Satisfactory Wasn’t Enough

Happy Friday. A Dallas jury just handed down a $604 million verdict against C.H. Robinson, its carrier, and the driver involved in a fatal 2021 crash. The carrier had a Satisfactory FMCSA rating. The jury still found the broker liable.

Plus:

• Diesel Is 68 Cents From a Record

• 20 Years in Prison for Staging a Crash

• Knight-Swift's Rate Recovery Breaks The Pattern

💡 QUESTION OF THE DAY:

The carrier at the center of the C.H. Robinson verdict had safely completed nearly ___ loads for the broker.

🍳 WHAT’S COOKIN’ IN FREIGHT

🛢️ Diesel Is 68 Cents From a Record. Houthi rebels attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Thursday, putting a second major oil chokepoint under pressure and sending Brent crude up 7.2% to $100.88 a barrel. About 5.4 million barrels of oil and condensate now move through the strait each day as tankers divert away from Hormuz, which normally handles roughly 20 million barrels per day. U.S. diesel has already climbed to $5.13 a gallon, just 68 cents below its June 2022 record, with Gulf Coast prices jumping nearly 40 cents in a single week. Energy analyst Tracy Shuchart expects prices to remain “higher for longer,” saying she does not “see how these issues resolve any time soon.”

🚨 20 Years in Prison for Staging a Crash. Senator Ashley Moody introduced a bill that would make it a crime to intentionally cause a collision with a commercial motor vehicle. Under the bill, a staged crash that causes serious injury or death would carry a mandatory minimum 20-year sentence. Moody's office cited a Louisiana case as the reason for the bill: attorney Danny Patrick Keating pleaded guilty in 2021 to paying a co-conspirator to stage 31 tractor-trailer crashes and then settling 17 of them for roughly $1.5 million. Staged accidents cost insurers an estimated $20 billion a year nationwide, and commercial trucks are especially attractive targets because they carry far higher coverage limits than passenger vehicles.

📈 Knight-Swift's Rate Recovery Breaks The Pattern. Knight-Swift brought in $2.1 billion in Q2 revenue, up 12.6% year over year, with truckload revenue up 2.8% and intermodal jumping 34.9%. CEO Adam Miller said tender rejections have climbed back to levels not seen since 2021, and called the recovery "more supply-driven than demand." Miller pointed to a tightening driver market and the Supreme Court's Montgomery v. Caribe ruling as tailwinds that are further squeezing capacity. Operating income jumped 44.4% to nearly $105 million, and the company expects its truckload operating ratio to keep improving into Q3.

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C.H. Robinson Hit With $604M Verdict

A Dallas jury just handed down a $604 million verdict against C.H. Robinson, motor carrier Lupus Superior, and the carrier’s driver over a 2021 crash that killed three people and injured two others.

C.H. Robinson brokered the Arizona Beverages load to Lupus Superior. While traveling through Mississippi, driver Gorgonio Gonzalez plowed into stopped traffic, triggering a fiery six-vehicle pileup. Gonzalez was also killed.

The jury assigned 45% of the fault to the driver, 32% to Lupus Superior, and 23% to C.H. Robinson. But the percentage split may not be the most important part for freight brokers.

The jury also found that Gonzalez was moving the load for C.H. Robinson’s benefit and was subject to the broker’s control over the details of the job. That finding could support treating the driver as an agent of the broker for liability purposes—despite the fact that he was employed by Lupus Superior.

C.H. Robinson strongly disagreed with the verdict and said it will immediately appeal. Chief Legal Officer Dorothy Capers said Lupus Superior had safely completed nearly 270 loads for the company and held a Satisfactory FMCSA rating when it was selected. That rating remained Satisfactory after a federal review of the crash.

“The carrier is an independent motor carrier, and the driver worked for them. C.H. Robinson does not employ drivers,” Capers said.

Capers added that C.H. Robinson applies multiple layers of safety and risk criteria beyond federal requirements. According to the company, only one serious accident claim is filed for every 500 million miles driven on its customers’ loads.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Roland Christensen called the verdict “a message to C.H. Robinson and the brokering industry that their dangerous practices are not acceptable.”

The plaintiffs presented a different picture. Their attorneys said federal regulators had flagged the carrier for unsafe driving before the crash and argued that the driver had reported feeling too sick to continue. The jury ultimately found all three defendants negligent.

The timing is what makes this verdict especially important.

In May, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that federal trucking law does not automatically block state negligent-selection lawsuits against freight brokers. The Court did not rule that C.H. Robinson was negligent in that case. It ruled that these claims may proceed.

Now the brokerage industry has a real-world example of what can happen after that door was opened.

The immediate takeaway: a Satisfactory FMCSA rating may no longer function as a complete legal shield. Carrier-vetting procedures, safety data, communications with drivers, and the extent of a broker's control over a load may all be examined by a jury.

C.H. Robinson also called on Congress and federal regulators to establish clearer lines of responsibility across the transportation industry, arguing that the “extreme nature” of the verdict makes federal action more urgent.

The verdict is not final, and the appeal could change the result.

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 🌎 AROUND THE FREIGHT WEB

🤖 Driverless Trucks Just Got Cheaper. Aurora launched its second-generation driverless truck this week, starting on its Dallas–Houston route. The new hardware is built to last a million miles at half the cost of the previous version.

🥕 Definitely Not Carrots. A 30-year trucker pleaded guilty after Border Patrol's canine unit found 24 people hidden in his trailer at a Texas checkpoint; the paperwork said it was hauling carrots. He's now facing up to five years in federal prison.

🚩 Beg, Then Threaten. A carrier caught with roughly 10 different placards in the cab didn't dispute the FreightGuard report posted on Carrier411. Instead, they begged the broker to pull it, then threatened them when that didn't work. The broker saved it all on video.

🤖 J.B. Hunt Sells Its AI to Everyone Else Now. J.B. Hunt spun its internal AI freight-execution tool into a standalone company, Overroute, now selling to other carriers and logistics operators.

📊 Rates Won't Budge. Analyst John Ferguson flagged the disconnect: tender rejections and live loads are down, truck volumes are up, and spot rates are holding firm anyway. His read: fuel surcharges, carriers declining to haul at low rates, and the World Cup.

🎣 THE FREIGHT MAGAZINE

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😂 FREIGHT HUMOR

🎧 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR PODCAST

Terminal Manager at Erives Enterprises, Mario Torres, joined Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski on the FreightCaviar Podcast to discuss why cross-border freight remains a steady bet despite tariffs, how Juarez has evolved into a high-tech manufacturing powerhouse, what keeps freight moving across the U.S.-Mexico border, and more.

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