Borderlands Mexico is a weekly rundown of developments in the world of United States-Mexico cross-border trucking and trade. This week in Borderlands Mexico: Thousands of Mexican truckers lose US visas over cabotage violations; US, Mexico complete first round of USMCA review talks; and RealCold expands into pharmaceutical logistics with SCL Cold Chain acquisition.

Thousands of Mexican truckers lose US visas over cabotage violations

More than 3,000 Mexican truck drivers have lost their authorization to enter the U.S. in recent months as federal authorities intensify enforcement of cabotage and visa regulations.

Pedro Lozano Martínez, president of the Nuevo Laredo Freight Carriers Association and a delegate of Mexico’s National Chamber of Freight Transportation (CANACAR), said approximately 3,200 drivers across the border region have had their visas revoked. 

The cancellations have affected carriers operating through major commercial gateways, Lozano said.

“It has been a serious issue in recent weeks,” Lozano told Agencia Rn Noticias. “CANACAR data indicates around 3,200 drivers have been affected along the entire border region.”

According to Lozano, the visa revocations stem from increased coordination between the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), allowing authorities to identify drivers previously flagged for potential cabotage violations. 

Cabotage occurs when a foreign carrier transports freight between two domestic points inside the U.S. without authorization.

“What happened is that the DOT and CBP systems merged, and all operators who had any warnings about possible cabotage were automatically identified,” Lozano said. “CBP is now revoking their visas through the system.”

Drivers often unaware until they reach the border

Lozano said many drivers do not realize their visas have been revoked until they attempt to cross into the U.S.

“The operator doesn’t even realize it unless they check their email,” Lozano said. “When they arrive at the border, the system tells them they must surrender their visa.”

Before the systems were integrated, DOT inspectors could issue warnings or administrative findings related to cabotage during roadside inspections or weigh station checks. Those findings generally did not carry immigration consequences because DOT lacked authority to revoke visas. 

Under the new enforcement framework, carriers say prior warnings are now triggering visa cancellations.

The Otay Mesa Chamber of Commerce warned in an April advisory that hundreds of visas had already been revoked and that enforcement efforts had expanded beyond recent activity to include reviews of alleged violations dating back several years. 

The chamber said federal authorities have placed increased emphasis on cabotage compliance and other visa-related requirements for Mexican commercial drivers.

Border enforcement expands

The recent visa cancellations come amid broader federal enforcement efforts targeting foreign commercial drivers operating in the U.S.

In November, Border Patrol agents in Arizona revoked the border-crossing privileges of two Mexican truck drivers accused of violating cabotage regulations after determining they were hauling freight between domestic U.S. locations. CBP said the drivers were returned to Mexico and their crossing cards were processed for revocation.

Additional enforcement actions documented this year include a Mexican driver whose visa was revoked after authorities alleged he transported commodities from Nogales, Arizona, to Laredo, Texas, in violation of cabotage rules. Another driver was deported after being accused of hauling produce from Arizona to Washington state while operating under a B-1/B-2 visa.

Federal authorities have repeatedly emphasized that violations of transportation, customs and immigration regulations can result in visa revocations, future entry restrictions and other penalties.

Industry warns of capacity constraints

The Otay Mesa Chamber of Commerce said the visa cancellations are likely to reduce the pool of available cross-border drivers and could contribute to delays and higher transportation costs.

“Expect delays and increased pricing in trucking services since there will be a shortage of truck drivers across the U.S.-Mexico border,” the chamber said in its advisory.

Lozano acknowledged that the crackdown has affected international trucking operations but said many displaced drivers are finding employment in Mexico’s domestic freight market, where carriers are also facing a driver shortage.

“It is not people who are losing their jobs,” Lozano said. “They are switching from the United States to Mexico. There is also a great need for operators here.”

Lozano said CANACAR has sought clarification from U.S. authorities and has worked with congressional offices, including that of U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, to better understand the scope of the visa revocations and enforcement policies. He said the situation underscores the need for carriers and drivers to strictly comply with international transportation regulations.

“We have to do things right,” Lozano said. “There will be greater oversight, and that puts us in a more formal competitive position in the international trucking market.”

US, Mexico complete first round of USMCA review talks

The U.S. and Mexico have concluded the first bilateral round of negotiations related to the joint review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), marking an early step in what could become one of the most consequential trade discussions in North America over the next year.

