Every shelf in this aisle got stocked by a truck. Some of them more than once a week.

Open the refrigerator. Almost every item inside — the milk, the produce, the packaged goods — made its way to the store on a truck. Before that, the ingredients that became those products also moved by truck, often several times over, from farm to processor to distributor to shelf. Take trucking out of the picture and the shelves empty out within days. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s how tightly the food supply chain depends on trucking.

An industry that measures itself in billions of tons
The scale is hard to overstate. In 2024, commercial trucks generated an estimated $906 billion in gross freight revenue and hauled 11.27 billion tons of freight, roughly 72.7% of everything shipped domestically by weight, according to the American Trucking Associations. Nearly 15 million trucks are registered to do that work, and the fleet logs almost 330 billion miles a year getting it done.

Trucking doesn’t stop at the border, either. It carried 67% of the value of U.S.-Canada surface trade and 85% of U.S.-Mexico trade in 2024, tying North American supply chains together, one load at a time.

Millions of jobs, most of them at small companies
The freight itself is only part of the story. Trucking employs 8.4 million people across the economy, including 3.58 million drivers, and that’s before counting the mechanics, dispatchers, warehouse staff, and freight brokers whose jobs exist because trucks need to move. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics tracks these employment trends across the broader transportation and warehousing sector, and trucking consistently accounts for a large share of it.

Contrary to the image of a handful of national mega-carriers, most of this employment sits with small operators. Almost 580,000 motor carriers are registered with the FMCSA, and 91.5% of them run 10 trucks or fewer. Trucking is, in large part, a small business industry, one where a single owner-operator’s paycheck depends on the same load-by-load economics as a major carrier’s.

As Drivewyze’s introductory guide to the industry describes it, that’s also how carriers get classified in the first place: by whether they haul their own goods or someone else’s, by the size of the load, and by the type of truck involved. Truckload, less-than-truckload, private fleet, for-hire: the distinctions sound technical, but they describe real differences in how a shipment gets from a farm or factory to a store shelf.

Essential, and exposed
None of this happens in a vacuum. As Investopedia puts it, the transportation sector is “central to the economy,” though its stability rises and falls with fuel prices, labor costs, regulatory shifts, and events far outside any one company’s control. A spike in diesel prices, a driver shortage, or a new emissions rule can ripple through freight rates and, eventually, through the price of groceries.

Drivers feel that exposure directly. Turnover at large fleets topped 50% in 2022, insurance premiums have climbed sharply, and carriers are under real pressure to invest in safety and efficiency just to stay competitive. The industry that keeps the country fed and stocked runs on thin margins and a workforce that’s harder to hold onto every year.

Why it matters at the kitchen table
Strip away the tonnage figures and freight bills, and the point is simple. Someone drove a truck so the bread, the produce, the medicine, and the everyday goods a household depends on would be there when needed. Trucking isn’t background infrastructure, it’s the reason “putting food on the table” is still possible at the scale a modern economy requires. Understanding the industry, its size, its fragility, and the people who keep it running, is a start toward appreciating just how much rides on every load.

The post Somewhere on the Road, a Truck is Bringing You Dinner appeared first on NATCO Transport.

The old tire got stuck. Yours doesn’t have to.

ATRI’s Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking breaks equipment spending into four buckets: trucks, trailers, repair and maintenance, and tires.

Of the four, tires are the smallest line item on a per-mile basis, but they’re also the one that fleets have the most day-to-day control over, and the one where the newest technology is making the biggest difference.

According to ATRI, the industry’s average tire costs rose 6.4 percent in 2025, to $0.050 per mile, after two years of near-flat pricing. Tariffs on natural rubber from Southeast Asia and on the petroleum feeding synthetic rubber production both pushed costs up.

Specialized fleets, the category that includes flatbed, felt it more than most: mid-sized specialized fleets running five to 100 trucks saw some of the highest tire costs in the industry, largely a function of harsher duty cycles and heavier loads.

With per-tire costs climbing, the industry’s response has been to focus less on price and more on how long a tire lasts. Manufacturers are leaning on advances in tread design, compounding, and casing durability to stretch tire life and hold performance over longer service periods. A few specific shifts stand out:

Smarter compounds. Tire makers are turning to silica-enriched rubbers, bio-based polymers, and chemically recycled PET fiber cords to build tires suited to high-load and long-haul duty. The goal is a casing that holds up to heat and load without sacrificing rolling resistance.

