Deaths Are Trending Down

Happy Hump Day. Crash deaths fell the same year Washington banned the drivers it blamed. We break it down in today’s feature.

Plus:

• Tesla Semi Kills Two in Nevada Crash

• Yellow Dodges the Bill for 22,000 Layoffs

• C.H. Robinson Dropped from Turnpike Lawsuit

🍳 What's Cookin' In Freight

🚛 Tesla Semi Kills Two in Nevada Crash. A Tesla Semi struck two passenger vehicles stopped at the intersection of Highway 50 and Traditions Parkway in Dayton, Nevada, shortly after 7 a.m. on June 28, killing two people and critically injuring a third. The Lyon County Sheriff's Office said preliminary statements at the scene suggest the semi's driver may have fallen asleep. The crash happened in northern Nevada, the same region as Tesla's Gigafactory, where the company began volume production of the Semi in April. Nevada Highway Patrol is investigating and hasn't released the cause or the names of those killed.

💸 Yellow Dodges the Bill for 22,000 Layoffs. A federal district court in Delaware ruled on June 29th that bankrupt Yellow Corp. owes nothing to the 22,000 union workers it laid off with almost no warning, exactly three years ago. The WARN Act normally requires 60 days' notice. The court said Yellow didn't have to give it. The judge agreed Yellow was a "faltering company" winding down, not an operating business, when it cut 3,500 nonunion staff and then 22,000 Teamsters over two days in July 2023. Bankruptcy followed that August. Yellow has long argued that a Teamsters strike notice over $50 million in missed contributions is what finished it off.

⚖️ C.H. Robinson Dropped from Turnpike Lawsuit. C.H. Robinson has been removed from the wrongful-death lawsuit over the August 2025 Florida Turnpike crash, in which driver Harjinder Singh made an illegal U-turn and a minivan carrying three people underrode his trailer, killing all three. The lawsuit had accused C.H. Robinson of negligently selecting White Hawk Carriers despite the carrier's documented safety violations in FMCSA data. The victim's estate filed the notice on June 26, dropping C.H. Robinson without prejudice. C.H. Robinson says it never brokered the load — White Hawk was blocked in its system and hadn't hauled for it since January 2024. The case continues against Singh, White Hawk, and its manager, with Singh facing three counts of vehicular homicide.

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Down Isn't the Same as Fixed

Truck crash deaths are trending down, but the roads still aren't safe, according to NHTSA's latest data.

• 5,340 people died in crashes involving large trucks in 2024

• That's down 2.5% from 5,478 in 2023

• And down further from 5,959 in 2022

• Early 2025 estimates show total road fatalities dropping another 6.7%

• Still, 161,201 people were hurt in truck crashes in 2024

Both drops landed in the exact stretch Washington spent building its case that non-domiciled CDL holders were a safety emergency.

That case produced a final rule on February 13, 2026, effective March 16, that cut eligibility to H-2A, H-2B, and E-2 visa holders and killed roughly 194,000 of the estimated 200,000 non-domiciled CDLs in circulation.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called it closing a loophole that let "dangerous foreign drivers" abuse the system. The rule cited 17 fatal crashes and 30 deaths involving non-domiciled drivers in 2025.

FMCSA's own data shows non-domiciled holders make up about 5% of CDL holders and roughly 0.2% of fatal crashes. The agency conceded in its own rulemaking that it has no rigorous evidence tying a driver's home country to crash risk.

The D.C. Circuit noticed the gap too, before FMCSA landed on a case it could actually win: not that these drivers crash more, but that states couldn't verify their records and issued licenses they had no legal basis to issue.

National crash data was never built to answer the question everyone's fighting over. It doesn't sort by domicile, so nobody, not FMCSA, not the plaintiffs, not the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, can point to it and prove their side.

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Highway CEO Jordan Graft joined Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski on the FreightCaviar podcast to talk about where freight is headed and what brokers and carriers need to be doing now.

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 🌎 Around the Freight Web

🏔️ Vermont Will Fine You $10K for Trying This Pass. Smugglers Notch on Route 108 is so tight that the state has posted warning signs, installed physical obstacles, and is now imposing a $10,000 fine on truckers.

📈 Consumers Spend More as Inflation Hits a 3-Year High. More spending means more freight to move, but inflation just hit a three-year high, and futures traders now expect a Fed rate hike by year-end, raising borrowing costs for carriers and brokers.

📦 Cargo Losses at Sea Nearly Tripled Last Year. 1,478 containers were lost at sea in 2025, according to a new World Shipping Council report, with severe weather and onboard fires the main culprits.

🚨 California Highway Patrol Finds $2.2M in Stolen Freight. A search warrant at an Anaheim warehouse turned up more than $2.2 million in allegedly stolen cargo, including roughly 22,000 boxes of TaylorMade golf balls, Meta server switches, and 29 pallets of hobby merchandise.

⛽ Diesel Drops for the Eighth Straight Week. The national average fell another 16 cents to $4.67 a gallon for the week of June 29, down nearly 40 cents in just two weeks to its lowest since mid-March.

🎣 The FreightCaviar Corner

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🎧 The FreightCaviar Podcast: Listen to this week's episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch the interview on YouTube.

Freight Humor

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