According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), negotiators meeting in Mexico City focused on reducing the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and strengthening North American supply chains. Discussions centered on automotive rules of origin, steel and aluminum trade, and economic security issues.

The two countries also discussed enhancing regulatory compatibility in several sectors, including medical devices, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, as part of broader efforts to strengthen regional manufacturing and supply chain integration.

USTR said additional negotiations are scheduled for June 16-17 in Washington, D.C., where officials will discuss agriculture and maintaining a level playing field for businesses. A third round of talks is planned for the week of July 20 in Mexico City.

The U.S. said it will continue emphasizing that the USMCA should benefit American manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, workers and businesses while addressing concerns about “free-riding from third countries.”

RealCold expands into pharmaceutical logistics with SCL Cold Chain acquisition

Dallas-based RealCold, a cold storage and logistics provider, announced Wednesday that it acquired SCL, a CEIV-certified temperature-controlled logistics provider specializing in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, wine and specialty foods. 

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The acquisition marks RealCold’s entry into pharmaceutical cold chain logistics, a sector requiring strict temperature controls, regulatory compliance and end-to-end shipment visibility. 

SCL brings expertise in continuous temperature monitoring, FDA-registered facilities and chain-of-custody management for temperature-sensitive products, according to a news release. 

The deal also adds pharmaceutical logistics capabilities to RealCold’s national network, which includes more than 61 million cubic feet of temperature-controlled warehouse space and over 180,000 pallet positions across the United States.

Founded in 2022, RealCold operates a national cold chain network serving food retailers, producers and distributors. SCL Cold Chain will continue operating under its existing brand as part of RealCold.

The post Borderlands Mexico: Thousands of Mexican truckers lose US visas over cabotage violations appeared first on FreightWaves.

Two weeks ago, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration flipped the switch on the biggest overhaul of its registration infrastructure in decades. The legacy systems carriers had used for years, including the Unified Registration System, the Licensing and Insurance public filing system, and the FMCSA Portal’s registration functions, were permanently retired at 8:00 PM Eastern on May 14, 2026. In their place came MOTUS, a single centralized platform tied to Login.gov identity verification, built to reduce fraud, tighten control over who can access carrier records, and modernize systems that had been running on infrastructure built decades ago.

That is the official version. The version playing out across social media, compliance forums, and the daily experience of carriers trying to use the thing is considerably less smooth, and the frustration is now loud enough that it has become its own story.

What Carriers Are Actually Experiencing

Scroll through trucking social media right now and the MOTUS complaints are impossible to miss. They range from exasperated to resigned to darkly funny, and they share a common thread: people who need to use this system to stay compliant cannot reliably get it to work.

One carrier posted a screenshot of the MOTUS site returning a raw error, a JSON response reading “Unauthorized access,” with the question that captures the entire problem: “When are we fixing Motus? This is a consistent message. How do we comply with the rules when the system does not want to work with us?” That question is not rhetorical. It is the practical bind that thousands of carriers and the compliance professionals who serve them are sitting in right now.

Another well-known voice in the compliance community, posting a list of bugs being compiled and sent to FMCSA, did not soften it: “Alright folks, MOTUS is buggy. Like super buggy.” That same person reported building a public bug-tracking site, motusbugs.com, to document the issues in the open and feed them to FMCSA, because the volume of problems being reported by carriers had outpaced any official channel for surfacing them.

The sentiment escalates from there. One user described the rollout as “a total disaster,” saying the agency “dropped the ball and then want to play the ghosting game,” and reported fielding four phone calls in a single day from people who were in the middle of getting their own operating authority when the transition caught them mid-process. Another compliance figure was blunt: “There’s really no underfunding or legal or any kind of excuse at this point. The MOTUS rollout has been unacceptable. It is one of the worst software releases I’ve ever witnessed.”

These are not anonymous complaints from people who do not understand the system. The voices driving this conversation are also compliance professionals, the people who do FMCSA registration work for a living, who understand the old systems intimately, and who are now unable to do their jobs because the new system returns errors instead of access.

What MOTUS Was Supposed to Do

To understand why the frustration is landing this hard, it helps to understand what MOTUS was built to accomplish and why the agency considered it necessary.

MOTUS, Latin for “movement” or “motion,” is FMCSA’s unified registration platform, designed to replace a fragmented collection of legacy systems with a single dashboard for USDOT number applications, operating authority management, biennial updates, and name and address changes. The project traces back to MAP-21, the surface transportation law passed in 2012, which mandated a modernized registration system that has taken more than a decade to reach launch. The old system was clunky, hard to navigate and a pain. This was supposed to be the ultimate modernization tool that could replace it.