Built-in sensors. Integrated sensors now feed real-time data on wear, pressure, and overall tire condition back to fleet managers, letting crews catch a slow leak or uneven wear pattern before it turns into a roadside breakdown. Some manufacturers are going further, embedding radio tags that stream tire data to the cloud for lifecycle tracking.

Retreadability by design. Newer casing technology is engineered from the start for durability and multiple retread cycles, which matters more than ever as fleets stretch trade cycles and hold onto trucks longer.

None of this changes the tariff pressure driving prices up in the near term, but it does change the math on total cost of ownership. A tire that lasts longer or retreads better closes some of that gap. Full tire and equipment cost data is available at truckingresearch.org.

The post Tires: The Small Line Item Doing the Most Work appeared first on NATCO Transport.

Two Categories Drew Extra Scrutiny
Each year, CVSA names a driver focus and a vehicle focus. This year, the driver focus landed on electronic logging device (ELD) tampering, falsification, and manipulation. The vehicle focus was cargo securement. (For the full announcement, see the Alliance’s underway notice.) Both categories were picked on the strength of 2025 numbers: falsification of records of duty status produced 58,382 violations last year, the second-most-cited driver infraction across all FMCSA inspections, and cargo not properly contained generated more than 18,000 violations on its own.

Day One Already Hinted at the Trend
FMCSA records compiled by FreightWaves showed Day 1 alone produced 1,580 inspections, 2,637 violations, and 496 out-of-service orders, translating to a 31.4% OOS rate against total inspection volume. For comparison, the full 2025 event ended at 18.1% vehicle OOS and 5.9% driver OOS across 56,178 inspections. Final 2026 numbers are expected later this year.

A few takeaways worth noting now, before the formal release:

• Brakes remain the steady leader. Even when CVSA names other focus areas, brake-related issues consistently account for more than 40% of vehicle OOS findings. Inspectors do not stop checking what they always check.
• Cargo securement is not a flatbed-only concern. Loose dunnage, tools, tarps, spare tires, and chains generate citations at roughly the same rate as the freight itself. For shippers moving oversize, heavy haul, or flatbed loads, securement discipline is the difference between a clean inspection and a sidelined truck.
• ELD audit trails carry weight year-round. Inspectors cross-reference duty status against fuel receipts, bills of lading, and toll records. Roadcheck lasts 72 hours. Hours-of-service enforcement does not.

The post Roadcheck 2026 Came for Logs and Loads appeared first on NATCO Transport.

The face of modern cargo theft looks legitimate.
Until it doesn’t.

Cargo theft isn’t new. Neither is the urge to dismiss it as somebody else’s problem, something that happens to other carriers, on other routes, with other shippers. That’s a comfortable position, and it’s also the reason cargo theft keeps working.

Here’s what Verisk CargoNet found when they ran the 2025 numbers: estimated losses surged to nearly $725 million, a 60 percent jump from 2024. The total number of incidents, though, stayed roughly flat. Read that again. Fewer incidents, vastly higher losses. Criminal enterprises aren’t casting a wider net. They’re getting more selective, targeting higher-value shipments, and walking away with more each time.

What’s changed is the sophistication. Thieves have graduated from opportunistic grabs at unattended trailers. Strategic cargo theft, as it’s now called in the industry, involves coordinated crews, advance research, and deliberate infiltration of the supply chain.

Transport Topics recently covered a panel at the Transportation Intermediaries Association’s 2026 Capital Ideas Conference where logistics security leaders detailed what’s new. One tactic stood out: organized crews get a member hired as a legitimate driver at a reputable carrier. The operative runs a load or two without incident. When a high-value shipment gets assigned, the driver parks the truck, walks away, and the crew takes the cargo. The carrier fires the driver for abandoning a load. The incident never gets flagged as strategic theft. The operative moves on to the next employer. It’s engineered to look like negligence, not conspiracy.

The stolen MC number problem runs parallel. Established carrier credentials, complete with shipper access and client relationships, are bought and sold as a commodity. A load can look perfectly legitimate until it vanishes.

None of this calls for panic. It calls for tighter process. Carrier vetting has to go deeper than the MC number. High-value shipments warrant tenure requirements for assigned drivers. Tracking isn’t optional. And an incident response plan written before you need one is exactly the kind of preparation that separates professional freight operations from everyone else.

