Month: May 2026

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) today released new research detailing the rising costs of commercial auto liability insurance in the trucking industry and the risk management strategies that motor carriers use to mitigate these costs.

Since the Supreme Court handed down Montgomery v. Caribe Transport on May 14, I have not been able to get through a phone call, a deposition prep, or a LinkedIn thread without somebody asking me the same question. What makes a carrier safe? If we cannot just lean on FMCSA’s SAFER snapshot anymore, what is… Continue reading Carrier vetting 101. Spoiler: It’s not about safety.

The tariff environment that emerged in 2025 restructured modern U.S. trade. Duty brackets that didn’t exist in 2024 suddenly held tens of thousands of entries. Effective rates layered across multiple policies collapsed cost predictability almost overnight. What followed wasn’t a return to normal. It was a sequence of adaptations — some reactive, some structural —… Continue reading New research: Tariffs didn’t raise costs. They raised the execution standard.

On May 17, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., and ranking member Rick Larsen, D-Wash., released the BUILD America 250 Act, a bipartisan five-year surface transportation reauthorization that has to be done before the current authorization expires Sept. 30. Buried inside the 1,000-plus pages is something the autonomous trucking industry has chased… Continue reading BUILD America 250 Act hands AV trucks a fed framework

A vacuum-based ship mooring system for the first time has been deployed at northern China’s Port of Qingdao. Reports say the autonomous technology, deployed in January, berthed a container ship in 30 seconds. It’s also safer, since workers aren’t required to secure mooring lines. A total of 13 vacuum mooring units shorten the mooring process… Continue reading This autonomous ship mooring system really sucks – and that’s a good thing