In the span of five days, three tractor-trailers were struck by CSX freight trains in metro Atlanta. The trucks were destroyed. Fires broke out in each case. By something close to luck, no one was killed. That cluster is worth every owner-operator’s attention, not because Atlanta is uniquely dangerous, but because the same scenario repeated three times in one week, and it is the scenario that ends drivers’ lives at crossings all over the country.
Here is what happened, and the hard operational lesson underneath it.
Three Crashes, Same Story
The first hit on the afternoon of June 25, in Fairburn, a fast-growing logistics suburb on Atlanta’s south side. A CSX train struck a tractor-trailer at the Highway 29 crossing near Bishop Road. According to Fairburn Police Chief Anthony Bazydlo, the truck had gotten stuck on the tracks and could not clear in time before the train arrived. The driver had just enough time to get out and run before the train hit the rig. The truck caught fire. Two people were aboard the train, one suffered minor injuries, and the truck driver was unhurt. As the chief put it, the train was not going to stop and does not stop quickly, and there was real potential for loss of life from both the impact and the fire.
The second came the very next morning, June 26, just before 3:45 a.m., at the Lee Street crossing in southwest Atlanta. A southbound CSX freight train struck a tractor-trailer and dragged it hundreds of feet before stopping. The truck was destroyed, it caught fire, and what appeared to be hundreds of packages were scattered across the tracks. The crash happened directly beneath MARTA infrastructure and forced the transit agency to shut down rail service between West End and Oakland City stations, running a bus bridge during the morning commute. The truck driver could not be located at first. A nearby resident told Channel 2 he could not see how anyone got out of that wreck. The driver, it later emerged, was in shock, walked to a relative’s home, and turned himself in to investigators afterward.
The third happened this morning, just after 3 a.m., near Boulder Park Road and Nathan Road in southwest Atlanta. Another CSX train, another tractor-trailer, another collision under investigation. No injuries reported.
In all three, investigators have said the same thing: the trucks ended up on the tracks as a train approached, and they have not yet explained why the vehicles were positioned there at the moment of impact. That “why” is the entire ballgame, and it is where the lesson lives for every driver who crosses tracks.
Why a Truck on the Tracks Is the Deadliest Position in Trucking
Whether it is a high cresting crossing where the landing gear gets stuck, or a driver simply isn’t paying attention, a freight train cannot stop for you. This is the single most important fact about grade crossings, and it does not care how good a driver you are. A loaded freight train can require more than a mile to stop from track speed. By the time a locomotive engineer sees a truck hung up on the crossing ahead, there is virtually nothing the engineer can do. The physics have already decided the outcome. The only variable left is whether the truck is out of the way in time, and that is determined entirely by decisions the truck driver made before the train ever came into view.
Trucks get caught on crossings for reasons that are specific to large vehicles and that a four-wheeler never has to think about. A long wheelbase and low ground clearance can leave a trailer high-centered on a humped or uneven crossing, the undercarriage grounding out on the raised track bed while the wheels lose their grip. A driver who pulls onto the tracks expecting the traffic ahead to keep moving can get boxed in with the trailer still on the rails when traffic stops. Tight crossing geometry, a sharp approach angle, or a crossing that sits close to an intersection can all leave a long vehicle straddling the tracks with nowhere to go. Frederick Burns, a flatbed driver who spoke to Atlanta media after the Fairburn crash, said plainly that getting stuck on tracks is a hazard experienced drivers are acutely aware of and that these situations are not as rare as people think.
The Atlanta cluster is a concentrated, visible version of a national problem. Collisions at grade crossings disproportionately involve large trucks and buses precisely because those vehicles need more time and distance to clear the tracks than anything else on the road. When the margin is thin, the truck is the vehicle most likely to still be on the rails when the train arrives.
The Rules That Exist Specifically to Keep This From Happening
Because the consequences are so large, there is a specific set of practices built around commercial vehicles at crossings, and they exist precisely because the failure mode is fatal.
Never start across a crossing you cannot completely clear, period. This is the cardinal rule and the one that would have prevented most truck-train crashes. Do not pull onto the tracks until you are certain there is room on the other side for your entire vehicle, trailer included, to clear the rails completely without stopping. If traffic ahead is backed up, if a light at the next intersection might trap you, if you are not sure the whole rig will fit on the far side, you do not start across. You wait. The few minutes you save by squeezing onto a crossing are not worth the only outcome that goes wrong there.