NATCO has spent three decades building carrier relationships we trust. Cargo security is part of that equation, not a footnote.

The post The Heist That Looks Like an Accident appeared first on NATCO Transport.

The American Transportation Research Institute’s 2025 edition of its annual survey of critical industry issues describes some familiar concerns still dominating the list. And there’s a notable newcomer that deserves attention.

Top Concerns
Through the survey of more than 4,200 industry stakeholders — from motor carrier managers to professional drivers — ATRI compiled a list of issues that include:

1. The Economy. Still holding the top spot for the third consecutive year as the freight recession continues.
2. Lawsuit Abuse Reform. Rising to #2 as nuclear verdicts continue plaguing the industry.
3. Insurance Cost/Availability. Premiums rose another 3% per mile in 2024.
4. Driver Compensation. Remains a top concern, especially among drivers themselves.
5. Driver Training Standards. – A new entry at #9 that’s worth watching.

Why Driver Training Matters Now
Here’s what’s interesting: Driver Training Standards first appeared on truck drivers’ lists of concerns back in 2019. It’s been simmering for years, but it finally cracked the overall top 10 this year at number nine.

The reason? Drivers consistently report that new entrants aren’t being adequately trained to safely operate commercial vehicles. And while FMCSA’s 2022 Entry-Level Driver Training (ELDT) rule was designed to fix this problem, there are significant gaps in enforcement.

The ELDT rule requires new drivers to complete structured theory and behind-the-wheel instruction before taking their CDL skills test. Training providers self-certify through an online Training Provider Registry that they meet federal requirements. But that self-certification process is where things get murky.

Moving Forward
The industry’s preferred solution? FMCSA needs to audit its Training Provider Registry to ensure providers are actually meeting the standards. Training provider associations themselves have joined the chorus, asking the Department of Transportation for stronger enforcement and oversight.

Nearly 43% of survey respondents believe better monitoring is the answer, while another 31% support developing industry-wide best practices and model curricula that all schools would follow.

The Bigger Picture
As freight companies navigate economic uncertainty, rising costs, and persistent challenges, the quality of driver training becomes even more critical. Well-trained drivers mean safer roads, fewer crashes, and ultimately lower insurance costs—connecting right back to issues #2 and #3 on the list.

For an industry built on safety and professionalism, getting driver training right isn’t just about compliance. It’s about protecting everyone who shares the road.

The complete ATRI report is available at truckingresearch.org.

The post Driver Training Takes Center Stage appeared first on NATCO Transport.

Drivers shouldn’t have to choose between safety and getting things delivered.

The American Transportation Research Institute’s latest industry survey digs into something we’ve known for years: truck parking isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s a critical safety issue. Among professional drivers, the lack of available parking ranks as the second-most pressing concern facing the industry today.

Think about what that means for the men and women we partner with to move freight. After navigating traffic, weather, and tight delivery windows, they face another challenge: finding a safe, legal place to rest. The pressure to keep moving when parking isn’t available doesn’t just violate Hours of Service regulations. It also compromises the very thing NATCO values most: driver safety and well-being.

The consequences: Drivers parking in unsafe locations because no alternatives exist. Delayed deliveries because drivers had to end their day early to secure parking. The stress that comes with not knowing where the next rest stop will be. These aren’t abstract problems. They affect real people doing essential work.

That said, there’s encouraging news on the horizon. Ohio, for example, recently announced plans to add 1,400 parking spaces, with Pennsylvania following suit with 1,200 new spots. The ATRI report shows that more than a third of industry stakeholders believe dedicated federal funding for freight-critical parking locations represents the best path forward. We’re watching these developments closely.

At NATCO, our commitment to clear, proactive communication extends beyond coordinating dispatch. It means helping drivers find routes with parking availability in mind. It means recognizing that rest isn’t a luxury — it’s a requirement. And it means never asking a driver to choose between meeting a deadline and their own safety.

Because at the end of the day, a truck parked safely isn’t just good compliance. It’s respect for the people who keep America’s supply chain moving.

The post The Search for Safe Parking appeared first on NATCO Transport.

Truck driving can also provide a path toward stability.

Deep inside this year’s annual report, “Evolving Truck Driver Demographics: Issues and Opportunities,” from The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), there’s an extraordinary section on foster care and trucking.

ATRI’s definition: “Foster care provides temporary, court-monitored placements for youth when their home environments are unsafe, with kinship care being the preferred option. When family placement is not possible, children may live with non-relative caregivers or specialized services, and/or in congregate care settings.”

