Freight Earnings Roll On as Diesel Stays Elevated

Good morning. It's Thursday, July 30th — earnings season keeps rolling as truck makers reshuffle production and the driver-supply fight heads to court.

Q2 results keep pointing the same direction: brokers and carriers are holding margins in a soft market as scarce capacity does the heavy lifting. C.H. Robinson hit its mid-cycle targets from the trough, PACCAR earned more on fewer trucks, and two less-than-truckload majors posted sharply different quarters. On the equipment side, Daimler is moving Freightliner and Western Star production to the Carolinas while used Class 8 sales rebound, a bill heads to the U.S. House over how autonomous trucks handle first responders, and a Toronto telematics startup lands fresh capital. Diesel is holding high on both sides of the border.

C.H. Robinson hits mid-cycle margins from the freight trough

C.H. Robinson reached its mid-cycle operating-margin targets even with the freight market still in the trough of the demand cycle, FreightWaves reports, as its adjusted operating margin rose 360 basis points year over year to 34.7% and total revenue climbed 19.3% to $4.9 billion on stronger pricing. Headcount kept falling under the third-party logistics (3PL) provider's "Lean AI" push, with brokerage-heavy North American Surface Transportation posting a 40.9% adjusted operating margin. As the largest U.S. freight broker and a key tender partner for Canadian shippers moving southbound, its margin resilience is a useful read on cross-border brokerage conditions.

Daimler moves Freightliner, Western Star production to the Carolinas

Truck News is reporting that Daimler Truck North America will shift Freightliner and Western Star production out of Portland, Oregon, to plants in North and South Carolina, laying off 375 workers while keeping its North American headquarters in Portland. The company framed the move as an effort to optimise its production network, and told employees on July 29. With the Cascadia and Western Star among the most common trucks in Canadian fleets, a production-footprint change is worth watching for build timing and availability on this side of the border.

PACCAR earns more on fewer trucks as Class 8 demand firms

PACCAR's second-quarter net income rose to $752 million, up 4% year over year and 24% from the prior quarter, per FreightWaves, as stronger orders lifted build rates even though the Kenworth and Peterbilt parent delivered fewer trucks than a year ago. Management pointed to a July 9 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) emissions clarification as a signal that could pull deferred purchases forward. PACCAR pegged 2026 U.S. and Canada Class 8 retail sales at 230,000 to 270,000 trucks, with firmer freight rates now pressuring fleets that had held off on buying.

Used Class 8 sales rebound in June as prices edge higher

Used Class 8 retail sales rose 9.6% month over month in June — Truck News puts the year-over-year gain at 4%, citing ACT Research — as the average retail price climbed 2% to US$61,751. The rebound outran the typical seasonal bump for June, one of the slower months, even as auction volumes fell 22% and wholesale activity slipped 4.8%. For Canadian operators buying or selling south of the border, the firmer used market is a read-through worth tracking alongside new-truck demand.

Canadian diesel — national average: C$2.26/L

Halifax: C$2.35 | Montreal: C$2.53 | Toronto: C$2.19 | Calgary: C$1.98 | Vancouver: C$2.47

Calgary eased about 3 cents and Vancouver slipped a cent, while Toronto firmed a penny and the national average ticked down to C$2.26. The Vancouver–Calgary spread sits at 49 cents per litre.

U.S. diesel — American Automobile Association (AAA) national average: US$5.32/gal

The AAA on-highway diesel average stood at US$5.32 a gallon, holding near recent highs. (Benchmark switched from the U.S. Energy Information Administration weekly figure to the AAA daily average this edition.)

Canadian diesel: Natural Resources Canada. U.S. diesel: American Automobile Association.

California tells court non-domiciled drivers are safer than citizens

Overdrive reports that California has produced a Department of Motor Vehicles crash-rate analysis telling a federal court that non-domiciled commercial-driver's-licence (CDL) holders are 20% to 25% safer than U.S. citizen drivers, as states line up ahead of oral arguments in September over the Department of Transportation's non-domiciled CDL ban. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has since leaned on driver-vetting and records-access concerns rather than crash data to justify the rule. The outcome will shape the southbound driver pool that Canadian cross-border carriers both compete with and rely on.

House bill would set AV standards for dealing with first responders

A bill introduced in the U.S. House would task the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) with setting minimum standards for how autonomous vehicles (AVs) interact with police, firefighters and paramedics. Truck News reports the AV Emergency Response Coordination Act, from Representative Kevin Mullin (Democrat–California), would also require AV firms to report safety data, stand up a 24/7 hotline for public officials, and let them issue "geofence notices" to keep AVs clear of emergency zones. Any federal AV standard would reach Canadian-owned operators running driverless lanes in the U.S., a group that is starting to grow.

Toronto's Terminal raises $20 million to scale its telematics data platform

Canadian fleet-data infrastructure just drew fresh capital, with Truck News reporting that Toronto-based Terminal closed a $20-million Series A led by Battery Ventures, bringing total funding to $26 million since 2023. The platform standardises data from more than 325 telematics providers — electronic logging devices (ELDs), GPS trackers, dash cameras and more — into a single application programming interface (API) used by insurers, fleets and logistics firms. Battery's Marcus Ryu, joining the board, argued telematics data is far more predictive of future risk than traditional underwriting inputs, pointing to where insurance-based fleet pricing is headed.

PACCAR keeps a driver in its autonomous trucks for now

PACCAR will not pull human drivers from its autonomous trucks yet, per Transport Topics, even as partner Aurora Innovation runs second-generation driver-out trucks on the highway. The Kenworth and Peterbilt parent, which also works with Kodiak AI and Stack, had asked Aurora to put an observer back in the cab after a 2025 driverless launch. The cautious stance matters for Canadian carriers now deploying Aurora capacity on U.S. lanes.

Reorganization charge pushes ArcBest into the red

Transport Topics reports that an impairment charge tied to a strategic reorganization pushed ArcBest to a $13.8-million net loss in the second quarter, reversing a year-ago profit even as revenue rose 15.7% to $1.18 billion. Operating expenses jumped 22.3%, driven partly by a 23.9% increase in purchased transportation at its asset-light division. Because ArcBest's ABF Freight network runs service centres across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, its terminal and cost moves ripple into cross-border LTL lanes.

Old Dominion inches toward a sub-70 operating ratio

Old Dominion posted a 70.1% operating ratio (OR) — FreightWaves notes that is a sharp improvement from 74.6% a year earlier and its closest approach to the sub-70 mark since 2022 — even as tonnage and shipments fell year over year. Revenue per hundredweight excluding fuel rose 5.5% to $29.71, with yield discipline offsetting softer volumes. Record-matching earnings of $1.68 per share underscore how LTL carriers are leaning on pricing rather than freight growth.

The truck at the door is less and less likely to be brown or purple. AlixPartners' latest Home Delivery Survey found the free-shipping expectation has tightened to 2.6 days from a long-steady 3.4, and 55% of retailers now use carriers beyond FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service — with 88% of shoppers saying a late delivery and a bare apology sours them on a retailer for good. It is a clear-eyed look at how last-mile diversification has moved from a procurement tactic to a core determinant of margins and customer retention.

Read the full analysis at FreightWaves.

Four times — how much more likely so-called chameleon carriers, which shut down and reopen under new identities to dodge enforcement, are to be involved in a severe crash, according to Land Line, a figure now cited by backers of the new U.S. Senate bill targeting the practice.