Know your clearance and your crossing. High-profile and low-clearance trailers are at real risk of hanging up on humped crossings, and many such crossings are marked for exactly that reason. A driver running an unfamiliar route with a low trailer needs to be reading for those warnings and planning around them.
Use the emergency notification system. Every public grade crossing in the country is required to post a blue-and-white Emergency Notification System sign with a toll-free number and a unique crossing identification number. If your truck ever does become stuck on a crossing, the sequence is fixed and it is not negotiable: get yourself and anyone with you out of the truck and far away from the tracks first, then call the number on that sign to report the crossing and stop approaching trains, and if you cannot find the number, call 911. People over property, every time. The truck is replaceable. You are not.
The drivers in all three Atlanta crashes got the first part right. Each of them got out and got clear before the train hit. That is why these are stories about destroyed equipment rather than funerals. But the goal is not to escape the truck in the final seconds. It is to never be on the tracks with a train coming in the first place.
The Part That Should Concern Every Carrier
There is a detail in the June 26 Lee Street crash that turns this from a driver-behavior story into a carrier-accountability story. The trucking company connected to that wreck, identified in reporting as MGM Worldwide Logistics, was reported to have been linked to a string of prior crashes, and the driver initially left the scene before later turning himself in. The company’s owner said not all of those prior incidents were serious. CSX police are leading the investigation.
Set aside the specifics of that one company, which are still under investigation, and look at the principle, because it matters for every small carrier. A pattern of crashes is not invisible anymore. It lives in the FMCSA Safety Measurement System, it shows up in CSA scores, and after the Supreme Court’s broker liability ruling this spring, a carrier’s crash and safety record is now a direct source of legal and commercial exposure. Brokers are scrutinizing safety profiles to decide who they will work with. Insurers are pricing risk against them. A carrier with a visible crash pattern is a carrier whose freight access and insurability are both at risk, entirely apart from the human cost of the crashes themselves.
Leaving the scene compounds it. A driver who departs the scene of a crash, whatever the reason, creates a compliance and legal problem on top of the underlying incident. The right thing and the required thing are the same: stay, report, cooperate, and document. Being in shock is understandable and human, but the record does not grade on sympathy.
The Takeaway
Three trucks, three trains, five days, one root cause. Every one of these crashes traces back to a truck being on the tracks with a train coming, and every one of them was survivable only because the timing of the driver’s escape happened to work out. That is a dangerous risk, and the way you keep from ever needing it is simple to state and requires discipline to live: never put your truck on a crossing you cannot completely clear, know your clearances, and if the worst happens, get out, get clear, and call the number on the sign.
The freight has to cross the tracks. You do not have to be on them when the train arrives. In a region like Atlanta, where dense interstate networks and heavy CSX and Norfolk Southern freight lines run through the same industrial districts your loads move through, crossings are a daily reality, and the discipline at each one is what stands between a routine trip and the kind of week metro Atlanta just had.
The post Three Trucks Hit CSX Trains in Metro Atlanta in Under a Week. Every One of Them Is a Lesson in the Crossing Mistake That Kills Drivers. appeared first on FreightWaves.
From July 12 to July 18, 2026, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance runs Operation Safe Driver Week across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and for those seven days the number of officers watching for unsafe driving goes up sharply. CVSA announced the dates and the focus on April 30. The official area of emphasis for 2026 is reckless, careless, or dangerous driving, the third consecutive year the alliance has chosen that theme.
If you run a truck for a living, the right way to think about this week is not as a test you cram for. It is a checkpoint that briefly makes visible something that is true every single week of the year: the way you drive generates a record, and that record follows you. The operators who come out of Safe Driver Week clean are not the ones who drove carefully for seven days. They are the ones who drive that way all the time, because the behaviors officers are looking for in July are the same ones that quietly run up CSA scores, insurance rates, and inspection exposure in every other month.
What “Reckless and Careless” Actually Means at the Roadside
CVSA defines its focus precisely. Reckless driving is operating a vehicle in willful or wanton disregard for the safety of people or property, the most serious of the three because the behavior is treated as intentional. Careless or dangerous driving is operating without proper attention or reasonable consideration for others, and unlike reckless driving it does not require intent. Inattention or distraction is enough.
