidents dissented in favor of a rate hike, marking the first three-way dissent since 2016. September is now back in play for small carriers already priced out of new equipment.

📍 Truck Goes Missing, Then Comes Back Fully Intact. A California electronics shipment worth $500K deviated off-route overnight, but Overhaul's monitoring team caught it in real time, and its tools fed live tracking straight to state police, leading to a full recovery with no driver in sight.

🎣 THE FREIGHT MAGAZINE

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😂 FREIGHT HUMOR

🎧 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR PODCAST

Co-Founder at Easy Truck Shop, Yuri Zgherea, joined Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski on the FreightCaviar Podcast to discuss why truck shops often sit on millions of dollars in parts simply because they don't track inventory properly, and how a road trip helped him build software around the problems trucking companies actually face, and more.

Watch it on YouTube, or listen to the full episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.