A cartel network involving truckers sent cash loads carrying at least $1 million apiece back into Mexico. Its cocaine operation supplied Atlanta, Georgia, Memphis, Tennessee, and other U.S. cities. Weekly shipments totaled up to 300 kilograms. Roberto Lopez managed logistics, including driver payments.
Federal prosecutors announced his 18-year, 10-month prison sentence Sept. 9, 2026. He pleaded guilty May 19 to cocaine trafficking and money laundering conspiracies. Another five years of supervised release will follow incarceration. Authorities captured him following more than a decade hiding abroad.
Truckers and stash houses
Trucking businessman Carlos Montemayor partnered with enforcer Edgar Valdez-Villareal, who went by “La Barbie.” During the early 2000s, their distribution network served Sinaloa and Beltran-Leyva cartel leaders. Lopez acted as its primary lieutenant. Within six months, traffickers distributed 1,500 kilograms of cocaine in Atlanta alone.
U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg called Lopez “the head of domestic transportation” for those cartels. His responsibilities included payments to stash house operators. He oversaw cash repackaging before arranging cross-border transfers. Court-authorized wiretaps captured discussions about incoming cocaine loads. Other intercepted conversations concerned proceeds heading toward criminal leaders.
Federal estimates put southbound weapons shipments above 1,000 rifles. The tally covered 100 to 200 converted machine guns. Traffickers also moved hundreds of magazines and ammunition drums. Additional equipment included silencers, night vision goggles, ballistic vests plus helmets.
More than a decade in hiding
Lopez, 46, fled after investigators disrupted operations. His indictment dates to Dec. 15, 2009. Authorities arrested the fugitive in Mexico City on June 27, 2024. Officials expelled him Aug. 12, 2025. He used aliases including “Shrek” and “NWA.”
An Atlanta judge sentenced Valdez during 2018. The punishment totaled 49 years, one month behind bars. Montemayor received a 34-year, three-month term in 2019. Both sentences included 10-year periods of supervised release.
DEA agents led this investigation, with assistance from federal marshals plus DOJ’s Office of International Affairs. Prosecutors Garrett L. Bradford, Elizabeth M. Hathaway and former U.S. Attorney John Horn handled court proceedings. The announcement does not identify participating trucking companies. It names neither individual drivers nor specific border crossings.
Why it matters
For brokers and carriers, the case puts trucking’s role in cartel logistics into focus. Knowing how criminal networks manage payments gives freight professionals another reason to examine their transportation partners.
Click here for more articles on cargo theft and freight fraud by Phil Brink.
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Samsara is launching a free perks program for professional drivers, giving millions in its network access to discounts and offers, from more than 50 brands.
The program, called Samsara Driver Perks, is available to professional drivers in the U.S. beginning Thursday, Sept. 10, and includes offers covering food and beverage, fitness, wellness, travel and personal development. Drivers can access the program through the Samsara Driver App, a direct web link or a QR code distributed by participating organizations.
The program is free for drivers and the fleets they work for. Samsara said it plans to expand Driver Perks to other parts of the world other than America. The initial group of participating brands includes Truck Parking Club, Farmers Insurance, A-Premium Auto Parts, 24 Hour Fitness, Crunch Fitness, Audible, BetterHelp and BetterSleep.
Each participating company determines its own discount or offer terms. Drivers redeem the offers directly through the participating brands rather than through Samsara.
The offers span both work-related expenses and activities outside of driving. Truck Parking Club and A-Premium Auto Parts are among the options more directly tied to life on the road, while fitness, wellness and entertainment brands offer benefits that drivers can use away from work.
The program is available to long-haul truck drivers, last-mile delivery drivers and passenger transit workers within Samsara’s network. That gives the program a broader audience than trucking alone, although many of the participating offers are relevant to drivers who spend extended periods on the road.
Some of the offers address issues specific to professional drivers. Truck Parking Club, for example, provides access to reservable truck parking locations. The company said it has more than 6,500 reservable parking locations across all 50 states.
“Drivers lose hours every week looking for parking,” Evan Shelley, co-founder and CEO of Truck Parking Club, said in the program announcement. “We give drivers a new option to park safely, legally and efficiently.”
Samsara said it developed Driver Perks with input from professional drivers through its Driver Council, an advisory board that provides feedback on the company’s products. The company also surveyed drivers across its network about the types of products and services they would find useful.
Fitness and wellness ranked as the category drivers were most interested in, with 64% selecting it. Food and beverage followed at 58%, while 51% identified learning and personal development as an area of interest.
Samsara said the survey results helped determine which offers would be included in the program.
Jerome Jolly, a driver at Ryan Logistics who has been driving for more than 40 years, said the range of offers was one of the program’s most appealing features.
“I know drivers with all kinds of interests and can see them getting a lot out of it,” Jolly said in a statement. “It’s something I’ll use to save money on what I already buy and try a few new things.”
