It's Fine. Everything Is Fine.

Happy Hump Day. The national average diesel price jumped to $5.652 a gallon this week, up nearly 20 cents from last week, and dry van spot rates have now fallen for seven straight weeks.

Plus:

• Fewer Carriers Are Going Under

• Trade War Escalates

• Descartes Buys Tai

💡 QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Fuel now makes up about ___% of a motor carrier's cost per mile, the highest share since before the pandemic.

🍳 WHAT’S COOKIN’ IN FREIGHT

💰 Fewer Carriers Are Going Under. BMO, one of the largest banks lending to trucking companies, says fewer of its loans are going bad. Loans already in trouble dropped to CA$440 million ($318 million in U.S. dollars) this quarter, down from $416 million in U.S. dollars three months ago, and the bank's estimate of future losses fell to roughly $11 million, the lowest since early 2023. Write-offs stayed roughly flat at $17.3 million. BMO's trucking loan book still totals about $9.2 billion, but new loans shrank to just $8 million this quarter from $82 million last quarter as BMO prepares to sell the business to private equity firm Stonepeak.

⚔️ Trade War Escalates. President Trump said Monday he will raise tariffs on Canadian vehicles and auto parts from 25 to 50 percent starting January 1, 2027. Medium- and heavy-duty trucks were among the sticking points that killed last week's U.S.-Canada trade talks. Canada's ambassador, Mark Wiseman, said Ottawa wanted those trucks included in tariff relief, and Washington refused. United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain specifically flagged "232 tariffs on auto and heavy truck," and the Canadian Trucking Alliance warned of direct hits to freight volumes and carrier costs. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose province is Canada's auto and steel hub, called Trump "a bully" this week.

🤝 Descartes Buys Tai. Descartes Systems Group acquired freight brokerage TMS provider Tai Software for $100 million, adding another piece to its growing freight-tech empire. Descartes already owns MacroPoint and MyCarrierPortal (MCP). Adding Tai means Descartes can now touch much of a brokered load’s lifecycle—from vetting carriers to booking, execution, and tracking—while collecting valuable data for AI and automation. Descartes generated $729 million in revenue in its latest full fiscal year, which ended Jan. 31, 2026, and is valued at roughly $6.7 billion. The bigger picture: Descartes is quietly assembling one of freight brokerage’s most comprehensive technology stacks.

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The Costs Are Stacking Up

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), part of the Department of Energy, reported that the weekly retail diesel price rose 19.8 cents to $5.652 a gallon effective Monday, breaking the $5.643 high set April 6, five weeks into the Iran war.

That puts diesel within 15.8 cents of its all-time record, $5.810 a gallon, set in June 2022, the highest weekly national average in EIA data going back to 1994.

Ohio, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska and Minnesota posted the sharpest weekly jumps, up 24 to 31 cents apiece, according to Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy's head of petroleum analysis.

Fuel now makes up about 21 percent of a motor carrier's cost per mile, up from roughly 13 percent at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Corey Klujsza, RXO's VP of Pricing and Procurement.

RXO's Chief Strategy Officer, Jared Weisfeld, says carrier operating costs excluding fuel are already running 29 percent above the prior market peak.

Lubricant Prices Are Climbing Too

Diesel is not the only line item moving. Lubricant base-stock prices are up 126 percent since January, according to Producer Price Index data, which is the largest six-month increase on record.

Finished lubricant prices have only risen 16 percent so far, meaning manufacturers have not yet passed most of that increase on to fleets. On a narrower, shop-level measure, fleets are already seeing 8 to 10 percent increases in engine oil costs this year, according to CCJ.

Seven Weeks of Rate Drops Aren't Helping

Broker-posted spot rates fell 2.7 cents a mile for the week ending Aug. 21, to their lowest level since early April, according to FTR and Truckstop.com, even as fuel costs climbed nearly 88 cents over six weeks.

Dry van rates have now dropped for seven straight weeks. Fuel-adjusted spot rates ran 40 to 50 percent above 2025 levels during the spring diesel spike; last week the gap had narrowed to 37 percent, the softest comparison since the end of April.

Why Diesel Alone Is Spiking

Using AAA's daily average, a separate tracking series from the EIA figure above, retail diesel hit $5.62 a gallon Tuesday, up from $5.28 a month earlier, while gasoline barely moved, from $4.11 to $4.10 over the same stretch.

FreightWaves ties the gap to Ukrainian strikes on Russian diesel refineries, Middle East crude that isn't reaching the market due to the war, and EV-driven softness in global gasoline demand.

Ultra-low-sulfur diesel futures fell 22.7 cents Monday after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration will lean on economic pressure against Iran rather than renewed military action.

Retail prices typically take several days to catch up to futures moves, meaning this week's record-testing EIA print does not yet reflect Monday's pullback.

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 🌎 AROUND THE FREIGHT WEB

🏅 The Best Freight Software, By Emerge, Is Emerge. The freight brokerage published its own "best freight quoting software for shippers" ranking this week, disclosed the conflict of interest up front, and put itself in first place anyway.

🤖 $200 Million Just Landed on Driverless Freight. Qatar's sovereign wealth fund led the investment in Gatik, which has completed 85,000 driverless deliveries for customers including PepsiCo and Loblaw.

🕯️ Kuehne + Nagel's Longtime Owner Dies at 89. Klaus-Michael Kühne, the majority owner of Kuehne + Nagel and Germany's wealthiest individual, died Monday in Switzerland.

🚛 2027 Truck Forecast Just Got Cut. Mobility Global cut its 2027 Class 8 production forecast 9.7% to 161,117 trucks, warning that the supply chain may struggle to scale fast enough despite strengthening orders.

🎬 The DOT Secretary Had a Rough Sunday Night. John Oliver spent a chunk of Last Week Tonight mocking Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's new YouTube travel series, and dug up his 1990s "Real World" past along the way.

🧊 South Korea's Arctic Shortcut Has a Russian Catch. PanStar's container ship is testing an Arctic route this week that could save 10 days compared with the standard Suez route, but the path runs through Russian waters and requires Moscow's permission.

🎣 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR CORNER

Catch the Epay Manager x FreightCaviar live event “Scaling Like a GOAT” Thursday, August 27th, at 12 PM EST/11 AM CST over on LinkedIn.

Sign up here.

😂 FREIGHT HUMOR

FreightCaviar has partnered with Alpha Staffing & Recruiting, a boutique logistics staffing and recruiting firm, to provide you with available roles in our industry. Click the role to learn more and apply.

• Driver Recruiter

• Dispatcher

• Human Resources Specialist

🎧 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR PODCAST

Lev Krasnopolskiy, President of Alpha Staffing and Recruiting Inc, and Co-Founder of Everest Transportation Systems, joined Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski on the FreightCaviar Podcast to discuss how he co-founded Everest and used offshore talent in Ukraine to help the brokerage compete and scale. He also explains why he believes freight offshoring isn’t going away, shares his views on offshore fraud, and discusses what it takes to build a global logistics workforce.

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