Here is the part that matters for how the week actually plays out, and it is the single most useful thing to understand about Safe Driver Week. Officers rarely write a ticket that says “reckless driving,” because reckless driving is a judgment call that is hard to charge cleanly at the roadside. Look at what the enforcement actually produced last year. During the 2025 campaign, officers in the U.S. and Canada stopped 8,739 vehicles and issued 2,504 citations and 3,575 warnings. The official focus area that year was the same as this year, reckless and careless driving, and that specific category produced only 20 citations and 53 warnings across the entire continent over seven days.
Speeding, by contrast, produced 917 citations and 1,249 warnings, making it the top infraction by a wide margin. Commercial drivers picked up another 79 citations and 107 warnings for texting or handheld device use, and 248 citations and 204 warnings for failing to wear a seat belt. None of those fall under the “reckless driving” line in the report. In practice, all of them are the focus area. The reckless, careless, and dangerous theme is the banner. Speeding, distraction, following too close, and no seat belt are the tickets.
That distinction is the whole game. If you brace for Safe Driver Week by telling yourself you are not a reckless driver, you are watching for the violation officers almost never write. The behaviors that actually generate citations are the small, everyday ones that a driver in a hurry commits without thinking, and those are exactly the ones a clean operator has already trained out of the cab.
The Tickets Officers Will Be Writing
The full list of behaviors CVSA has named for enforcement this week is worth knowing plainly, because each one is both a roadside citation and a CSA data point. Officers across North America will be watching for speeding, distracted driving, following too closely, improper or unsafe lane changes, failure to wear a seat belt, fatigued or drowsy driving, impaired driving, and disregarding traffic control signals.
The reason CVSA keeps returning to these specific behaviors is in the crash data. Speeding was a factor in 11,288 U.S. traffic deaths in 2024, about 29% of all roadway fatalities. Distracted driving killed 3,208 people that year. Nearly half of the passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2024 were not wearing seat belts. The U.S. recorded 36,640 traffic fatalities in 2025. CVSA’s position, backed by federal data, is that driver behavior contributes to roughly 94% of all crashes, which is why the program targets the driver rather than the equipment. This is the one CVSA enforcement week that is about how you drive, not what you are driving, which makes it fundamentally different from Brake Safety Week or International Roadcheck.
Why a Safe Driver Week Ticket Outlasts the Week
The reason this matters well beyond seven days in July is the Safety Measurement System. A citation written during Safe Driver Week does not stay contained to that week. Driver-side violations feed the Unsafe Driving BASIC in FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System, and that score shapes how often your trucks get pulled in for inspection going forward.
This is the compounding mechanism that owner-operators and small fleets cannot afford to ignore. A speeding ticket in July is not a one-time cost of the fine. It is a data point that raises your Unsafe Driving score, which increases the probability that the system flags you for inspection, which means more roadside stops, which means more chances for the next violation. The score also feeds directly into how brokers and insurers evaluate you. As covered on this platform before, a strong CSA profile has become a commercial asset that affects which loads you can book and what you pay for coverage, and the Unsafe Driving BASIC is one of the most heavily weighted categories in that profile.
For a one-truck operation, a single bad week can move the score meaningfully because there are so few inspections to average against. The smaller the operation, the more each individual violation weighs. That is the opposite of how most owner-operators intuitively think about it, and it is why the solo operator actually has more at stake in a clean Safe Driver Week than a large fleet does, not less.
How to Come Through the Week Clean
The honest preparation for Safe Driver Week is not a checklist you run on July 11. It is honestly the set of habits a professional already runs. But there are concrete things worth tightening as the week approaches.
Slow down and build in time. Speeding is the number one citation of this week every year, and it is entirely within your control. The schedule that requires you to speed is the schedule that needs fixing, because the ticket and the score damage cost far more than the minutes saved. Plan routes with realistic timing so you are never making up minutes against the clock during the one week enforcement is heaviest.
Put the phone away completely. Handheld device use is a federal violation for CMV drivers, it carries heavy fines and CSA points, and it is one of the behaviors officers are specifically watching for. Mount it, set it before you roll, and do not touch it in motion. This is the easiest violation to avoid entirely and one of the most damaging to collect.
Wear the seat belt, every mile. Seat belt violations produced hundreds of citations and warnings last year, they are visible to an officer at a glance, and there is no argument for skipping it. It protects your life and your record at the same time.