The case for it was real. The old systems were fragmented and their identity controls were weak, and that weakness had become a serious industry problem. Unauthorized account access, fraudulent carrier registrations, fake insurance filings, and chameleon carrier activity, where an operation shuts down under one DOT number to escape its safety record and reopens under another, had all become growing concerns that the aging infrastructure could not adequately police. MOTUS was designed to address exactly those vulnerabilities by tying registration to Login.gov identity verification, requiring document capture and facial verification for individual users, and adding business-verification checks tied to entity records. The Federal Register notice indicated that new applicants and roughly 800,000 existing registrants would complete identity proofing when they first use the system.

The fraud-control rationale matters and it is legitimate. The problem is not the goal, the problem is the execution and the timing.

Why the Timing Makes Everything Worse

The MOTUS rollout did not happen in a vacuum. It landed in the middle of one of the most consequential stretches for carrier compliance in years, and the convergence of events is what has turned a rough software launch into something carriers are experiencing as a genuine threat to their ability to operate.

The May 14 launch coincided almost exactly with a wave of biennial update deadlines, the twice-yearly MCS-150 filings that carriers are required to complete to keep their registration current. Carriers who sat down to knock out a routine ten-minute MCS-150 update found themselves staring at spinning wheels, invalid login messages, and error screens instead. A compliance task that used to be trivial became, for many, impossible to complete during the exact window it was due.

The identity verification architecture created a second-order problem that has caught a particular category of carrier off guard. Under MOTUS, only the designated Company Official using the same Login.gov email tied to the original FMCSA Portal account can claim the company’s MOTUS account for the first time. In a great many small trucking companies, the person who originally set up the Portal account years ago is not the person handling compliance today. The account could be tied to a former employee, a former safety manager, an outside registration service, or an email address nobody has access to anymore. When that is the case, claiming the MOTUS account becomes a support-ticket ordeal at exactly the moment the support queues are overwhelmed.

The scale of that specific problem is documented. FMCSA sent 2.2 million letters to registered users ahead of the transition, and roughly 18%, about 396,000, came back undeliverable. That is nearly 400,000 registered entities whose contact information was already out of date before the new system that depends on accurate contact and identity information went live.

And the recovery paths are slow. A carrier who lost their PIN and needs to recover it through the mail is looking at a seven-to-ten-day delay. Paper filing workarounds, where they exist, have been reported to face processing delays of at least eight business days. For a carrier whose authority or registration status is caught in the transition, those timelines are not abstract. They are days the truck may not be able to move.

The Connection Carriers Are Drawing to Broader Enforcement

The MOTUS frustration is not happening in isolation, and carriers are connecting it to the broader enforcement environment in ways worth taking seriously.

The same period that produced the MOTUS launch has produced an aggressive FMCSA enforcement posture, including non-domiciled CDL crackdowns, identity verification expansion in the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse, and a general tightening of the compliance environment. For carriers, the experience is one of being held to an increasingly strict standard by an agency whose own systems are simultaneously failing to function. The carrier’s question, “how do we comply when the system will not let us in“, is sharpened by the fact that the consequences of non-compliance have rarely been higher.

There is a real tension here that the industry frustration is pointing at directly. MOTUS was built in significant part to fight fraud and chameleon carriers, the bad actors who exploit weak identity controls. The carriers being tripped up by the rollout are, in large part, legitimate operators trying to do routine compliance work. When a system designed to catch bad actors is instead blocking good ones from basic registration tasks, the people who feel it most are exactly the people the system was not built to target.

What Carriers Should Actually Do Right Now

Frustration aside, carriers still have to operate, and there are concrete steps that reduce the risk of getting caught in the worst of the transition problems.

Confirm who your Company Official is and what Login.gov email is attached to your FMCSA records before you have an urgent filing to make. This is a common point of failure in the MOTUS transition, and it is far easier to resolve when you are not also up against a deadline. If the designated official is a former employee or an outdated email, start the process of correcting it now rather than discovering the problem when you cannot file.

If you can complete a needed registration action, do it the moment the system lets you rather than waiting. The error messages appear intermittent for many users. Access that works this morning may return an “unauthorized access” screen this afternoon. When the window is open, use it.

