TQL Walks

TGIF. TQL won a liability case this week. Read how before you celebrate.

Plus:

• Diesel Prices Cross $6/gal

• Trump Moves From Tariffs to Bans on Canadian Goods

• MOTUS Quietly Raised Insurance Bar on Carriers

• & more.

💡 QUESTION OF THE DAY:

How much higher is a gallon of diesel than it was a year ago? Answer below.

🍳 WHAT’S COOKIN’ IN FREIGHT

⛽ Diesel Crossed $6. The Pumps Are Out of Digits. The U.S. national average for retail diesel crossed $6.00 a gallon for the first time ever yesterday, according to GasBuddy. That's roughly $2.30 more than a year ago. GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan, to Reuters: "Every truck, every delivery, every package, every grocery run just got more expensive." He'd called it the day before publicly, and without hedging. And in California, at least three gas station price tickers hit the ceiling and displayed diesel at $9.999/gal. That's the mechanical ceiling of what the dispenser can display. The state average ran about $7.81 over Labor Day weekend.

🇨🇦 Tariffs Were the Warm-Up. Now It's Bans. Effective Sept 29, the White House will ban imports of Canadian wines and spirits, certain motorcycles and mopeds, dairy, including whey, and certain molasses. Trump also directed GSA to strip Canadian-origin products from its Multiple Award Schedules. Canada had already retaliated on C$27.6 billion (~$20B) of U.S. goods at 15–50%, roughly 8% of everything it imports from us. The 50% band hits milk, steel, aluminum, golf clubs, jackets, and t-shirts. Prime Minister Mark Carney: "We will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes."  SONAR clocked Canada-to-U.S. volumes down roughly 16% since Sunday after heavy August front-loading.

🧾 Motus Moved the Insurance Bar, Too. Two weeks ago, we told you Motus errors were costing carriers real money. Here's the other half of it. FMCSA's registration system also rewrote what carriers are required to carry: 150,076 saw their insurance filing requirement go up, and 73,681 saw it go down. Of the ones that rose, 27,287 had adequate coverage before Motus and don't now, according to Commercial Carrier Journal. One carrier's BIPD requirement jumped from $750,000 to $5 million with no change to anything it filed. The inverse should worry the brokerage side more: CCJ found dockets displaying as Active with $0 insurance on file. FMCSA, meanwhile, has extended its pause on biennial-update enforcement and USDOT deactivations "until further notice." Pull your own record before Monday.

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TQL Walks. The Shield Doesn’t Exist

On June 11, 2024, a Monique Trucking rig came down U.S. 285 near Conifer, Colorado, trying to pass five vehicles at 60 to 80 in a 45. It sideswiped, jackknifed and rolled, throwing roughly 47,000 pounds of steel pipe and angle iron across the highway. Scott Miller, 64, was killed. A woman was seriously injured. State Patrol found speed was a primary factor, and the brakes had failed. The driver, Ignacio Cruz-Mendoza, did not hold a valid CDL.

He was convicted of criminal reckless driving resulting in death and served one year. When he walked out, ICE arrested him and moved him to its Denver detention facility pending removal — saying he had been removed or voluntarily returned to Mexico 16 times since a 2002 order.

Everyone in this story has an outcome except Deann Miller, married to Scott for 46 years.

She sued Cruz-Mendoza and Monique Trucking, then amended to add Total Quality Logistics, Intsel Steel West, Triple-S Steel Holdings and Searing Industries.

Tuesday, Judge Nina Wang of the U.S. District Court in Colorado cut TQL loose.

The reason? The complaint didn't say enough.

Miller "does not allege any facts suggesting that TQL hired Mr. Cruz-Mendoza as an employee or independent contractor," Wang wrote, faulting the plaintiff for leaning on "broad references to 'defendants' generally." Vicarious liability, negligent hiring, joint venture, joint enterprise — gone. Intsel and Triple-S went with them.

All of it without prejudice. She can replead.

Now the part brokers should read twice.

TQL originally raised F4A preemption; the argument that state claims touching "price, route or service" are federally barred. The industry's armor for a decade. TQL withdrew it. It had to: in May, a unanimous Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that the FAAAA's safety exception leaves negligent-selection claims against brokers alive. Barrett wrote it. 9–0.

So TQL won simply because a complaint was drafted badly. The next one won't be.

Ask C.H. Robinson, still waiting on a Dallas judge to affirm the $604 million verdict in Lipe v. Lupus Superior, where a jury put 23% — $138.9 million — on the broker. CHRW CFO Damon Lee, on everybody smaller: "the average small and medium-sized broker is going to have a very difficult time surviving in the post Montgomery, post Lipe world."

Yes, it's TQL. You'll have thoughts. But nothing here protected a broker. A filing did.

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 🌎 AROUND THE FREIGHT WEB

🪪 $5,000 a CDL. Six people pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Louisiana to a bribery scheme that put at least 124 fraudulent CDLs on the road between 2020 and 2024. Ringleader Mahmoud Alhattab, a restaurant owner, charged applicants an average of $5,000 and paid off OMV employees and training-school operators.

🪦 Forty-seven Years, Done. Sparhawk Trucking of Wisconsin Rapids is closing after filing Chapter 11 in March and failing to find a buyer. First layoffs hit Monday; the rest follow in November.

🤖 J.B. Hunt Runs AI Agents on Millions of Loads. Overroute — spun out of a 2024 J.B. Hunt/UP.Labs collaboration — raised $5.5M Tuesday and is now deployed across every J.B. Hunt business unit. COO Nick Hobbs calls it "a force multiplier."

📦 LTL is Getting the Spillover. ABF Freight's August tonnage rose 9% year over year with shipments down 4%, and that’s because average shipment weights jumped 14%.

🎣 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR CORNER

Earning the Freight: What separates preferred transportation providers? Hear live from James Hardie & GoodShip leaders on trust, data, and performance.

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😂 FREIGHT HUMOR

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🎧 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR PODCAST

Andrew Leto, Founder at GlobalTranz, Emerge, and now Felix AI, joined Reed Loustalot on the FreightCaviar Podcast to discuss how AI agents could help carriers find more loads, why margins could fall from 12–13% to 8–9%, and why Andrew believes carrier-side technology and carrier data could become the biggest opportunity in trucking.

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