Manage your following distance and your lane changes. Following too closely and unsafe lane changes are both on the enforcement list and both are habits that a tired or rushed driver falls into without noticing. Give yourself room. The space in front of your truck is the cheapest insurance you have.
Run your normal clean pre-trip and have your documentation in order. While this week is about driving behavior rather than equipment, an officer who stops you for an observed behavior will still look at the whole picture, your license, medical certificate, registration, hours, and ELD. A clean stop on the driving behavior should not turn into a paperwork or equipment problem because something was out of order.
And if you run drivers, this is a coaching moment, not a crackdown. The fleets that come through this week best are the ones already managing driver behavior year-round with telematics and honest coaching, surfacing speeding and distraction and following distance before they become roadside citations. Safe Driver Week just makes visible what those operators are already watching every day.
The Real Point
Operation Safe Driver Week is not something to fear, and it is not a speed trap to outsmart for a week. It is a concentrated reminder that in modern trucking, how you drive is recorded, scored, and carried forward into your inspection exposure, your insurance, and your standing with brokers. The week rewards the operators who already drive like professionals every day, and it quietly penalizes the ones who treat safe driving as something to perform only when they think someone is watching.
The seven days in July come and go. The Unsafe Driving score they feed does not. Drive the week the way the safest operators drive every week, clean, unhurried, and attentive, and the enforcement blitz is just another Tuesday. That is the entire goal of the program, and it is also, not by coincidence, the way to run a trucking business that lasts.
The post Operation Safe Driver Week Hits July 12. The Ticket You Get That Week Follows You Long After the Week Is Over. appeared first on FreightWaves.
C.H. Robinson has been dismissed as a defendant in a Florida case that might have been one of the first tests of broker liability in a legal arena changed by Montgomery vs. Caribe Transport II.
A court document filed Friday afternoon in the 19th Circuit Court for St. Lucie County, in the widely-publicized case involving driver Harjinder Singh and his fatal u-turn behind the wheel, removed C.H. Robinson as a defendant in the lawsuit brought by the estate of Faniola Joseph, killed in the crash along with two others that occurred after Singh’s tragic turn.
Reiterates: we weren’t part of this
The document doesn’t say why C.H. Robinson (NASDAQ: CHRW) was dismissed as a defendant. But in a prepared statement, the giant 3PL said the same thing Tuesday as it did when the lawsuit from Joseph’s estate was first filed: it had nothing to do with any of the companies involved in the crash.
“The lawsuit in Cantelar v. White Hawk Carriers incorrectly alleged that C.H. Robinson brokered the shipment involved in the accident,” the company said in a prepared statement provided to FreightWaves. “That was false, which is why C.H. Robinson has been dismissed from the case.” (Yaniel Cantelar represents the Joseph estate).
White Hawk is the name of the carrier that Singh was driving for when the crash occurred in August 2025. C.H. Robinson, when the suit was filed, immediately said through its chief legal officer Dorothy Capers that White Hawk “is not an approved carrier for C.H. Robinson nor has been authorized in our system for years.”
Capers said C.H. Robinson had not done business with White Hawk since late January 2024.
That was the argument C.H. Robinson reiterated Tuesday with the news that it was dismissed as a defendant.
“C.H. Robinson did not broker or arrange the shipment, nor was it involved in the selection of the trucking company that moved the shipment.” the statement said. “In fact, at the time of the accident, the trucking company in question was blocked in C.H. Robinson’s system from being booked on any load.”
C.H. Robinson presumably demonstrated that fact to attorneys for the Joseph estate. “Once the plaintiff learned the truth, they voluntarily dismissed C.H. Robinson from the case on June 26, 2026,” the 3PL’s statement said. “C.H. Robinson should not have been named as a defendant in this case, and its dismissal reflects the underlying facts.”
In the initial lawsuit, the recap of how the load came to be hauled by White Hawk and Singh suggested there had been double brokering somewhere in its history. And even if that turns out to be true, C.H. Robinson won’t be accused of being a party to it.
“Any commentary suggesting that C.H. Robinson may have been involved through a ‘double brokerage’ arrangement or somehow booked the load outside of its mandatory, rigorous, and multi-layered carrier vetting process is false,” the company’s statement said. “This was not a C.H. Robinson load, and neither C.H. Robinson nor any C.H. Robinson employee had any role in brokering or arranging the transportation of this load with any carrier.”
