Where'd All The Drivers Go?

HAPPY WEDNESDAY

Spot rates just hit record highs, but the trucks aren't there, and it's not the driver shortage everyone's been predicting for a decade.

Plus:

• TQL's 44% Margin Is Going To Court

• Another Authority Revoked

• Blitz Starts On Sunday

💡 QUESTION OF THE DAY:

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🍳 WHAT’S COOKIN’ IN FREIGHT

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⚖️ TQL's 44% Margin Is Going To Court. The rule that would force brokers to hand over records within 48 hours returns to FMCSA's agenda this month — and TQL heads to the D.C. Circuit on September 11 to fight it. It started when owner-operator Pink Cheetah pulled the paperwork on one load and found TQL kept 44% of the rate. A lower court sided with the broker, whose defense is blunt: a 2023 FMCSA email ordering it to drop transparency waivers wasn't binding, so it ignored it. If the appeals court disagrees, the "we can't send the paperwork electronically" stall dies — and every broker's margin becomes a number carriers can demand.

🚛 Another Authority Revoked. Mountain Valley Express stopped taking freight on Tuesday, shutting a 13-terminal network across California, Arizona and Nevada and pulling 277 trucks off the board. Nine months ago, the Manteca carrier was touting "aggressive growth goals" and rolling out a new TMS; now the FMCSA has revoked its broker authority, and it's directing creditors to a claims portal. If MVE owes you, move fast: surety-bond claims generally must be filed within a year, and with everyone lining up for the same bond, carriers usually recover pennies on the dollar. Retain your bills of lading and rate cons — that paperwork is what gets you paid.

🚨 Blitz Starts On Sunday. Operation Safe Driver Week runs July 12–18, putting extra officers across the U.S. and Canada on the hunt for reckless driving — speeding, tailgating, using a phone, no seatbelt, driving impaired. Trucks and cars alike get pulled over and ticketed. Enforcement leans on drivers because they cause 94% of crashes, not the equipment they're in. Last year, officers wrote nearly 1,840 tickets and more than 3,200 warnings to truckers in a single week. For brokers, that means more of your carriers getting stopped this week — and an unsafe one is a liability long before it's in a wreck.

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Record Rates, No Drivers

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Broker-posted dry van spot rates just hit an all-time high: up 11.3 cents in the first week of July and roughly 42% above the same week last year, per FTR and Truckstop.

Trucking shed more than 1,000 jobs in June, per federal data.

Both are happening in the same market, and it's not the driver shortage everyone's been blaming for a decade. It's closer to the opposite.

The Glut, Not the Shortage

Carriers flooded in during the 2021 boom to chase COVID-era rates, the driver pool peaked in 2022, and when freight normalized, there were too many trucks.

More than 120,000 trucking jobs have been erased since October 2022, per federal data, with employment falling in all but five months since February 2023.

The glut is gone, rates are climbing, and capacity still can't grow. ACT Research's Freight Rate Index rose 13 points in May, a record in its 17-year history, while its Driver Availability Index hit a five-year low in April.

Rate strength and driver availability are moving in opposite directions, which almost never happens.

Three Forces Draining the Pool

All three are pulling drivers out at the same time, and higher rates don't slow any of them.

• Demographics: Baby Boomers still make up about 20% of the driver pool, and the average driver's age has climbed from 42 in 1995 to 47 today. That's a fifth of the current workforce aging toward the exit, and it doesn't reverse when rates rise.

• Regulation: English-proficiency failures were reinstated as out-of-service criteria in June 2025, after nearly a decade of dormancy. In the year since, more than 20,000 drivers have been placed out of service, making it one of the most frequently cited violations in the country.

• Enforcement: The crackdown on non-domiciled licenses is pulling them in real time. On July 1, Idaho ended its non-domiciled CDL program, revoking existing licenses that did not meet the new residency requirements. DOT says more than 28,000 CDLs have already been revoked nationwide, and the March federal rule that triggered the purge affects roughly 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders.

The Drivers Ain't Coming Back

Arrive Logistics' David Spencer told Land Line the falling employment "illustrates the lasting impact multiple years of poor trucking conditions" have had on carriers. Regulatory pressure, he added, is "adding fuel to the fire, creating real driver availability problems."

ACT notes that higher rates "make the case for higher driver pay, but that is easier said than done", and pay was never the whole problem.

A raise doesn't un-retire a Boomer or restore a revoked license.

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 🌎 AROUND THE FREIGHT WEB

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🌊 Record-breaking flooding. Camden, NJ took on nearly four inches of rain in about an hour on July 6, hitting areas that have never seen flooding before.

⚠️ 15 Violations, Still Rated "Satisfactory." The carrier in C.H. Robinson's latest liability case holds a "Satisfactory" FMCSA rating dating back to June 2010 despite 15 severe hours-of-service violations.

🟥 That "Dedicated Lane" Offer Is a Trap. A scammer spoofed TQL's real number to pitch a fake dedicated lane for an $1,100 "commission," but the real target was the driver's tax ID and LLC.

🚢 Ships Are Heading Back to Suez. Maersk is routing ships back through the Red Sea for the first time since the Houthi attacks — a move that could free about 5% of the global container fleet from the long haul around Africa.

🤝 Freight M&A Is Quiet. That Won't Last. Deals ran flat through mid-2026 at 566, but Tenney Group says idle buyers will drive a record-breaking 2027, led by cross-border operators.

🛡️ A Free "Second Look" at Every Carrier. AscendTMS added SearchCarriers' live data to its free vetting tool, giving brokers a no-cost way to fraud-check any carrier before booking it.

🗞️ FREIGHT CAVIAR PRINT

Issue 003 of FreightCaviar Print is almost here.

Print magazine + Caviar Circle access.

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📷 THE FREIGHT CAVIAR PODCAST

Founder & CEO at NT Logistics, Lynn Gravley, joined Paul-Bernard Jaroslawski on the FreightCaviar podcast to discuss the real reasons why some freight fraud incidents go unreported, his new role as Chairman of the TIA Board of Directors, and why he compares AI's potential impact to the advent of computers.

We also talk with Lynn about his approach to building broker relationships and how those connections help solve real challenges across trucking networks.

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

😂 FREIGHT HUMOR