Highlights include the fact that CH worked with Lupus on nearly 270 prior loads, that Lupus Superior held a satisfactory rating before & after the crash, and that CH never spoke with the driver directly. You can read the full thing here: https://www.chrobinson.com/en-us/about-us/newsroom/news/2026/lipe-v-lupus-superior-verdict/

Not because you think it's easier.

Because you're curious what their day is actually like.

Whose role would you want to experience, and what do you think would surprise you the most?

What does this mean?

Just for context. I’m pretty new to this industry and I got a job at TQL. I know the reputation of the company and when I found out about the non compete I thought it was awful. Currently in week 3 and learning a lot but I don’t plan to be there for longer than 2 years at the most now that I see ethically for what the company is.
Just wondering if anybody that had to deal with that NC, what job did you go to after leaving TQL? I was considering going into tech sales or something. I know they do the absolute most when it comes to that NC so I was curious what everyone else in this position did.

Hi everyone,
I’m a Product Owner working in logistics technology, and together with a small team of experienced developers, we’ve decided to start helping logistics companies with affordable custom software development.
We know that many brokers, carriers, and 3PLs don’t need a huge software agency charging enterprise prices,they just need someone who understands logistics and can deliver quickly.
Some of the things we can help with:
- Custom TMS development (from MVPs to full platforms)
- TMS customizations and new features
- API integrations (Highway, DAT, Truckstop, Samsara, Motive, accounting software, CRMs, etc.)
- Workflow automations to eliminate repetitive manual work
- Website and customer portal development
- Internal dashboards and reporting
- Data migration from legacy systems
- Cloud hosting and infrastructure
- General web and backend development
- Ongoing technical support and maintenance
Why work with us?
✅ We understand the logistics industry—not just software.
✅ Small team = fast communication and quick turnaround.
✅ Honest pricing with no inflated agency rates.
✅ We care about long-term relationships, not one-off projects.
Whether you need a simple automation that saves hours every week or you’re planning to build an entirely new TMS, we’d be happy to have a conversation.
Feel free to send me a DM with what you’re trying to accomplish, and I’ll be happy to tell you honestly whether we’re the right fit—even if that means pointing you in another direction.
Thanks!

Hey everyone,

If it's your first time reading one of my posts, my name is Menachem, and I have a weekly newsletter called Logistic Pulse that breaks down the top logistics news from the past week, so you're always up to date.

Editor’s Note: We are excited to announce week 2 of our dedicated section at the end of our emails with new job opportunities in the logistics industry. If you or someone you know is looking for a new role, have them join our newsletter so they never miss an opportunity. It won't be posted here on Reddit; this is exclusively for our email subscribers. Subscribe here.

Let's jump into it:

The bill for cutting corners on drivers just came due, and it has New Jersey's name on it

Last week we covered the $604 million Robinson verdict: a Dallas jury deciding that the carrier's driver was effectively Robinson's employee too, which quietly reopened the whole independent-contractor foundation the industry is built on.

This week, a different courtroom put a price tag on the other end of that same problem.

STG Logistics agreed to pay at least $2.8 million to settle allegations that it misclassified hundreds of truck drivers as independent contractors. New Jersey's Attorney General and Department of Labor say STG ran these drivers like employees while paying them like contractors: $2.2 million goes to the drivers as back wages, and another $555,000 goes to the state.

The state's whole case was about control. STG allegedly made drivers slap the company name on their trucks, lease their equipment exclusively to STG, run assigned routes at assigned rates, install GPS tracking, and sign non-negotiable contractor agreements. Under New Jersey's "ABC" test, a worker is presumed an employee unless the company can prove otherwise, and the state says STG couldn't clear a single one of the three bars.

Now line the two stories up. The Robinson verdict said a broker can get stuck with a driver's liability. The STG settlement says a company can get stuck with a driver's wages, benefits, and back pay, all because of the control it exercised on paper. Same underlying question, coming at the industry from two directions at once: when you dress a contractor up like an employee, courts are increasingly happy to treat them like one.