No test of new definition of broker liability
From a broader perspective, the elimination of C.H. Robinson from the case means that the highly-publicized fatal crash will not have a broker as a defendant. And in the post-Montgomery ecosystem of trucking lawsuits that could bring in the issue of broker liability brought to life by the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision, the tragic case of Harjinder Singh’s fatal u-turn won’t be one of them.
In that crash, Singh was making an illegal u-turn across multiple lanes of Florida’s Turnpike. Joseph and two other individuals were in a minivan that ended up wedged under Singh’s truck after it had sought to make its turn.
Singh’s status as an illegal immigrant made the case more than just the tragic death of the three passengers in the minivan. The fact that he was illegal, had a CDL issued by California and was not proficient in English injected a hefty dose of politics into the post-crash discussion.
Singh is being held in a Florida jail while awaiting trial on three counts of vehicular homicide.
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The post C.H. Robinson out of Florida ‘U-turn’ lawsuit appeared first on FreightWaves.
Drayage operators are under growing pressure to do more with less. Between demand volatility, terminal congestion, driver shortages, and shrinking margins, relying on manual processes is no longer sustainable.
FreightWaves partnered with CargoWise Landside to survey drayage professionals and uncover how carriers are responding to today’s operational challenges.
Insights include:
- The biggest operational challenges limiting growth and profitability
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- How fleet size and business mix influence technology priorities
- The barriers preventing operators from modernizing their businesses
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Download the report to see how the industry’s top performers are positioning themselves for the next era of drayage.
The post What It Takes to Win in the Next Era of Drayage appeared first on FreightWaves.
In Southern California, Big Blue has moved to Big Yellow and away from Big Orange.
Maersk, the world’s second-busiest container line, has switched most of its eastbound container traffic moving out of the Southern California port complex from BNSF Railway to Union Pacific Railroad.
Data specialist RailState said Maersk (OTC: AMKBY) has concentrated nearly all of its outbound intermodal volume from the Port of Los Angeles-Long Beach on UP’s Sunset Route and off of BNSF’s Southern Transcontinental route.
Omaha-based UP (NYSE: UNP) has grown its share of Maersk volume there from single digits to about 59%, RailState said.
“Shifts like this are almost invisible from the outside,” according to a blog post by marketing chief Daniel Devoe of RailState, which extrapolates data from a sweeping network of cameras aimed at rail lines. “Railroads and shippers keep them private, and the volumes don’t surface in quarterly reports until months later, if ever. By reading the ID on every container that passes a sensor, RailState tracked this shift as it happened.”
Maersk currently has contracts with both UP and BNSF (NYSE: BRK-B).
RailState in a recent report found that Union Pacific volume from Southern California to Chicago had been rising in recent weeks.
Approximately 1,000 TEUs of Maersk’s weekly Southern California outbound volume have shifted to Union Pacific, which now handles 77% of Maersk’s volume in that region. These shipments are primarily routed via UP’s Long Beach-to-Chicago service, reaching the Global 4 terminal near Joliet, Illinois, and the Long Beach-to-Dallas corridor, industry observers say.
“A change like this is hard to see from the outside. The volumes may turn up later in a quarterly report, but that can take months, and many shifts are never announced at all,” said Devoe.
Throughout the tracking period, Maersk transported 100,559 TEUs east along this corridor, with 90% previously handled by BNSF. However, after UP maintained only a single-digit share through mid-May, the volume began to shift rapidly. By the week of June 1, UP’s share surpassed 50% for the first time, climbing to approximately 76% by the week of June 8. Since the transition started in late May, UP has accounted for roughly 59% of the total volume.
The shift comes just as the peak shipping season moves into high gear, and UP presses its case for a transcontinental merger with Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC). BNSF has been an outspoken critic of the merger.
FreightWaves has reached out to Maersk, UP and BNSF for comment.
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Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.
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The post NEW: Maersk shifts SoCal import containers to UP from BNSF appeared first on FreightWaves.
As part of a planned leadership transition, multimodal transportation provider Schneider National announced additional changes on Monday.
Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Schneider (NYSE: SNDR) previously announced that President and CEO Mark Rourke will become the executive chairman of the board, effective Wednesday. Jim Filter, Schneider’s executive vice president and president of transportation and logistics, will succeed Rourke as the company’s president and CEO. Filter, who has been with the company for 27 years, is also expected to be appointed to the board at a later date.
The company said Monday that Michael Baumgardt has been named executive vice president of the intermodal and logistics units. Baumgardt has been with the company in various leadership roles since 2001, most recently serving as senior vice president and general manager of intermodal.
Schneider’s intermodal and logistics segments generated $2.4 billion in combined revenue over the last 12 months.
Steve Wells has been named executive vice president of Schneider’s truckload unit. Wells has been president of Schneider subsidiary Cowan Systems since November 2024, when Schneider announced it would acquire the carrier. Wells has been with Cowan for 27 years and served as chief operating officer from 2019 to 2024.
Scheider’s truckload business generated $2.5 billion in revenue during the last 12 months.
“As we look ahead to a new chapter, I am confident the tightly aligned structure we are announcing today will help us remain nimble, maintain close relationships with our customers and continue building a stronger, more agile Schneider for the future,” said Filter. “Our strategy empowers accountable leaders and engaged teams to accelerate growth and drive efficiency.”
The Monday update also showed that Angela Prill was promoted to senior vice president of intermodal operations. She has been with Schneider for 16 years, most recently serving as vice president of intermodal network management and operations.
As part of the succession plan, Schneider previously announced that Chairman James Welch will become lead independent director of the board.
Last week, the company announced the appointment of Austin Ramirez to its board. Ramirez is the CEO of Wisconsin-based manufacturing company Husco.
More FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden:
- Truckload market’s upswing ushers in driver pay hikes
- Cass sees freight volume recovery in second half of year
- Routing guides are crumbling: ‘It is different this time’
The post Schneider announces additional leadership changes appeared first on FreightWaves.
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: Port of Brownsville completes $295M ship channel deepening project; Palmer Holland expands into Mexico with Querétaro operations; and TexAmericas Center in line for proposed $500M battery-materials project.
Port of Brownsville completes $295M ship channel deepening project
The Port of Brownsville has completed the $295.2 million Brazos Island Harbor Improvement Project, an infrastructure investment that deepens the Brownsville Ship Channel by 10 feet.
The aim of the project is to position the South Texas port to handle larger cargo vessels, expand energy exports and compete for new maritime business.
“The deeper channel changes what the Port of Brownsville can do operationally,” Port Director and CEO William Dietrich said in a news release. “It increases our ability to accommodate larger, more fully loaded vessels, improve cargo efficiency and compete for maritime business that previously faced depth limitations.”
Located 277 miles south of San Antonio at the southernmost tip of Texas along the Gulf of Mexico, the 17-mile Brownsville Ship Channel at the Port of Brownsville is the only deep-water seaport located along the border, making it a major trade channel between Texas and Mexico.
More than 80% of the port’s trade is with Mexico, moving commodities such as steel, petroleum products and industrial cargo, making it a critical gateway for cross-border commerce.
The project deepened the channel’s main navigation route from 42 feet to 52 feet while increasing the entrance and jetty channels from 44 feet to 54 feet.
Brownsville Navigation District Chairman Sergio “Tito” Lopez said the project represents decades of planning and investment.
“This is a generational change,” Lopez said. “This is going to transform our port tremendously.”
Palmer Holland expands into Mexico with Querétaro operations
Specialty chemical and ingredient distributor Palmer Holland has expanded into Mexico, establishing its first operations in the country as part of a broader strategy to grow its presence across North America and Latin America.
The Cleveland-based company said the expansion includes a fully operational legal entity in Mexico, warehouse operations in Querétaro, locally based account managers and Spanish-speaking operations personnel to support customers and suppliers nationwide.
“Our expansion into Mexico is a natural evolution of Palmer Holland’s North American growth strategy,” CEO Tim Skufca said in a news release. “By investing in people and operational capabilities, we are positioning ourselves to provide faster response times, stronger technical support, and greater supply chain continuity.”
The company said its presence in Querétaro will allow it to leverage its North American distribution network while providing localized service to customers across the country.
TexAmericas Center in line for proposed $500M battery-materials project
TexAmericas Center could land a commercial-scale battery-materials manufacturing project representing about $500 million in potential investment in Northeast Texas.