Samsara’s core business is selling technology to fleets, including tools for managing vehicles, equipment and workers. Drivers are among the people who interact with that technology on a daily basis.
Driver Perks extends that relationship beyond the fleet’s day-to-day operations by giving drivers access to benefits when they are not working.
“We’ve spent more than a decade building technology to help keep drivers safe and efficient on the road,” Johan Land, chief product officer at Samsara, said in a statement. “Driver Perks is about recognizing them for that work in a way that’s practical and real.”
The program is also available to fleets at no cost. That allows carriers to offer the discounts to drivers without having to create and administer their own rewards program.
Drivers do not have to pay to access the program, and fleets do not have to purchase a separate service to make the offers available to their drivers. Samsara said the program is intended to evolve as it receives additional feedback from drivers and adds participating brands.
Lon Ingram, director of safety and risk management at All Aboard America, said the program gives fleets another way to support their drivers.
“Our drivers carry the most precious cargo there is: people,” Ingram said in a statement. “They put so much into their work every day, and they deserve to feel supported and recognized.”
Samsara said it plans to add more brands and offers to Driver Perks over time. The company also plans to expand the program beyond the U.S.
Why this matters:
Samsara is expanding beyond the fleet technology it normally sells by giving drivers benefits they can use outside of work. The move gives Samsara another way to stay connected with drivers, who are the people using its technology every day. It also shows how fleet technology companies are looking for ways to build stronger relationships with drivers, not just the fleets that buy their software. For carriers, the program offers another no-cost benefit they can provide to drivers without having to create their own rewards program.
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As federal regulators crack down on hundreds of commercial driver training providers, a veteran truck driver in Georgia is launching a school he says will take a different approach — smaller classes, more time behind the wheel and a greater emphasis on preparing students for the realities of life on the road.
Shawn Gresham, founder of Trucking Life Academy in Dalton, Georgia, told FreightWaves that the problems facing commercial driver training go beyond fraudulent or noncompliant schools.
Gresham, who has driven commercially for 17 years and says he has logged more than 1 million miles, said some legitimate schools do what they are designed to do — help students obtain a commercial driver’s license — without necessarily preparing them for what comes afterward.
“Schools just help you get the license, and that’s just kind of what we got accustomed to,” Gresham said. “It was a status quo.”
Gresham said the problem became clearer after he began training drivers himself.
He recalled receiving a call from a new driver who was descending a mountain and didn’t know which gear to use. When Gresham asked where the driver’s trainer was, the driver told him the trainer was asleep.
Gresham said financial incentives at some carriers can encourage trainers to operate more like team drivers with their trainees instead of spending their time actively teaching them.
“The trainer needs to go to sleep every night and do their 10-hour break, period,” Gresham said, describing changes he implemented while overseeing trainers at Rosedale Transport. “You’re better off paying the trainer a little more money and have them actually train.”
Small classes, eight weekends
Trucking Life Academy is scheduled to open Oct. 18, pending approval from the Georgia Department of Driver Services. Gresham said the fire marshal has inspected the facility and the school was awaiting the remaining licensing process at the time of the interview.
Gresham plans to limit classes to six students and initially operate the program on weekends over eight weeks.
The school will also train students on manual-transmission trucks. Gresham said he believes learning on a manual transmission helps students better understand that operating a commercial truck is fundamentally different from driving a passenger vehicle.
Planned tuition for Trucking Life Academy’s Class A CDL program is $3,795.
Students who haven’t mastered the required skills by the end of the course will be allowed to return for additional training without being charged again, Gresham said.
“If you come here and you’re not ready, you’ll just keep going to school until you get it,” he said.
The academy is also designed to give working students an alternative to carrier-sponsored training arrangements that can require drivers to remain with an employer or repay training costs.
Gresham said the weekend schedule allows students to continue working while learning to drive.
‘It’s the whole industry’
While backing remains an obvious challenge for inexperienced drivers, Gresham said one of the biggest deficiencies he sees is harder to measure: preparing new drivers to handle the pressure of trucking.
Drivers may have to navigate heavy traffic and bad weather while dealing with fatigue, appointment times, dispatchers and long waits at loading docks.
“It’s not just about textbook,” Gresham said.
He said schools can teach students backing maneuvers, but drivers also need to know how to remain composed when traffic, weather, fatigue and pressure from dispatchers converge.
“That there, I think, is something that’s not mandated in schools,” Gresham said.
He also wants students to learn how to communicate with dispatchers, brokers and safety departments and how to recognize situations in which operational pressure conflicts with safe driving.
Gresham said improving CDL education therefore can’t fall solely on schools.
“Yes, it’s schools, but it’s the whole industry,” he said.
Drivers help build the school
Trucking Life Academy has developed largely through donations from drivers and businesses, according to Gresham.
