The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is officially turning up the heat again on something that’s been quietly enforced for years: English language proficiency behind the wheel.
This week, Sean Duffy, confirmed that the agency will be fully restoring enforcement of English requirements for commercial drivers. This means inspectors and compliance officers will now be actively verifying that truck drivers...
If you’ve been hauling freight over the last few years, you already know—this market hasn’t been kind to small carriers. Rates have been stuck low. Fuel hasn’t offered much relief. And too many loads are posted without the pay to back them up.
But this week, the data is showing signs that the market might be starting to shift. Not in a drastic way—but enough that smart carriers can get ahead of it if they understand what’s happening.
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https://www.freightwaves.com/news/what-sonar-is-telling-us-this-week
When a commercial truck crashed into a house in New Jersey this week, the company’s owner attributed the crash to a medical emergency. There were no fatalities, but what about next time? In short, “it happens,” and this disturbingly common phrase in trucking exemplifies the very state of highways in the U.S. today.
That crash wasn’t bad luck. It was a symptom of something deeper: driver health. The trucking industry’s refusal to treat driver health as a foundational part of fleet safety is a...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/when-health-becomes-highway-hazard
If you’ve ever sat at a dock for three hours with no pay and no apology, you’ve already felt the pain of a bad detention policy. The truth is, detention is one of the most common and overlooked ways carriers lose money—and often, it’s not because the pay isn’t there. It’s because it was buried in the paperwork and nobody fought for it.
Every rate con tells a story. And the detention clause tells you whether your time is respected—or just taken for granted.
This article breaks down how detention...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/understanding-detention-pay-clauses
Most owner-operators know how to drive. Some know how to negotiate. But only a few truly know their business. And the ones who do? They’re not just looking at weekly gross or fuel receipts—they’re tracking KPIs.
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. In plain language: these are the numbers that tell you whether your business is winning or bleeding. Not guesses. Not gut feelings. Hard data, tracked weekly, that exposes the real truth about how well the truck—and the business behind it—is...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/what-every-owner-op-should-know-about-kpis
Ask any fleet manager or consultant, and they’ll tell you that when the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration initiates a compliance review, it’s a full-body scan of your operation that starts long before the auditor walks through your door.
In most cases, you’ll get a notice via email or mail that your company has been selected for a compliance review (CR). This could stem from a poor Inspection Selection System score, a recent crash, BASIC alerts in the Safety Measurement System (SMS), a...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/what-fleets-need-to-know-about-fmcsa-compliance-reviews-in-2025
Let’s get real for a second: Just because someone has a license doesn’t mean he or she should be driving a commercial vehicle. New posts from Adam Wingfeld in the FreightWaves Playbook report that nearly 4% of truck drivers on U.S. highways don’t have a valid CDL. That’s tens of thousands of drivers, potentially hauling 80,000-pound loads while technically not legal to operate them.
It gets worse. What license do you get before you can have a CDL? Thirteen states don’t require verifiable...
If you’re running a fleet or managing drivers in 2025, you’d better speak up, literally. On Tuesday, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued new guidance that officially reawakens enforcement of the English Language Proficiency (ELP) rule found in 49 CFR § 391.11(b)(2). This time, there’s real bite behind the bark: Starting June 25, drivers who can’t pass a new two-part ELP roadside test could be placed out of service on the spot.
This move follows Executive Order 14286 signed by...
Scam loads are on the rise. Fraudulent rate confirmations—fake documents posing as real broker contracts—are being used to trick carriers into hauling freight they’ll never get paid for. These scams aren’t just hurting new carriers. They’re costing experienced fleets thousands in fuel, time, and credibility.
Fraudsters are getting better. They mimic real brokers, forge FMCSA credentials, copy MC numbers, and even create fake dispatchers with legitimate-sounding names. In most cases, it all looks...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/5-red-flags-on-a-rate-confirmation-sheet-you-should-never-ignore
You don’t have to manage a fleet of 3,000 trucks to start thinking like someone who does. In fact, some of the most innovative tactics enterprise carriers use aren’t exclusive to the megacarriers. They have better systems, more data and the discipline to act on that data. Many of the advantages big fleets enjoy come from habits and perspectives that small carriers can adopt without massive investments or teams of analysts.
As someone who started as a driver turned owner-operator, built a fleet,...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/big-fleet-tactics-small-carriers-can-borrow