The proposed project is tied to a joint venture between EnergyX and Wildcat Discovery Technologies to develop a lithium iron phosphate cathode active material manufacturing facility in the Texarkana area. EnergyX has secured site control for about 330 acres at TexAmericas Center as it evaluates future development.
The project is not final and remains subject to EnergyX exercising its option to purchase the site, securing approvals, obtaining financing and completing development milestones. Wildcat’s proposed co-location would depend on EnergyX moving forward with the larger commercial project.
EnergyX has already invested about $20 million in an existing demonstration-scale project. The larger facility under evaluation at TexAmericas Center would represent about $500 million in potential investment and could produce about 15,000 metric tonnes per year of lithium iron phosphate cathode active material in its first phase, with room to expand in later phases.
The companies said the facility would support battery components used in energy storage systems, electric vehicles, defense platforms, drones and other advanced energy applications. The proposed facility would be located near EnergyX’s Project Lonestar lithium plant and the U.S. Army’s Red River Army Depot.
TexAmericas Center owns and operates nearly 12,000 acres and approximately 3.5 million square feet of industrial, warehouse, office and logistics space. The industrial park also includes an on-site 350-car rail yard and more than 30 miles of rail running through its properties.
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For years, commercial trucking insurers have encouraged fleets to participate in telematics programs by offering premium discounts in exchange for access to electronic driving data. Programs that once focused primarily on rewarding safe driving have gradually become an increasingly important part of commercial underwriting. Progressive Commercial’s Smart Haul program has been one of those initiatives, allowing eligible motor carriers to share telematics data with the insurer in exchange for potential premium savings. However, documentation reviewed by us and confirmed by Progressive indicates that, for some trucking applicants, participation in Smart Haul is no longer simply an opportunity to earn a discount. Instead, it has become part of the underwriting process itself.
The issue first came to light after we reviewed screenshots from Progressive’s commercial quoting platform. The screenshots showed an insurance applicant progressing through the quoting process before being prompted to identify the fleet’s current electronic logging device (ELD) provider. In the example reviewed by us, The applicant selected Samsara as the company’s existing telematics provider. Rather than continuing with the application, the system displayed a message stating that the customer would be required to purchase and install Motive telematics devices and agree to share telematics data in order to proceed.
According to the website, the system advised that the applicant would not be able to receive a quote without agreeing to install Motive devices within 30 days. For many trucking companies, particularly those that have already invested heavily in an existing fleet management platform, that language represents more than a simple underwriting question. It suggests that, under certain circumstances, the choice of telematics provider may become a condition of obtaining commercial insurance coverage.
To verify whether the screenshots reflected current underwriting procedures, we contacted Progressive. The company responded by providing documentation explaining that a “small subset of trucking risks are required to participate in the Smart Haul program as part of the underwriting process”. The documentation further states that, in certain situations, customers are specifically required to install Motive telematics devices, while other applicants may qualify using different approved telematics providers depending on their underwriting profile.
Progressive’s response confirmed an important distinction between voluntary and mandatory participation. While many customers continue to have the option of enrolling in Smart Haul in exchange for a premium discount, applicants who are required to participate as part of underwriting do not receive the standard Smart Haul participation discount during their initial policy term. Instead, enrollment is treated as an underwriting requirement rather than a voluntary pricing incentive.
The documentation also explains that applicants subject to mandatory participation are expected to install qualifying telematics devices within 30 days. If the requirement applies to a policyholder and the devices are not installed within that time frame, the documentation indicates that coverage may be subject to cancellation. That requirement underscores how telematics has evolved from a safety initiative into a tool that may influence eligibility for insurance coverage itself.
The implications extend beyond simply replacing a small electronic device mounted inside a truck. Modern ELD systems have become the operational backbone of many trucking companies. Beyond recording hours-of-service information required by federal regulations, today’s telematics platforms integrate dispatch software, maintenance scheduling, GPS tracking, fuel management, payroll, routing, driver scorecards, safety reporting, and compliance documentation into a single ecosystem. For many carriers, years of operational data are stored within those systems.
Changing from one telematics provider to another often requires purchasing replacement hardware, scheduling installation across an entire fleet, retraining drivers and office personnel, reconnecting software integrations, and migrating operational information accumulated over several years. For small carriers and owner-operators, those costs may represent a significant business expense beyond the insurance premium itself. For larger fleets, replacing hundreds or thousands of devices can require months of planning and implementation.