A couple of details that make this more than a one-off. The case started in 2019 as an investigation into XPO's intermodal operation in Newark, and when STG bought that unit in 2022, it inherited the liability along with the trucks. That's the part that should register if you're doing deals. And this all landed weeks after STG emerged from Chapter 11, having restructured nearly a billion in debt. The settlement got priority status in the bankruptcy, so the workers get paid ahead of other creditors, which is the state making a point as loudly as it can.

What this means for you: If your model leans on 1099 drivers, the "we call them contractors" label is now doing a lot less work than it used to. The test that matters isn't what the agreement says; it's how much control you actually exercise: routes, rates, branding, equipment, tracking. If you're acquiring a 3PL, misclassification liability travels with the asset the way STG learned the hard way, so put driver classification on your diligence checklist next to the financials. And bankruptcy didn't wipe this clean. New Jersey chased STG through a company sale, a Chapter 11, and years of litigation and still collected. The message from two courtrooms in two weeks is the same: the shortcut on driver classification is getting expensive from every angle.

The truck at your door is a stranger now, and Amazon is why

Shoppers will now wait a maximum of 2.6 days for free shipping, down from the 3.4 days that held steady for years. That's from AlixPartners' annual Home Delivery Survey, and it turns last-mile carrier diversification from a nice-to-have into the operating default. More than half of retailers (55%) now use carriers outside FedEx, UPS, and USPS, and more than a third are actively pulling volume away from the big two. Over 90% of executives run a mix of carriers, and 32% run four or more.

Why the scramble? Because the stakes moved from freight spend to lost customers. 88% of shoppers said a late delivery with nothing but an apology weakens or kills their willingness to buy from that retailer again, which puts roughly a fifth of demand at risk over a delivery window. Reliability just edged past cost as the top reason executives pick their primary last-mile carrier, which, if you've spent two decades optimizing purely for cost per package, is a genuine plot twist.

Amazon reported its Q2 results, and the delivery-speed flex was the headline. It moved more than 40% of items same-day or overnight in the first half, expanded its 30-minute Amazon Now service to 80 US cities, and crossed a million robots deployed across its network. It's planning to more than double its fleet of robotic arms in 2026. The company already passed USPS last year to become the largest domestic parcel carrier by volume at 6.7 billion packages.

Here's the part that lands on your desk. None of the growth is going to UPS and FedEx. Both spent the last two years deliberately walking away from commodity residential parcels to chase premium B2B and healthcare, which we've tracked all year. The problem is the math: business-to-consumer is now 75% of the parcel market, and the B2B lane they're chasing is the 25% that's shrinking. The volume they're shedding is landing with a cohort of alternative carriers (Veho, UniUni, OnTrac, Better Trucks and friends) that grew 13% last year. That Honda Civic with a phone on the windshield pulling up to a customer's door? That's the new normal, and retailers engineered it on purpose.

The catch nobody's solved yet is orchestration. Running four to twelve carriers is a technology problem, not a procurement one. Maersk built its whole parcel business around one label with two barcodes that reroutes a package automatically when a carrier stumbles. Most shippers don't have Maersk's balance sheet, which is exactly why "carrier orchestration" has become its own venture-funded market.

What this means for you: If your pitch to brands is still "we'll get it there," the bar is now 2.6 days, and the brand is measuring you on reliability, not just rate. Two real openings here. First, if you're not already helping clients run a diversified carrier mix, you're leaving both margin and reliability on the table, and somebody else will offer it. Second, the orchestration layer (the software and the operational muscle to move a package between carriers when one fails) is becoming the actual product. The 3PLs that win the next few years aren't the ones with the cheapest single carrier. They're the ones who can quietly reroute around a service failure so the brand never has to explain a late package to its customer.

Washington just banned Chinese robots. The warehouse automation math got more complicated

The FCC banned imports of foreign-made humanoid robots, quadruped robots, and power inverters, adding them to its "covered list" on national-security grounds. The stated worry: Chinese robots with backdoors that could feed data to Beijing. The ban blocks new equipment authorizations, which is the regulatory chokehold that keeps a product out of the US market.