Document everything. Screenshot the error messages, note the dates and times, and keep a record of your attempts to comply. In an enforcement environment this strict, a documented good-faith effort to complete a required filing through a malfunctioning federal system is worth having on file if a registration lapse is ever questioned.

Do not attempt to create a new or duplicate account to work around an access problem. Duplicate or improperly claimed accounts create exactly the kind of identity inconsistency the system is designed to flag, and resolving that is harder than resolving the original access issue.

And if you rely on a compliance service or registration professional, understand that they are navigating the same broken system you are. The people compiling public bug lists and feeding them to FMCSA are the professionals in this space. Their frustration is not a sign they are not trying. It is a sign the system is genuinely not working as it should.

The Bigger Question

MOTUS will eventually work. Many large government IT modernizations go through painful launch periods and stabilize over months. Phase 3 of the rollout is explicitly dedicated to continuous improvement based on user feedback, and the bug reports being compiled now will, presumably, feed that process.

But the question carriers are asking right now is the right one to sit with: when a federal agency makes a system mandatory, retires every alternative, ties it to strict compliance requirements with serious consequences for failure, and then the system does not reliably work, where does that leave the small operator who did everything right and still cannot get in?

That is not a software question, it is a fairness question, and it is the one driving the frustration that has turned a registration system rollout into one of the loudest conversations in trucking right now. The carriers raising it are not asking for the modernization to be reversed. They are asking for the agency to acknowledge the problem honestly, fix it quickly, and extend the kind of grace on deadlines and enforcement that the situation plainly calls for while the system that everyone is now required to use is made to actually function. Even if the FMCSA would pick up the phone and not have users on 2 hour long holds, that would be helpful to the masses.

The post “One of the Worst Software Releases I’ve Ever Witnessed.” Users Are Not Holding Back on FMCSA’s New MOTUS System appeared first on FreightWaves.

A notice has been going out to carriers in the C.H. Robinson network, and it is worth reading carefully because of what may sit behind it.

The message, branded under C.H. Robinson and titled “Changes to carrier eligibility,” tells the recipient that their company “exceeds intervention thresholds for C.H. Robinson’s scoring model based on data from the FMCSA.” Effective immediately, the notice states, the account is moved to non-certified status until BASIC scores improve. The carrier loses access to book loads on Navisphere Carrier and through their aligned representative immediately. Loads in transit deliver and get paid as normal. Existing payables process in full. But the ability to book new freight is gone until the safety scores come back into the broker’s acceptable range.

On its face, this reads as a safety policy update. Read against what happened at the Supreme Court two weeks before these notices started circulating, it invites a different question: is the freight brokerage industry beginning to reprice carrier risk in real time, because the legal consequences of getting that risk assessment wrong just changed permanently?

C.H. Robinson has not publicly stated that the eligibility change is connected to the Supreme Court ruling, and the company has not publicly announce additional changes. What follows is an analysis of the ruling, the notice, and the timing; and readers should weigh the connection as a strong inference supported by sequence and mechanism, not as a stated company position.

What the Supreme Court Actually Did on May 14

To understand why the C.H. Robinson notice is drawing attention, you have to understand Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC and the decision is more consequential for smaller carriers than almost anything else that has happened in freight this year.

On May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously, 9-0, that state-law negligent hiring claims against freight brokers are not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion. Justice Kavanaugh concurred, joined by Justice Alito. There was no dissent.

The case started with a 2017 crash on Interstate 70 in Illinois. Shawn Montgomery had pulled his vehicle onto the shoulder when a tractor-trailer operated by Caribe Transport II veered off the road and struck him. Montgomery lost his leg. He sued the driver, the carrier, and the freight broker that arranged the load — C.H. Robinson. His claim against the broker was specific: C.H. Robinson negligently selected Caribe Transport when it knew or should have known the carrier posed a safety risk. Montgomery pointed to Caribe’s conditional FMCSA safety rating, with documented deficiencies in driver qualification, hours of service, vehicle maintenance, and crash rate.

For years, brokers defeated claims like this with one argument: federal preemption. The FAAAA bars state laws “related to a price, route, or service” of a broker, and brokers argued that negligent selection claims fell under that bar. The district court agreed., the Seventh Circuit agreed then the Supreme Court took the case and reversed everyone.

