Good Monday morning. The March Logistics Managers’ Index just dropped, and it’s giving 2022 vibes as transportation prices hit their highest reading in four years.
Plus:
- Massive CA Warehouse Arson
- Mexico Trucker Strike Continues
- Broker Margins Still Bleeding
🍳 What’s Cookin’ In Freight
🔥 Fires Hit Both Ends of the Supply Chain. A 6-alarm blaze destroyed a 1.2M sq ft Kimberly-Clark distribution center in Ontario, CA (about 11 city blocks), with 175 firefighters responding and multiple big rigs destroyed at the docks. An NFI Industries employee was arrested on felony arson charges. Separately, a fuel tanker explosion near the Bridge of the Americas at the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal killed one worker and temporarily shut down the bridge, though canal shipping was unaffected.
🇲🇽 Mexico’s Trucker Strike isn’t Over. What started Monday as blockades across 20 Mexican states stretched into a second day, and organizers say it could continue indefinitely. Truckers are demanding action on cargo crime (16,000+ incidents annually), diesel costs, and highway security. Key corridors linking Mexico City, Sinaloa, and border crossings in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez remained disrupted Wednesday. Rejection rates in Laredo were already up 37% YoY heading in. If you have cross-border freight moving right now, route around city centers and keep drivers in contact with dispatch.
📉 Brokers, the Math isn’t Working. March broker gross margin landed at $206.12 per load, up just $7.74 from February, with a GM% of 9.91%, essentially flat, per DAT’s Ken Adamo pulling from 1M loads across 439 companies. His read: “the industry is operating at or below total operating cost.” Some brokers are cherry-picking higher-margin loads; others are going after market share and bleeding quietly. Neither works until contract rates move.
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This Isn’t 2022. But It’s Getting Close.
The March Logistics Managers’ Index dropped yesterday. The headline number: 65.7, the fastest rate of expansion since May 2022.
But the number that should stop brokers cold is 89.4.
That’s the Transportation Prices reading. Up 12.7 points in a single month. The highest since March 2022, when the freight market was on fire and everyone was printing money.
Why it’s Happening
The Iran war closed the Strait of Hormuz, taking roughly 20% of global oil supply off the market. For context: Russia’s Ukraine invasion took 10%.
Diesel nationally is now $5.64/gallon, up over $2 from a year ago. In California, it’s $7.57.
Carriers are already responding. A DAT survey of 540+ trucking companies found:
- 18% have parked trucks due to fuel costs
- 45% are driving fewer miles
- 44% are avoiding heavy loads that burn more fuel
The gap between Transportation Prices and Transportation Capacity is now 50.2 points — the widest inversion since November 2021, the height of the Covid freight boom.
Costs are moving across the board:
- Transportation Prices: 89.4 (highest since March 2022)
- Transportation Capacity: 39.2 (lowest since September 2021)
- Aggregate logistics costs: 233.0 (highest since May 2022)
- Forward projection: 241.2, above 240 is historically “highly inflationary”
Why 2026 isn’t a Copy-Paste of 2022
Four years ago, inventories were bloated. Warehouses were stuffed. When demand dropped, freight cratered fast — “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
Today, inventories are lean. The LMI’s Inventory Levels reading is 54.8, versus 75.7 in March 2022. This means there’s less buffer. Firms can’t draw down stockpiles the way they could last time.
That cuts both ways: supply chains are more flexible, but there’s less cushion when things tighten.
So what does this mean?
Small brokers are feeling this hardest. Without contracted lane coverage, they’re chasing capacity on a spot market that’s tightening fast. Tender rejections have been in double digits for most of 2026. Every load is a negotiation they’re less equipped to win.
Meanwhile, larger brokers are facing contract repricing. Shippers will push back.
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🌎 Around the Freight Web
💼 Echo Logistics’ AI Hire. A brokerage posting a dedicated AI ops role says more about where this industry is going than any white paper.
🚨 Kroger Sued. After Quickway shut down, Werner, Swift, and U.S. Xpress allegedly refused to hire its former Teamsters drivers on Kroger’s written instructions. A federal class action says the motive was the union card.
🤖 Driverless On I-70. Kodiak AI ran Level 4 autonomous trucks on Interstate 70 in Ohio and Indiana, its first deployment outside the Sun Belt.
🚛 Prime Inc. & GoodShip. One of North America’s largest trucking companies just signed on for AI-driven bid management, jumpstarting GoodShip’s expansion to serve carriers and brokers, too.
📋 CA Revoked CDLs Unrestored. A judge ordered the DMV to restore non-domiciled CDLs, but the DMV says processing will take a year, and the feds may still block reissuance. Next hearing: October 2026.
🚂 Rail’s Comeback Year. While trucking fights diesel and capacity, rail posted broad recovery numbers.
⚖️ Truckstop Goes Heavy. Truckstop has acquired heavy-haul platform Wize Load and rebranded as Truckstop Heavy Haul.
🎣 The FreightCaviar Corner
CHATTANOOGA, TN. Join FreightCaviar on April 9th at Home Bar— 409 Market Street — for the drop of FreightCaviar Print Issue No. 2: The Freight Alley Edition, 80 pages tracing how one city became the heartbeat of American trucking, brokerage, and freight technology.
The same night, we’re premiering our Freight Alley film, where you can hear the story direct from Chattanooga legends like Max Fuller, David Parker, and Ted Alling.
Freight Humor
Fuente: https://www.freightcaviar.com/freights-2022-flashback/
