FreightCasts

Stuart Chirls joins the show to discuss whether or not intermodal’s growth rate is sustainable.

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Is the freight market finally turning a corner? On today’s episode of FreightWaves Today, Craig Fuller and Julie Van de Kamp break down a massive week of Q2 earnings, major rail updates, and supply chain headlines!

We sit down with Josh Phelan, CVP of Operations at J.B. Hunt, to discuss driver constraints, cost inflation, contract vs. spot rate momentum, and why this cycle might look very different for carriers big and small. Plus, FreightWaves' own Todd Maiden breaks down Knight Swift’s massive Q2 earnings beat. And Paul Tonsager, CEO & Founder-Integrated Multi-Modal Solutions, LLC talks industry growth.

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The trucking crackdown is here. The question is...will your company survive it?

FMCSA has rewritten the playbook. CSA has undergone its biggest overhaul in years. English proficiency enforcement is back in force. DataQs are more important than ever. And freight fraud has exploded into one of the biggest threats facing carriers today.

One bad inspection.

One stolen identity.

One double-brokered load.

One compliance mistake.

That's all it takes to turn a profitable trucking company into tomorrow's cautionary tale.

In this episode of Brake Check, Charles Gracey sits down with two industry experts who have worked both sides of enforcement.

Rob Carpenter, VP of Compliance at TruckSafe, shares what carriers need to know about FMCSA audits, driver qualification files, freight fraud, identity theft, double brokering, compliance, and protecting your business before criminals or regulators...show up at your door.

Then John Seidl, former Wisconsin State Motor Carrier Trooper and FMCSA Investigator, explains what inspectors are really looking for during roadside inspections, how the new CSA scoring system affects carriers, how English proficiency enforcement is playing out in the real world, and how DataQ challenges can remove violations that never should have been written in the first place.

In this episode:

The biggest FMCSA and CSA changes every carrier needs to know

What inspectors are actually looking for roadside

How to survive an FMCSA audit

Driver qualification file mistakes that can cost you

The freight fraud scams targeting carriers today

Identity theft, double brokering, and fictitious pickups explained

How to protect your authority and your business

How DataQs really work and when you should fight a violation

The inspection mistakes that destroy CSA scores

Practical compliance strategies every fleet can use today

Whether you're an owner-operator, small fleet, safety director, dispatcher, broker, or trucking executive, this episode delivers practical advice you can put to work immediately.

If you're serious about protecting your business, lowering risk, and staying ahead of the next enforcement wave, this is one episode you can't afford to miss.

Subscribe to FreightWaves for more trucking news, carrier insights, and industry-leading conversations.

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Most carriers think their recruitment problem is a marketing problem.

Post the ad. Get the calls. Fill the seat. Move on.

Christian Martinez has managed over 65 owner-operators at Voyager Nation out of Mulberry, Florida — and he'll tell you straight up that recruitment is the easy part. The hard part is everything that comes after somebody signs on.

He started at the bottom. Loading trucks. Warehouse operations. Port logistics. Last-mile delivery. Recruiting. Fleet acquisitions. He worked his way through nearly every level of this industry before landing in operations management — which means when he talks about why owner-operators leave, he's not guessing. He's watched it happen from every angle.

The trucking industry spends millions trying to find drivers. It spends almost nothing figuring out why they leave. And most small carriers running two, three, five trucks are making the same mistakes the big fleets made twenty years ago — just on a smaller budget with less room to absorb the damage.

This episode is about what actually keeps an independent contractor running your freight. Not the sign-on bonus. Not the percentage. The things that determine whether an owner-operator calls you a partner or a problem — and what that decision costs you either way.

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In this episode, we kick things off by examining a major milestone in the autonomous trucking race as Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation ⁠launched its second-generation driverless hardware across ten commercial freight routes⁠ in the U.S. Sun Belt. Unlike its first-generation trucks, the new fleet is built to run with no passive observer at all, erasing what one Morgan Stanley analyst called "one of the last remaining asterisks around the technology." Engineered for a one-million-mile operating life and designed for volume production rather than pilot-scale trials, Aurora is leaning heavily on manufacturing partner Roush, which is targeting an annual production run-rate of one thousand trucks by year-end.

Meanwhile, the nation's largest truckload carrier is declaring that a structural recovery is finally here. Knight-Swift Transportation ⁠reported second-quarter adjusted earnings per share of sixty-three cents, smashing consensus by twelve cents⁠ and coming in twenty-eight cents higher year-over-year. CEO Adam Miller credited aggressive regulatory enforcement by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Department of Transportation for forcing out non-compliant capacity and creating what the company called a "rapid progression in truckload market conditions." Contract rates climbed throughout the quarter, with revenue per loaded mile accelerating from low-single digits in April to eight percent in June, while Knight-Swift's tender rejection rate was twice the industry average.

Finally, over on the rails, CSX is riding a powerful volume rebound to beat Wall Street expectations. The Jacksonville-based Class I railroad ⁠reported second-quarter revenue of three point nine four billion dollars, up ten point one percent year-over-year⁠, while earnings per share came in at fifty-four cents, beating analyst consensus estimates by four point two percent. Carload volumes improved by six point one percent, a dramatic swing from just zero point one percent growth a year ago, with intermodal traffic surging across CSX's eastern U.S. network. Free cash flow swung dramatically from negative one hundred fifteen million dollars in the second quarter of twenty twenty-five to positive six hundred eighty-seven million dollars this quarter.

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