Broker transparency clears FMCSA as diesel keeps climbing

Owner-operators got the week's most consequential news on August 27, when the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration sent its broker transparency rulemaking to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs -- the last internal checkpoint before a rule can be published. It does not change anything at the load board yet, but it is the furthest this long-stalled proposal, which would force brokers to hand over transaction records, has moved in years. FreightWaves reported the filing; OOIDA's Land Line has the driver-side background on what transparency would actually require.

On enforcement, three more states have ended their non-domiciled CDL programs, Transport Topics reports, part of a federal crackdown that is pushing states out of the voluntary licensing arrangements. If you run team or lease drivers, check where their credentials were issued before it becomes someone else's roadside problem.

If you dispatch through Motive and Highway, the two platforms said they have restored the electronic-logging-device data access that a payment dispute had cut off earlier in the week, per FreightWaves. The interruption is over, but it is a reminder that the pipes between your compliance tools are commercial arrangements that can break.

For anyone who has circled a full lot at 9 p.m., Missouri has broken ground on a truck-parking expansion along I-70 that will add 255 spaces by late 2028, according to Trucking Dive. It is years out and one corridor, but it is real capacity on one of the busiest east-west freight routes.

Watch your freight in the yard: reported U.S. cargo theft rose 5% in the second quarter, with California and Texas accounting for more than half of recorded cases and Southern California still the worst hot spot, FreightWaves reports. Electronics were the top target.

On the cost side, the national average on-highway diesel price sits at $5.454 a gallon in the week to August 17, up 3.7% on the week -- still climbing, and still your biggest controllable line. That figure is a retail pump average including taxes; fleets buying on contract at truck stops pay less, so read it as direction rather than as what you will pay.

The one number moving the driver's way is reefer. The national refrigerated produce rate averaged $4.21 a mile in the week to August 25, up 1.8% on the week. It is an unweighted average across whichever produce lanes were active, so the mix shifts with the growing season -- but the cold trailer is the segment holding firm while diesel keeps eating into everything else.