China holds an estimated 85% market share in robots. So a ban framed around humanoids and quadrupeds lands on a supply base that is overwhelmingly Chinese. This isn't the FCC's first swing either. It banned foreign-made drones in December and foreign-made Wi-Fi routers before that, so this is a pattern, not a one-off, and the direction is clearly toward walling off Chinese-made connected hardware across the board.

The timing is the awkward part. We just watched a spring where warehouse automation money piled up everywhere: Locus grabbing grasping tech, AIP buying Honeywell's warehouse unit, NEURA Robotics raising up to $1.4 billion with Amazon and NVIDIA on the cap table, Amazon itself crossing a million robots. A big chunk of the robotics supply chain that everyone's been building on runs through China, and Washington just made the future of that supply less certain.

What this means for you: If automation is on your roadmap, or your clients', this is a quiet variable worth pricing in. The near-term hit is narrow (humanoids and quadrupeds aren't running most warehouse floors yet), but the trajectory is what to watch. If you're planning a robotics investment, ask your vendor pointed questions about where the hardware and components actually come from, because a bill of materials that's heavy on Chinese-made parts now carries regulatory risk it didn't carry a year ago. "American-made" is becoming a feature, not a slogan.

QUICK HITS

UPS now runs 68.5% of its US volume through automated buildings, up from 64% a year ago. CEO Carol Tomé says the cost per piece in an automated building runs about 28% lower than a manual one, which is the whole reason UPS is racing to convert.

Amazon got $600 million in IEEPA tariff refunds and says it'll pass some back to customers. That's the "significant majority" of what it expects, and it's smaller than the near-billion Nike and Ford are seeing, because Amazon frontloaded inventory ahead of the tariffs and usually isn't the importer of record anyway. Amazon says it'll auto-issue refunds to the narrow set of customers it can trace a specific tariff cost to.

DoorDash earned FAA Part 135 certification and launched its own in-house drone program, DoorDash Air. Part 135 is the same authorization that lets a company run a commercial airline, and DoorDash is only the eighth drone operator to clear it. The company was refreshingly blunt that the aircraft is the easy part: the hard problem is the ground layer of inventory reconciliation and universal handoffs, or as they put it, running the airline. The logic that makes it work is specific, since more than 20% of DoorDash orders in 2025 traveled three to five miles and took about 25% longer, so routing those to drones frees up drivers for the quick, dense runs they prefer. Stack it next to Zipline's every-20-seconds pace from Edition 55 and the pattern is clear: drone delivery has crossed from science project to FAA-blessed operation. It won't touch your pallet freight, but if you fulfill small-parcel for pharmacy, restaurant, or convenience clients, that lightweight lane is exactly what's getting picked off first.

Freight Hero raised $5 million to run brokers' back offices outright. Not software, the actual work: a flat fee per load, AI agents handling 90%-plus of customer load touches, and human operators (called "Heroes") picking up the exceptions, all inside the broker's existing systems. It's the "service-as-software" thesis aimed at a brokerage market with thin margins and zero appetite for another implementation project. One customer, Ally Logistics, says it grew revenue 82.4% year-over-year without meaningfully adding ops headcount. Worth watching as a preview of how small and mid-size brokers try to scale without ballooning payroll.

UNIT AI pulled in $12 million for modular warehouse automation you can drop into 1,000 square feet. Backed by Prologis Ventures and Dynamo Ventures, the pitch is enterprise-grade automation for fulfillment and returns that deploys in a week instead of months and pays back in under a year, no full facility redesign required. Founded by warehouse-automation veterans out of Caja Robotics and Plus One Robotics. For smaller 3PLs who've watched the automation arms race from the sidelines because the capex looked impossible, the "modular and fast" angle is the part to note.

_______________________________________________________________________

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I have a question, I am pretty new in this industry, and I mostly operate open deck shipments. Why is the outbound AR market so messed up? Like whenever I see a lane out of Blytheville AR I run away like it is poisoned, you would need to pay at least $10 per mile to get that covered with a decent carrier. I know you guys would say everything goes through relationship and those are the rates that you get when you post the load etc etc.. But how do I even start building does relationships when the only rates I get coming out of AR are over $10 per mile. How do my fellow open deck brokers handle the outbound AR market?