Barrett’s reasoning was direct. The FAAAA contains a safety exception that preserves “the safety regulatory authority of a State with respect to motor vehicles.” Requiring C.H. Robinson to exercise ordinary care in selecting a carrier, Barrett wrote, “concerns motor vehicles; most obviously, the trucks that will transport the goods.” That puts the negligent hiring claim inside the safety exception, which saves it from preemption. The shield brokers had relied on for years was gone in a unanimous decision that legal analysts described as fitting its core reasoning “on a napkin.”

The practical effect: a broker can now be sued in state court for negligently selecting an unsafe carrier, and the case can proceed on the merits rather than being dismissed early on preemption grounds. In an environment where nuclear verdicts against trucking-related defendants regularly exceed $10 million, that exposure is significant even for a company the size of C.H. Robinson.

Why the Ruling and the Notice Appear Connected

The C.H. Robinson carrier eligibility notice does not mention Montgomery v. Caribe. The connection, if there is one, is in the mechanism — and the mechanism is worth laying out plainly so readers can judge it for themselves.

The Supreme Court decision means a broker’s carrier selection process is now a potential source of direct legal liability. If a broker tenders a load to a carrier with poor safety scores, and that carrier is later involved in a catastrophic crash, the broker can now face a negligence claim in state court for having selected that carrier. The most important piece of evidence in that kind of case would be the carrier’s FMCSA safety data which is the same BASIC scores that C.H. Robinson’s notice references as the basis for moving carriers to non-certified status.

The sequence is what draws attention: two weeks after the Supreme Court held that brokers can be sued for selecting carriers with poor safety scores, the largest freight broker in North America began removing carriers with elevated safety scores from its board. That timing, combined with the fact that the notice’s stated criterion is FMCSA BASIC data, is why carriers and industry observers are connecting the two. It is a reasonable inference. It is not, at this point, a confirmed company rationale and this article does not present it as one.

The carrier exchanges circulating on social media this week shows how the change is landing on the ground. One carrier posted openly on X— an account whose claims have not been independently verified — that C.H. Robinson disabled access to their load board, initially unsure whether it was specific to them or “something related to the lawsuit.” In follow-up posts, the carrier said they were told by their C.H. Robinson representative that the company is referring carriers to FMCSA for safety score assessments and that many carriers are going through the same thing. The carrier’s stated frustration: that they have a clean out-of-service and violation record and still exceeded the broker’s threshold.

That detail, if accurate, points to the crux of the problem for small carriers caught in this. A carrier can have a clean out-of-service rate and pass inspections and still exceed a broker’s internal scoring threshold because the scoring model draws on the full range of FMCSA BASIC data, not out-of-service violations alone, and the threshold for what a broker will now accept appears to be tightening. The effect is less freight options for the carrier.

Why a Broker’s Threshold Would Move

Before Montgomery, a broker’s calculus on carrier safety scores balanced two things: the operational need for capacity against the relatively contained legal risk of using a carrier with mediocre scores, since preemption usually got negligent selection claims dismissed early.

After Montgomery, that balance shifts. The legal risk of using a carrier with elevated BASIC scores is no longer contained by preemption. It is a live exposure that can reach a jury. A risk-averse broker has a rational incentive to tighten its carrier acceptance threshold, reducing the population of carriers whose safety data could later be used to argue negligent selection. And after a 9-0 Supreme Court loss, the entire industry has reason to be risk-averse on this specific question.

That is the logic that connects the ruling to the kind of policy change the C.H. Robinson notice describes. Whether or not C.H. Robinson cites Montgomery as its reason, the incentive the ruling created points directly toward exactly this type of response and it points there for potentially every broker, not just one.

What This Means for Small Carriers Right Now

Regardless of C.H. Robinson’s stated rationale, the Montgomery decision changes how small carriers need to manage their FMCSA safety profile. This is no longer only about passing inspections and avoiding out-of-service orders. It is increasingly about where your BASIC scores sit relative to broker acceptance thresholds that have a clear new incentive to tighten across the industry.

Your CSA BASIC scores are now a commercial asset or a commercial liability in a way they were not three weeks ago. The seven BASIC categories: unsafe driving, hours-of-service compliance, driver fitness, controlled substances, vehicle maintenance, hazardous materials, and crash indicator all feed the scoring models brokers use to assess legal risk. A carrier who has not been actively managing those scores may have been treating them as a DOT enforcement matter only. After Montgomery, they carry commercial weight too.

