Don't Trust the Dip

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Happy Hump Day. Spot rates cooled off after the Fourth of July, but Arrive says don't get used to it — the floor's not moving until at least 2027.

Plus:

• Lettuce Beat the Rule Built to Track It

• LA Just Had Its 3rd-Best Month Ever

• FMCSA Moves on Brokers Before Congress Does

💡 QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Van rates, excluding fuel, are up roughly ___% year-over-year.

🍳 WHAT’S COOKIN’ IN FREIGHT

🔍 Lettuce Beat the Rule Built to Track It. A Cyclospora outbreak tied to iceberg lettuce from a single farm in Guanajuato, Mexico, has sickened more than 1,600 people across 27 states, with product sold under multiple retail brands between June 29 and July 16. FDA is tracing the source back using old-school case interviews and manual traceback, not the FSMA Food Traceability Rule, which would force growers, packers, and carriers to hand the FDA a sortable digital lot record within 24 hours. That rule was due to take effect in January; Congress instead barred the FDA from enforcing it until July 2028. Once it kicks in, picking up and dropping off a load are logged, and carriers hauling FTL produce become part of the paper trail.

🚢 LA Just Had Its 3rd-Best Month Ever. The Port of Los Angeles moved more than 1 million containers in June for just the third time in its 118-year history. Imports alone accounted for 530,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), up 13% year-over-year, as the market absorbs freight volumes driven by resilient consumer spending and early tariff pre-stocking. West Coast trucking markets have stayed calm through the summer despite that volume, but FreightWaves' Craig Fuller expects that to change: he says an imminent late-Q3 push into Labor Day will shift capacity leverage back toward West Coast corridors, reshaping domestic freight flows.

📋 FMCSA Moves on Brokers Before Congress Does. FMCSA plans to release a proposal by September that would require brokers and freight forwarders to designate a responsible person with at least 3 years of real-world industry experience. It's a requirement that's been the law for over a decade but was never enforced. The agency is getting there on its own: a highway bill that would have forced the issue cleared committee back in May and hasn't moved since. Separately, a proposal closing a loophole in the rule requiring brokers to share rate and transaction records with carriers could land as soon as this month.

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No Rate Break Coming Anytime Soon

Spot rates pulled back after their July Fourth peak, but don't read that as a sign of relief. Van rates excluding fuel are up roughly 50% year-over-year, contract linehaul rates are up 19% over the same span, and Arrive Logistics' data puts May and June 2026 among the five largest single-month rate increases ever recorded.

Spot is still running well above contract, which means shippers are about to start raising their own pricing just to regain control of their routing guides.

The Rate Floor Isn't Seasonal Anymore

This isn't the usual end-of-quarter spike fading into a summer lull.

Enforcement of non-domiciled CDL and English Language Proficiency (ELP) rules has removed roughly 5,000 drivers from Service in the past two months due to ELP violations alone, and more are exiting voluntarily to avoid exposure.

Carriers are responding by raising driver wages at the fastest two-month pace on record, a trend Arrive expects to continue, pushing the rate floor higher through the second half of the year.

On top of that, insurance premiums and insurability standards are climbing following the Supreme Court's May 2026 Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II ruling, adding financial pressure on carriers already navigating elevated operating costs, per Arrive's report.

Capacity Pressure Is Piling Up

On top of the non-domiciled CDL and ELP rules, cross-border capacity is being squeezed from another direction. Enforcement tied to prior cabotage warnings and violations is now revoking driver visas at the border on arrival.

Equipment costs are adding to the squeeze too: carriers ramped up truck orders in June to reinvest in their fleets while rates remain elevated, getting ahead of new EPA emissions requirements taking effect in 2027.

Every Month You Wait Costs More

Shippers are expected to keep raising pricing through at least early 2027 to regain control of the routing guide, with contract rates potentially reaching their highest levels in years by the time that process is complete.

Aside from a brief dip around Labor Day, the demand calendar has nothing major until Thanksgiving, so there’s no rate relief coming shortly.

Manufacturing has expanded for six straight months per ISM data, and consumer spending remained strong through June, with an added boost from the World Cup.

Imports climbed through June too, as shippers rushed to beat the July 24 expiration of the flat 10% tariff set in February — one more thing keeping this market tight while brokers wait for a break that isn't coming.

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 🌎 AROUND THE FREIGHT WEB

⚓ Six Months' Pay to Risk Sailing Hormuz. Sinokor Group, the world's largest supertanker owner, is offering crew an extra six months' salary for a single Hormuz oil run, after 59 commercial ships have been attacked and at least 17 seafarers killed since the war began in February.

📊 Spot Rates Dip, Records Don't Care. Spot rates eased across the board last week, but flatbed still closed at an all-time high for the week, 24 cents above the 2021 record. Reefer rates out of Fresno, CA sit 50% above last year despite the pullback.

📵 Time's Up for 12 ELDs. FMCSA revoked these 12 devices earlier this year for failing to meet federal standards, and as of July 20, any carrier still running one is cited for having no ELD at all and is placed out of service on the spot.

🏒 Trump Just Tariffed Milk and Hockey Sticks. A new 50% tariff hits a specific list of Canadian goods: hockey sticks, beer, plywood, cement, and dairy, while sparing autos, steel, and energy entirely.

⛽ Diesel's 3rd-Biggest Weekly Jump Ever. The national average spiked 33.8 cents for the week of July 20, and the culprit isn't crude oil alone; it's refining capacity getting squeezed by the closed Strait of Hormuz.

💼 Forward Air Just Saved Half Its Biggest Account. One customer makes up 10% of Forward Air's revenue and almost took all of its business elsewhere. Instead, Forward gets to keep at least half of that $250 million account, maybe as much as 75%.

🎣 THE FREIGHT MAGAZINE

Issue 003 of FreightCaviar Print is here.

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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.