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Gone Before the Good Times

The Caviar Desk · June 5, 2026 · 6 min read

Happy Friday. The freight boom arrived. For some carriers, it arrived too late. We explain why in today's feature.

Plus:

Real Gouda Fellas
Satisfactory Doesn't Mean Safe
LTL Is Waking Up

💡

Question of the Day:

At its current pace, it would take FMCSA ______ years to rate every registered carrier in the US.

Top Lane Movers, Powered By Triumph

🍳 What's Cookin' In Freight

Via a NY Post screenshot shared on Danielle Chaffin's X.

🚨 Real Gouda Fellas. Eight people were just indicted for running a highly sophisticated cargo theft operation. The scheme was simple in concept: hack the load board, steal the winning bid, forge the DOT placards, and show up at the dock looking like a legit carrier. They pulled it off six times across six months, walking off with nearly $5 million in freight. Lamb, cheese, beef, copper, and $3.3 million in cigarettes. One broker got phished through an email that looked like it came from a carrier they'd used a hundred times, handed over the bid details, and never knew what hit them. The stolen goods moved straight to the black market in the Bronx. "These guys acted like they watched every mob movie ever made and emulated American gangsters — the Hollywood version," one law enforcement source told the NY Post. Eight indictments from the Manhattan DA.

⚠️ Satisfactory Doesn't Mean Safe. Over 80% of active carriers are currently unrated, and at the historical pace of 4,000 investigations per year, it would take 268 years* to rate every registered carrier in the system. And the ones that do have a rating? "Satisfactory" just means their paperwork looked fine the last time someone checked, which could've been years ago. The Supreme Court's recent ruling removing brokers' negligent-hiring defense in state courts makes this urgent — brokers now face greater liability for the carriers they put on a load. "If you hire a Conditional carrier and something happens, I can't defend you in court," said transportation attorney Cassandra Gaines.

📦 LTL Is Waking Up. Three major LTL carriers dropped May updates. Old Dominion posted a 12.3% year-over-year revenue increase in May, with tonnage (the total weight of freight being moved, a key demand measure) continuing to recover. Saia saw tonnage grow 8.4% year-over-year, driven by heavier shipments, which is a reliable signal that shippers are sending fuller loads and the market is tightening. XPO flipped positive in May after an April decline, putting it on track to beat its own Q2 guidance. Manufacturing PMI hit a four-year high of 54 in May, which historically leads LTL volume gains by a few months. "Demand has continued to improve as the quarter has progressed," said Old Dominion CEO Marty Freeman.

Presented by Augment

The Supreme Court just removed brokers' federal liability shield for carrier selection. Our free risk assessment tool reveals if the carriers you're booking today could cost you in court.

Rates in the Sky, Carriers in the Ground. Why?

Last week, we posted a carousel featuring carriers that had recently shut down. In the comments, one question kept coming up: how are carriers going out of business in a market this good?

It's a fair question. So we decided to answer it.

Spot rates just hit $3.71 a mile. That's an all-time high, and it got there faster than COVID-era rates did.

Tender rejections are sitting above 17%, meaning nearly one in five loads is getting turned down because there are better options. By every measurable metric, this might be the best freight market ever recorded.

And carriers are still going bankrupt.

The List Keeps Growing

600+ jobs gone.

Sparhawk Trucking in Wisconsin (178 trucks, 146 drivers) filed for bankruptcy and told employees not to assume the business would stay open.
SP Trans in Illinois, a long-haul carrier that was still active on the roads as recently as May.
M&L Express in Maryland, a carrier that ran over a million miles a year on nine tractors.
Boost Express Logistics filed for Chapter 7 with assets under $50,000 and liabilities up to $1 million. The same story goes for Saturn Trucking from Illinois. All gone within a week.

It's Not the Market, It's the Math

These companies didn't collapse because the market is bad. They collapsed because the market was too bad for too long.

From 2023 to 2025, rates were stuck in the $2.00–$2.30 range. Equipment loans kept coming. Insurance kept climbing. Diesel prices, sitting at $5.39 a gallon today, more than double the cost at the start of COVID, twisted the knife. For two years, small carriers bled quietly, borrowing to cover the gap, deferring payments, hoping the market would turn before the bank did.

The market turned, but the bank didn't wait.

By the time rates recovered, the balance sheets were already in terminal condition. The $3.71-per-mile rate you see today doesn't fix a loan you defaulted on six months ago.

The Signs Are There Before the Filing

According to Darren Brewer, CEO of Carrier411, the red flags to watch include recent insurance lapses or cancellations, worsening BASIC scores, out-of-service trends over the last 6 to 12 months, and verified performance issues such as double-brokering or no-shows.

The problem is that right now, even those signals are harder to trust due to the MOTUS rollout.

Darren Brewer warned:

"Heightened fraud risk right now: FMCSA has still not released updated authority and insurance data in over two weeks."

The market might be the best it's ever been. Just not for everyone.

Presented by Highway

A valid MC number. A certificate of insurance on file. For years, that was the bar, and it held. It doesn't anymore.

Cargo theft, double brokering, spoofed identities, and unqualified drivers aren't abstract threats. They're operational exposures with real consequences for freight, margin, and shipper relationships. Industry analyst Bart De Muynck breaks down why identity-first operations are replacing assumption-based vetting — and what brokers need to build now to protect their networks.

🌎 Around the Freight Web

🚨 36 Semi-Truck Drivers Arrested. Border Patrol swept Arizona and found nearly three dozen truckers operating illegally. 28,000 CDLs have already been cancelled nationally this year.

🚛 Knight-Swift's Founder is Out. Kevin Knight built one of trucking's biggest carriers from scratch, engineered the Swift merger, and walked away this week with a $20.3 million exit package.

🚢 $2,600 Surcharge. CMA CGM just dropped a $2,600 peak season surcharge on containers moving from the East Mediterranean to U.S. East Coast ports, as ocean volume has surged 33% since early May.

🚛 English or Park It. States are turning federal English proficiency rules into state law, allowing officers to park noncompliant drivers on the spot without waiting for federal enforcement.

🅿️ $200 Million for Truck Parking. A House appropriations panel advanced $200 million in federal funding to expand truck parking capacity nationwide, the second such allocation this year after Trump already signed $200 million for the same purpose earlier in 2026.