The specific actions that matter now. Pull your current BASIC scores through the FMCSA portal and know exactly where you stand in each category. A score that sits below the intervention threshold for DOT purposes may still land above a broker’s commercial threshold. If you are a motor carrier and you have violations you believe were cited incorrectly, file DataQ challenges. Successfully challenged violations are removed from your record, and every violation you can legitimately remove improves your standing. If your scores are elevated, the path back is what it has always been: clean inspections accumulating over the 24-month rolling window CSA uses. What has changed is the commercial stakes attached to that cleanup.

The gap a carrier feels when a clean out-of-service record still results in lost board access is the gap between DOT compliance and commercial acceptability. For practical purposes those used to be close to the same thing. They may not be anymore.

The Bigger Picture: Capacity, Rates, and Where the Freight Goes

There is a second-order effect worth thinking through. If C.H. Robinson and other major brokers tighten carrier eligibility based on safety scores, they reduce their own available capacity at a time when the freight market has already been tightening on the supply side. A broker covering the same freight with fewer eligible carriers generally pays more to do it. The carriers who remain eligible (those with BASIC scores comfortably below the new thresholds) gain leverage. The carriers who lose eligibility lose access to a major freight source and have to rebuild it elsewhere.

This has the shape of a sorting event. It separates carriers into those whose safety profile clears the new commercial bar and those whose does not. For carriers on the right side of that line, reduced competition for broker freight is an opportunity. For carriers on the wrong side, it is a serious problem that calls for immediate attention to safety score management and likely a pivot toward direct shipper relationships and brokers with different risk tolerances while the BASIC scores are rehabilitated.

The Montgomery decision changed broker legal exposure unanimously, permanently, and effective immediately. The clearest takeaway for carriers is this: the value of a clean safety record just moved from a compliance matter toward a commercial advantage, and that shift is worth acting on now regardless of how any single broker explains its policies.

The post C.H. Robinson Is Removing Carriers Based on Safety Scores. A Supreme Court Decision Two Weeks Ago May Explain Why. appeared first on FreightWaves.

The Port of Oakland, Calif., handled 184,492 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) in April, as cargo activity stabilized amid fewer vessel arrivals.

April volume edged down 198,667 TEUs in March as vessel calls declined from 86 to 80. 

The port in a release credited throughput resilience in the face of  evolving global shipping patterns.

April imports of 91,805 TEUs were again outpaced by exports of 92,687 TEUs.

Total cargo volume in April slipped 0.5% from the same month a year ago, when shippers frontloaded ahead of tariff deadlines. Loaded imports totaled 78,822 TEUs, while loaded exports came to 63,910 TEUs.

Year-to-date, volume through April was 742,351 TEUs, a bigger decline of 5.7% from the same period in 2025.

“April’s softer activity reflected a combination of fewer vessel calls, continued adjustments in carrier scheduling and vessel deployment, and typical month-to-month cargo fluctuations,” the port said. “Even with fewer vessel arrivals, cargo volumes remained comparatively stable, continuing a trend toward larger vessel exchanges and increased cargo movement per call.”

Maritime Director Bryan Brandes said Oakland’s diverse cargo mix helps the hub weather volatility across trans-Pacific trade markets. It’s a gateway for agricultural exports and Northern California commerce, he said.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

U.S. fines Maersk $1.9 million over detention charges

Maersk denies report its vessel transited dangerous Mideast route

WATCH: Port of Virginia CEO talks about tariffs, investment, and why her new cranes are the most unique among U.S. container hubs

Port Houston sees April cargo dip, expects rebound in May

The post Oakland exports lead imports in April appeared first on FreightWaves.

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern got what they wanted, now federal rail regulators want what they have asked for.

The Surface Transportation Board on Thursday avoided what would have been an historic first – a second rejection of a merger application – which more than likely would have raised serious questions about the viability of the deal to create the first transcontinental railroad. 

The markets made their displeasure known, slapping UP (NYSE: UNP) and NS (NYSE: NSC) on their collective wrists to the tune of around $7.5 billion in lost capitalization, or close to 10% of the estimated $85 billion value of the deal. Hey, everything’s more expensive these days.

But a rejection also could have stirred blowback from President Trump, who blessed the merger in an Oval Office meeting with UP CEO Jim Vena in 2025, and last week in an interview mused about the federal government possibly taking an ownership stake in the consolidated entity. The STB and Chairman Patrick Fuchs clearly didn’t want that smoke.