He said two trucks and a trailer were donated to the school, while drivers and supporters have contributed other equipment and supplies. Some drivers have also sponsored tuition for students who otherwise couldn’t afford the program.
Gresham said one donated truck came from a Dalton-area diesel business whose owner had encountered poorly prepared drivers through his towing work.
Another truck, a 2014 Freightliner, was donated by an owner-operator whom Gresham had previously trained. A supporter paid the fuel costs to bring the truck from Florida, while a Dalton leasing business donated a trailer, Gresham said.
Gresham said the academy’s low overhead makes it possible to keep class sizes small and give students additional training when needed.
He said he previously considered outside investment but walked away after concluding the economics would require moving larger numbers of students through the program more quickly than he wanted.
Related: DOT shuts down 110 truck driving schools in CDL fraud crackdown
Gresham calls for closer scrutiny of instructors
Asked what he would change about CDL training if he could make recommendations to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Gresham pointed to instructors.
“I would recommend that the instructors have a good record, a clean record,” he said. “If a driver’s had suspensions and he’s had wrecks and he doesn’t have a clean record, then how are you having [him] teach the next generation of drivers?”
Gresham also favors requirements that prevent schools from attempting to train large numbers of students with too few trucks or inadequate training facilities.
He described one driver he later trained who told him that his previous CDL school had 17 students sharing one truck. According to Gresham, the driver would arrive at 5 a.m., wait much of the day and receive only two 30-minute opportunities to practice backing.
“But as long as he was there in line, paid his $5,000, he got the test and got his license,” Gresham said.
For Gresham, the federal scrutiny of CDL schools represents an opportunity to reconsider not only who is authorized to train commercial drivers, but what happens between earning a CDL and becoming a competent professional driver.
“We’ve got to get back to the focus of making sure that driver succeeds,” he said.
Why it matters: Federal enforcement may remove fraudulent CDL schools, but Gresham’s experience highlights a harder safety question: whether drivers graduating from compliant programs are receiving enough practical preparation to operate safely.
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Visibility tells you what’s wrong. Does your network know how to fix it?
Real-time visibility has become table stakes in supply chain management. But seeing a disruption and solving it are two very different things. When capacity tightens, regulations shift and customer expectations keep rising, dashboards and alerts alone leave your team scrambling for emergency capacity, haggling over spot rates and untangling handoffs by hand.
Does your supply chain have the structural muscle to act on disruption, not just see it?
Download the white paper to learn how to:
- Move beyond the visibility trap and build decision intelligence that turns real-time data into automatic action
- Secure flexible capacity through pre-built carrier relationships instead of rigid, long-term contracts
- Synchronize network-wide coordination across teams, modes, and regions before a disruption hits
- Unlock the advantage of a multi-shipper network to access more capacity, better rates, and sharper benchmarking
- Ask your logistics provider the three questions that reveal whether real savings are actually being executed
Build a supply chain network that doesn’t just watch for disruption. Build one that acts on it.
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Lufthansa Cargo, the logistics subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa Group, has agreed to acquire airport service provider LUG air cargo handling GmbH, as it recognizes that efficient transfer operations are a way to reduce slowdowns on the ground for customers expecting fast freight service.
LUG provides cargo handling and distribution at Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg airports in Germany. The purchase immediately gives Lufthansa Cargo (XETRA: LHA) more capacity to handle its own shipments, while diversifying its revenue stream with business from other airlines require ground handling services, the company said on Tuesday.
The transaction is subject to regular antitrust and regulatory reviews. LUG will continue to operate as independent company and customers will not experience any change in service.
“In an increasingly volatile market environment, we want to become more flexible, more efficient and more resilient for our customers. That is why we are making targeted investments in our infrastructure in our home market in Germany to set the course to provide an even better offering for our customers and achieve profitable growth,” said Frank Bauer, chief operating officer of Lufthansa Cargo, in a news release.
LUG, which is currently owned by the Dettmer Group, has about 400 employees and manages more than 538,000 square feet of warehouse space.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Lufthansa Cargo is currently the No. 14 carrier in the world, by traffic volume, according to the International Air Transport Association. It operates 12 Boeing 777 freighter aircraft and is able to market capacity on six 777s operated by AeroLogic, a joint venture between Lufthansa and DHL Express, for a total of 18 widebody freighters under its control. It also manages the belly capacity of sister airlines Lufthansa Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Discover Airlines and SunExpress to transport freight.
The airline has sharpened its focus on high-margin industry sectors like pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, automotive, and artificial intelligence. Part of the premium strategy includes modernizing cargo infrastructure on the ground. In addition to the LUG acquisition, the company is building a $682 million, 3.5 million square-foot cargo terminal with high bays for efficient pallet storage and automated transport system that will significantly expand cargo handling capacity and efficiency at its Frankfurt hub.