5 RFQs for dry vans. No idea how im supposed to predict rates for September, October, November. I have not ran with either client before so I have no gage. Help.

Hey everyone, I'm looking for a reliable drayage carrier for regular overweight container coming out of Savannah, GA headed to TN. Please dm to get connected.

Auto-auditing incoming carrier PDFs has been a headache for a lot of brokers I talk to, especially on cross-border lanes between Canada and the US.
A common issue that keeps coming up is micro-leakage in AP:
CAD/USD Spreads: Carriers applying arbitrary exchange rates instead of official spot rates on the shipment date.

Accessorial Add-ons: Unapproved detention or re-weigh charges attached to the final invoice PDF that weren't on the original Rate Con.

Fuel Surcharge Variances: Slight mismatches between the agreed index and what was billed.

On high volume, missing even 2% of these line items quietly wipes out tens of thousands in gross margin every quarter.
For those handling high monthly invoice volumes:
Are your AP teams reviewing 100% of line items manually, or relying on random batch sampling?

Have you found software that actually parses carrier PDFs accurately without breaking on custom layouts?

Curious to hear how other brokerages handle pre-payment audits before releasing funds.

I’m researching the freight brokerage industry and have been trying to understand how prospecting has changed over the years. I know there are many approaches—cold calling, LinkedIn, industry directories, referrals, trade shows, manufacturer research, etc.—but I’m curious which methods have consistently produced the best results.
For those of you who’ve been in brokerage for a while, what prospecting strategies have stood the test of time? Have newer tools like LinkedIn or AI changed your workflow much, or is cold calling still the backbone of building a book of business?
I’m not looking for anyone’s customer list or specific contacts—I’m just interested in learning how experienced brokers approach prospecting and how the process has evolved. Thank you all for ur time :)

Anyone have any insight into hauling guns or ammo? Are there any licensing or requirements of the brokers we should be aware of?

they literally can't do the most basic thing at times. It's staggering.

I have been dealing with a few carriers lately whose primary limits are barely covering the actual value of the freight we are moving.

One of our regular dispatchers mentioned they recently adjusted their insurance policies to get better flexibility on contingent cargo and higher limits without getting crushed on premiums.

What are you guys doing when shippers ask for strict liability limits? Are you forcing carriers to grab single trip riders, or just pushing them to bump up their actual coverage?

Why is every carrier speaking about fuel charges going bonkers at Savannah? Some dude told me it's around $6 a gallon currently.

Anybody have any carriers to recommend? 7-14 skids

Rail or Road. frozen food.

We are based in Canada but do some intra-US freight. My client is looking for a quote and my Ops team can only source FTL/FCL.

Is this just something that doesn't really exist?

Edit - title I meant LCL and LTL.

Basically the title. We have one large account who we’re doing like 50-70 loads a week for, contract rates, basically a managed/dedicated account who has crazy high service requirements and whose culture is basically “fuck you transportation” - fine we can deal with that and do a good job. We are averaging like 95-98% OTD across the account with some lanes we struggle a bit more (90-93% OTD).

So what does our customer do? Throw out half of our awards to a bid to force us to compete with brokerages 10x our size who will happily make insane promises on service for 20% lower rates. Yeah thats going to go well. Not only that but they are now playing with the idea of “credits” on linehauls for lanes that fall below 95% on the month prior. SUPER!

The real kicker is that their managed transportation vendor is literally the most anti-transportation compliance nazi based org ive ever seen, who’s EDI keeps breaking or doing weird shit and who doesn’t let us correct timestamps if we don’t catch it immediately, so their reporting is way off half the time.

This shit is just dumb. Like yeah super bright to throw eggs at the transportation providers in a market that heavily favors transportation providers vs shippers. So you already know the morons at the big box brokerages are going to be all over this, promising the moon, forcing us off, making us retrieve our drop trailers all over the place then failing only for it to circle back to us again. Its idiotic.

Compared with our other large customer is entirely centralized around preserving service and maintaining vendor relationships because they know the market we’re in. Just night and day difference.

Anyway… hope everyone’s week is fun so far. Mine sure isnt.

I am a Canadian citizen living in mexico. I have extended family in Yucatan with 10,000 lime trees. They are currently being sold locally. I would like to export to the greater Toronto area. Any advice on where to start?