So the regulator asked the railroads to submit more information across a range of issues by July 27, delaying the start of formal evaluation until that time. But where the application is concerned, a baseball that’s 99% foul is still 100% fair. 

To this point, for Vena and NS CEO Mark George, navigating the transcontinental two-step has been like trying to stuff an elephant through the eye of a needle. Vena has said that he doesn’t want to give away too much proprietary information about business plans to rival railroads but at the same time, this is unmapped territory for all concerned. No one’s tested the STB’s tougher rules laid down after the chaotic mergers of the Nineties; it’s not even clear how they apply in a radically changed business environment a quarter-century later. And, Vena for sure doesn’t want to give competing Class I carriers a playbook for the mergers sure to follow, which could hollow-out any gains UP and NS are going to great pains to carve out.

Railroading is a close-knit business that rightly takes pride in the fact that even 175 years after turning the first wheel on this continent, it’s the industry that helped make America into a global economic colossus. So, there’s a lot of chatter and a lot of casual talk surrounding the merger as people seek out clues to the merger’s end result. 

In April I reported something I was told by one of the biggest suppliers in the business, and I’ll repeat it here: This supplier had been planning for months in expectation that NS would sell off or otherwise divest 15,000 miles of track, mostly to major short line and regional operators. That’s a suprising number as the entire NS network totals 29,000 miles. UP and NS have both denied this, but I assure you, this supplier is closely tied to the Class Is and is unlikely to make up that kind of number out of thin air.

Make no mistake, UP-NS will be the most thoroughly analyzed merger in the history of transportation, and maybe of business. Fuchs co-authored the most recent surface transportation bill and knows transportation inside and out. The STB collected 120 million separate data points before the application was even filed, including years of traffic statistics, and brought on specialists from MIT to help crunch the numbers.  

One thing stakeholders agree on is that UP and NS will have to give to get, that is, whatever they’re offering in the application are just table stakes before the STB gets down to brass tacks. In a deal of this magnitude, outside of the principles, there are three types of participants: those who want to maintain the status quo; those seeking significant concessions; and others who just want to get paid.

The train gets a-rolling July 27.

Subscribe to FreightWaves’ Rail e-newsletter and get the latest insights on rail freight right in your inbox.

Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.

Related coverage:

STB conditionally accepts UP-NS rail merger application, wants more data

Rail freight rolls on in latest data

UP refutes new AG claims, says it provided all answers in merger paperwork

Short line rail hits T&I truck benefits, costly safety mandates

The post How rail mega-merger moved ahead, and STB avoided making history appeared first on FreightWaves.

Faster-than-expected results are easing early operational fears while shifting attention to decisions on accounting, tax and financial reporting issues.

It’s likely there have been other driver pay increases implemented before Illinois-based Nussbaum Transportation announced one this week. 

But it does appear Nussbaum is the first one to talk about it so publicly.

The announcement this week by Nussbaum brought back memories of when Schneider National (NYSE: SNDR) in September 2020 said it was increasing the pay of its drivers. At the time, it wasn’t certain that it was the first one to increase compensation. But the giant carrier was the one who first did it publicly, and a wave of announced driver pay increases followed, a cascade of them that went on for months. 

Joseph Anderson, the recruiting director at privately-held Nussbaum, told FreightWaves in an interview that the higher pay package announced this week was actually the second one the company had implemented in the past two months. But the April increase was not publicly disclosed, he added.

Nussbaum is not claiming to be the only carrier that has increased pay. Anderson said when it made the disclosure of its higher pay package, he received at least one call from someone he knows at another carrier who said that her company also had recently set higher pay levels for its drivers.

But from all indications, Nussbaum is the first one out there telling the world what it did.

Leading the pack

“We do think we are a little bit ahead of the pack,” Anderson said. 

That driver pay is starting to increase beyond any announcements was affirmed by Leah Shaver, the president of the National Transportation Institute, one of the leading companies surveying driver compensation.

“We have received a conservative number of reported pay increases from fleets in the last four weeks, focused on base pay increases and ease of transitioning for over the road drivers,” Shaver said in an email to FreightWaves. “Based on the complaints from fleets about challenges hiring drivers beginning in Q1 and surging in Q2 and the data supporting the lack of driver hiring in the previous quarter, the pay increases are expected.”

Nussbaum has fluctuated between about 540 to 550 drivers in recent years, Anderson said. It also has a flatbed operation that a year ago was about 11 drivers, Anderson said, and is now up to about 50.