Lufthansa Cargo’s vertical integration extends to cross-border logistics. The company earlier this year merged heyworld, which focuses on providing expedited cross-border shipping for e-commerce shipments and CB Customs Broker, into a new company called GlobeCross GmbH.
Lufthansa Cargo said the combination creates an integrated platform for e-commerce customers with faster, more predictable and fully compliant service in an increasingly complex trade environment.
Customers benefit from a more integrated setup that provides a single interface, shorter decision trees, reduced delays at borders and faster implementation of customized solutions, the carrier said.
Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.
Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.
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Global container throughput reached an all-time monthly high in July 2026, as resilient world trade grappled with operational constraints and disruptions from the Iran war.
Revised data from carriers show July 2026 lifting totaled 17.3 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs), according to Container Trade Statistics, setting a new monthly record roughly 25,000 TEUs above the previous high set in May 2026. Year-to-date global volumes through July are up 5.1% versus the same period in 2025, while July alone was 4.5% higher year over year.
Freight rates climb to two-year highs
The CTS Global Price Index rose to 115 points in July 2026, up 7 points month over month and marking a 47% increase since the start of the year. Compared with July 2025, the index is now 37% higher, with its steep upward trajectory beginning in February 2026 alongside the onset of the Persian Gulf crisis. The last time the index reached similar levels was August 2024, highlighting how market disruption is pushing freight rates higher even as volumes remain robust.
Through the first seven months of 2026, all major regions recorded year-to-date import growth except the Indian Sub-Continent & Middle East, which fell 4.2%. Sub-Saharan Africa posted the strongest percentage gain at 14% year to date, driven in part by Asia-origin cargo, which added nearly 700,000 TEUs versus 2025. Imports from North America to Sub-Saharan Africa also rose almost 15% year to date, pointing to Africa’s expanding role in global container flows.
Europe’s imports were up 6.1% year to date, with Far East cargo contributing roughly 1.5 million additional TEUs compared with the prior year. One factor behind the Far East–Europe strength may be growing European demand for Chinese-manufactured vehicles, with some shipments shifting into containers amid capacity and cost pressures in traditional car-carrier services.
Export patterns reinforce Far East centrality
On the export side, the Indian Sub-Continent & Middle East recorded the largest year-to-date decline at 8.5%, while Europe’s exports slipped 0.7%. Europe’s weaker export performance reflects limited growth to most destinations, though Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception; exports from Europe to the Indian Sub-Continent & Middle East fell by more than 10% year to date, widening the gap between Europe’s strong imports and softer exports.
Asia posted the strongest export growth, up nearly 9% year to date — or almost 6 million additional TEUs—with gains to every destination region and particularly strong contributions from Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Read more articles by Stuart Chirls here.
Read more:
Drinking water or warships? Panama Canal reverses ship restrictions
Sustainability goals: New analysis shows 31% emissions gap between ocean carriers on same trade lane
Fuel, congestion push trans-Pacific ocean rates near $9,500
Jones Act service gets new 10-year port deal
Maersk unfurls new sail power for container ship
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President Donald Trump said Mexico has little the U.S. needs and suggested Washington could stop trading with countries where it runs trade deficits, escalating rhetoric against one of America’s largest trading partners.
President Donald Trump suggested the U.S. could stop trading with Mexico and other countries where it runs large trade deficits, saying during an Oval Office news conference Friday that America could prosper by reducing its dependence on foreign trade.
“We could do tremendous good for ourselves by just not trading with countries,” Trump said during the Sept. 4 news conference.
Trump singled out Mexico, one of the United States’ largest trading partners and a critical link in North American automotive, manufacturing and agricultural supply chains.
“We lose with Mexico $195 billion a year,” Trump said in a video posted by C-SPAN. “If I don’t trade with Mexico, they have nothing that we have to have. I mean, hot tamales? Tomatoes? A couple of things? Basically, they have nothing we need. We have oil. We have everything.”
Trump added that he has a good relationship with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
“I don’t want to do that, because we get along very well with the president,” Trump said. “We like the president, respect her a lot.”
Related: Exports of Mexican-made vehicles to the US rose in August
The president made similar comments about Canada and the European Union, saying the U.S. could eliminate trade deficits simply by refusing to trade with those markets. Trump said the U.S. “loses” roughly $200 billion annually with the European Union and claimed ending trade with Canada would save the U.S. between $60 billion and $90 billion a year.
The remarks came as Trump continued to pressure the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. Reuters reported Friday that Trump threatened to stop trading with some countries where the U.S. runs deficits if the Fed does not cut rates.
Why it matters: The U.S. ran a $197 billion goods deficit with Mexico in 2025, but Mexico also supplies critical vehicles, machinery, electronics and agricultural goods to U.S. businesses and consumers.
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