The trucking industry has experienced rapid growth in telematics adoption over the past decade. Initially driven by the federal electronic logging device mandate, carriers quickly recognized additional benefits that extended well beyond regulatory compliance. Fleet managers now routinely use telematics to monitor equipment utilization, reduce fuel consumption, improve driver coaching, schedule preventive maintenance, and optimize routing decisions. The technology has become deeply embedded within daily fleet operations.
Insurance companies have also increasingly recognized the value of telematics data. Traditional underwriting has historically relied on information such as years in business, loss history, operating radius, cargo type, driver experience, and annual mileage estimates. Telematics adds another layer of information by providing insurers with data regarding actual driving behavior. Depending on the program, insurers may receive information related to speeding events, harsh braking, rapid acceleration, cornering, mileage, vehicle utilization, hours of operation, and other measurable driving characteristics.
Supporters argue that access to this information allows insurers to evaluate risk with greater precision than traditional underwriting methods alone. Rather than relying solely on historical loss experience, insurers can incorporate real-time operational information into pricing and underwriting decisions. Advocates also contend that telematics encourages safer driving habits by providing fleets with objective performance data that can be used for coaching and risk management.
However, mandatory participation raises broader questions for fleet owners. One issue involves customer choice. Many carriers selected their existing telematics provider after carefully evaluating available features, integration capabilities, subscription costs, customer support, and compatibility with their existing software. If insurance eligibility becomes tied to the use of a specific telematics platform, fleet owners may find themselves balancing operational preferences against underwriting requirements.
Data governance represents another area of interest. As insurers increasingly rely on operational information collected directly from commercial vehicles, questions naturally arise regarding how that information is stored, how long it is retained, who has access to it, and how it may influence future underwriting or claims decisions. Fleet operators may also wonder whether driving behavior recorded during one policy period could affect future renewals or pricing decisions.
Competition within the telematics industry could also become part of the conversation. The commercial trucking market includes numerous established providers offering different capabilities and integration options. If underwriting requirements increasingly favor particular platforms for certain applicants, telematics vendors may face additional pressure to establish technical relationships with insurance carriers or expand compatibility with underwriting systems.
Progressive’s documentation indicates that mandatory Smart Haul participation applies only to a relatively small subset of trucking risks. The company did not publicly identify the specific underwriting criteria used to determine which applicants are required to participate. We requested additional clarification regarding what underwriting factors trigger mandatory enrollment, how frequently those situations occur, whether existing policyholders could encounter similar requirements during renewal, and why Motive is specified in certain cases rather than allowing all approved telematics providers. Additional requests for comment were made to Progressive representatives; however, no further response was received prior to publication.
Although the documentation reviewed by us confirms that the mandatory program applies only to certain applicants, the development reflects a broader trend occurring throughout the commercial insurance industry. Insurers continue investing heavily in predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and telematics as they seek more accurate methods of evaluating risk in an environment marked by rising repair costs, increasing medical expenses, litigation, and large liability verdicts. Operational data collected directly from commercial vehicles has become an increasingly valuable underwriting resource.
For trucking companies, the evolution of insurance underwriting may require additional planning when evaluating both technology investments and insurance options. A decision regarding which ELD platform best fits a fleet’s operational needs could also become intertwined with insurance eligibility or underwriting preferences. That possibility reinforces the importance of discussing telematics requirements with insurance agents and brokers early in the quoting process so that fleets understand whether participation is optional or mandatory before making coverage decisions.
As commercial trucking insurance continues to evolve toward data-driven underwriting, telematics is becoming more than a voluntary safety tool. Progressive’s confirmation that certain applicants are required to participate in Smart Haul—and, in some cases, install Motive devices as a condition of obtaining coverage—illustrates how underwriting practices continue to change alongside advances in fleet technology. Whether similar requirements remain limited to a relatively small group of applicants or become more common throughout the trucking insurance market remains to be seen. What is clear is that the relationship between insurance underwriting and fleet technology is becoming increasingly interconnected, making telematics an important consideration not only for compliance and safety but also for obtaining commercial insurance coverage.
The post Progressive’s Mandatory ELD Switch? Some Small Trucking Fleets May Be Required to Switch ELD Providers. appeared first on FreightWaves.