“We’ve got a large orientation group that is coming next week, and hopefully that will put us over the 550 mark,” Anderson said. “That’s basically as high as we’ve ever been.”

Nussbaum was founded in 1945, Anderson said. It largely operated out of one terminal in central Illinois. Anderson said about 30% of the company’s business is for dedicated customers.

Cuts were made at the end of 2024

The change in pay policy at Nussbaum is coming at a head-spinning speed. Anderson said the level of pay for new hires was cut as recently as December 2024. That move also came with reducing supplemental pay levels for what Nussbaum called its “key locations” where it had been paying extra to put drivers into those regions: the area between Chicago and Kenosha/Racine, Wisconsin, the Quad Cities area, Indianapolis and Columbus. 

Most of the cuts came off a level that was lifted during the height of the post-pandemic freight surge, that period when the aforementioned Schneider National had kicked off the run of announced increases.

Some of those reductions were reversed in the April 2026 increases. With the new policies announced this week, the specifics are now public. 

What they’re going to get

Current over the road drivers will get a 3-cent per mile raise and a $50 increase in their weekly minimum guarantee. For new drivers, the starting pay will be up 5 cents per mile with a $100 increase in the minimum. 

One change is that Nussbaum has brought back its enhanced pay package for what it has dubbed its “key locations.” Anderson said between the two increases, April and May, drivers hired in those locations will see a base rate that is 10 cents per mile more than before the change in pay policy.

“Basically, the driver from Chicago who called us two months ago, what we would tell them now is that their pay is 10 cents higher per mile, and there’s an extra $200 in the weekly guarantee, and a sign on bonus of $3,000,” Anderson said. 

For a driver “transitioning” from a prior employer to Nussbaum, the sign-on bonus is $3,000, paid out in steps over six months. But the offer only runs through the end of June.

For flatbed drivers, it’s a $5,000 bonus, also paid out in steps and also ending after the end of June.

Nussbaum is also offering an increased “early exit option.” If a driver moves to Nussbaum and then decides it isn’t the place to be, the company previously offered $1,000 as they departed. That will now be up to $2,000.

According to Nussbaum’s announcement, the various increases will add up to what it calls “irregular route” dry van drivers earning an additional $5,000 to $6,000 per year, “and can expect $81,000 to $92,000 their first year depending on experience.

For drivers in the key locations, it’s another $12,000 per year and $86,000 to $95,000 in their first year, “climbing to $91,000 to $100,000 by year two to grow from there,” the company said.

“Before these increases, the top 30% of Nussbaum OTR drivers were already earning an average of $100,000 per year. Nussbaum expects that number to rise significantly once the new pay takes effect,” according to the company’s statement.

Profit sharing a first

One of the biggest changes in compensation will be the implementation of Nussbaum’s first profit sharing plan with drivers.

Anderson said the profit sharing plan rolled out in this latest offering is new; there’s no comparison to what existed previously. It isn’t a fixed number. But as Nussbaum said in its prepared statement on its pay policies, it is likely to average 2 cents per mile per year, “while strong years could see 4 cents/mile.”

Driver pay increases are coming as the movement of drivers from one company to another has slowed, according to a recent blog posting by Shaver.

In a recent update, Shaver said private and for-hire fleets are finding it challenging to snag “quality drivers.”

“Fleets across the industry are finding that drivers are less willing to move, not because pay has collapsed, but because they feel their current position is on par with anything else they’d find,” Shaver wrote.

She said even during the weak freight market of most of 2025, driver pay was stable. That continued into 2026, she said. 

In a recent question and answer session at an investors’ conference, Ryder (NYSE: R) CEO John Diez said the ground is being laid for higher driver pay levels.

Ryder’s Dedicated segment services the transportation needs of companies that outsource their requirements to Ryder. 

Speaking at the Bank of America Industrials, Transportation and Airlines Key Leaders Conference earlier this month, Diez said the “improving freight market” will start to hit driver pay. 

“You’re going to see it on the driver side with turnover and activity moving up,” he said, according to a transcript of the interview. “We have seen some of that as we exited Q1. You’ll then see sign-on bonuses to attract drivers in the marketplace. Sign-on bonuses are not broadly spread, but in select markets, we are seeing sign-on bonuses. And then later on, you’re going to see wage inflation, which will be the next part of the market dynamic.”

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