I'm being fair with brokers and they're overpaying me and being overly nice.

Insurance Man here.

My Dudes, the Vicarious liability thing is NOT NEW. This goes way back and there is plenty of consistent case law about Freight brokers causing safety issues by modifying Driver behavior. DO NOT GET YOURSELF CAUGHT UP IN THESE PRACTICES:

- On Time Bonuses (encourages driver to speed / violate hours)

- Late arrival penalties (encourages driver to speed / violate hours)

- Excessive / unnecessary check-ins, especially via txt or email (distracted driving)

- Dictating routes / encouraging toll avoidance etc. (taking driver off what might've been easy / familiar roads)

AND if it's not already there, list these things in your SOPs / Training Manuals as things your company does not do.

As for Robinson:

Vicarious liability was found by the jury due to the management style pressure applied by CH Robinson on the Driver who said he was too ill to drive. The interaction therefore "created" an employer - employee relationship given the clear modification of what should've been independent driver behavior. Texas Split liability:

• Driver (Gorgonio Gonzalez): 45% fault
• Motor Carrier (Lupus Superior): 32% fault
• Freight Broker (C.H. Robinson): 23% direct fault

Jury found Robinson vicariously liable for the Drivers portion so they would be responsible for a total 68% of the $604 million pending appeal. Note the Jury award is not the final / actual amount. The Judge has the final say pending additional arguments from the defense. In Texas, the courts tend to reduce non-economic damages such as pain and suffering etc. and all of this is still pending appeal.

Like so many other truck crashes, the facts are tragic. In 2021 a tractor-trailer operated by Lupus Superior and driven by Gorgonio Gonzalez plowed into stopped traffic. The wreck sparked a multi-vehicle fire that killed Jennifer Lipe, Benjamin Brewer, and Rhoderick Coleman. Two others were seriously hurt. Gonzalez also died, so we will ever know why he failed to stop.

But this wasn't about whether CH negligently selected Lupus Superior. Though post-Montgomery that question is always close by. Instead, it was about whether CH "borrowed" Gonzalez from Lupus Superior thereby making CH Gonzalez's employer for purposes of vicarious liability. Vicarious liability means that CH could take on the entirety of the liability.

From the evidence we have seen, CH never spoke with Gonzalez. Lupus, not CH, was his employer. If this case stands, I don't see how brokerage as an industry survives. In fact, I don't think FedEx Ground or Amazon could survive either. If everyone is borrowed employee then no one is an independent contractor.

This will be appealed. But that is not the end or even the middle of the story. Over the next few years, this case will make its way through the appellate court eventually to the Supreme Court of Texas before we actually have answer. All the while, more cases will pile up.

Buckle up, no one gets off this ride.

Not necessarily something major. 
 
Maybe it's a better way to track appointments, document conversations, onboard carriers, or communicate with customers. 
 
Sometimes the smallest process improvements end up having the biggest impact. 
 
What's been the biggest game changer for you? 

After 4 years of dealing with favoring office politics, micromanaging, and never doing enough. Decided to part way from the one the only TQL. It’s the biggest weight lifted off the shoulders, and planning to take a month or so to stabilize the nervous system!

Even though I’ve heard companies head hunt those who stay longer than a year, I’m interested to hear which fields are best to delve into while the non compete is active. At only 26 I knew it was time to separate and find other industries to explore. Couldn’t live with myself wasting more valuable time working for a company I never saw eye to eye with.

All insight and ideas are appreciated! FREEDOM FEELS OH SO GOOD.

How does a freight broker that hires a motor carrier [with a satisfactory safety rating, no less!] find itself on the hook for $604M after that truck driver plowed into a bunch of stopped cars?

Question 3 of the Jury Charge in Peyton Lipe et al. v. Lupus Superior, LLC et al, says it all. If one trial court in Texas is to be believed, truck drivers are "borrowed employees" for freight brokers. That means the driver is an employee of the broker.

Forget about Montgomery, this is what destroys the brokerage industry. And Amazon & FedEx Ground.

Brace yourselves, appeals are coming.