The numbers:

• 73.2 million children in the United States in 2022.

• About 1 in 128 (0.8%) were served by foster care at some point during the year.

• West Virginia (3.3%), Alaska (2.2%), and Montana (1.9%) have the highest shares of children in foster care.

• New Jersey (0.2%), Utah, Delaware, Virginia, and Maryland (0.4%) have the lowest.

Youth in foster care tend to have a lower high school graduation rates (56%) than the national average (86%), and ATRI’s connection is that housing instability and education are factors affecting a stable future.

Along come national, state, and local programs to help move foster care youth in a positive, more stable direction. Big Brothers Big Sisters has a mentorship program. Foster Care to Success has career counseling, internships, and scholarships.

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act ensures those with housing instability have access to essential services and education. This legislation is one way that the trucking industry is able to reach foster youth and connect them to the possibilities of stability and income. It does so in part through programs like the Foster Care Transition Toolkit.

ATRI words the scenario respectfully and straightforwardly:

“As a society, including the trucking industry, it is important to recognize that foster youth should not be defined by their past experiences. The proper support can help ensure that they surmount any barriers to becoming reliable, motivated, and hardworking employees. By focusing on targeted outreach, inclusive hiring practices, mentorship, and career development opportunities, the industry can help break down stigma and leverage the strengths that foster youth bring to the workforce.”

Transitioning into adulthood is challenging enough, and those with housing stability have an extra set of challenges. Kudos to those in the trucking industry who provide them with an opportunity to go on a career path that can help with stability and a promising future.

The post Foster Care and Trucking appeared first on NATCO Transport.

The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) issued a report this summer: “Evolving Truck Driver Demographics: Issues and Opportunities.” It’s a goldmine of information about our nation’s truck drivers.

About halfway through the document, ATRI presents this table and discussion:

ATRI: Summary Statistics for Top Transportation Occupations

There’s much to unpack here. First, the caveats: The chart is not exclusively for tractor trailer drivers, and that $1,005 median weekly earnings for drivers doesn’t factor in any bonuses. (ATA’s driver compensation study lists that average at $1,470 per week. or some $76,420 per year). Still, we can see that the driver average is, in fact, average when held up with the entire U.S. labor force.

ATRI groups these top five transportation sector occupations to show a scope of industry numbers and then, cleverly, the study pivots into how the industry might effectively confront its perpetual driver shortage.

Which explains the title of that section: “Opportunity: Recruit Younger Employees from other Transportation Occupations.” As they describe the situation:

From which pool do you recruit talent?

“Driver/sales workers and truck driver not only have higher average ages but also higher median weekly earnings than other occupational groups … Consequently, motor carriers (and other transportation companies) may possess a pool of younger talent that is well-positioned to transition into truck driving roles (those with average ages in the upper 30s). Individuals in these positions may already be familiar with the requirements, lifestyle, and expectations associated with truck driving. This presents an opportunity for fleets to leverage their existing non-driving workforce to internally recruit and develop younger drivers.”

Here’s the rub. ATRI’s very next section in the study is “Issue: Declines in Teen Licensing May Impact Younger Adult CDL Applicants.”

Yep. It seems the percentage for those who are eligible to have driver licenses (16 years or older) and don’t is remarkably high. New York: 25%. West Virginia: 24%. Texas: 21%. Hawaii: 21%. Oklahoma: 20%. (All of these percentages are from 2023.) The national average of those without driver licenses was 14%.

So, some people need rides. Uber and Lyft are probably not complaining.

This presents yet another challenge for expanding a commercial driver pool that’s increasingly aging out. ATRI has a solid idea here: Pull from those potential drivers already involved in the transportation industry through aligned jobs. Yes. Start with what you know.

The post The Transportation Jobs appeared first on NATCO Transport.

⏤⏤

Homework? No homework. NATCO took care of that already.

We were one of Truckstop’s first customers. At night, we faxed in our loads to this place in Idaho, and the next morning they were posted.

I was asked to participate on the Truckstop customer advisory board: it took place on the basement of a cruise ship. (And no, they didn’t make us row the boat.) They put up the Truckstop logo and they’re like, “When you see this, what do you think?”

And I quietly — quietly, I thought — said in the back row, “Walmart…maybe a little on the cheap side.” I didn’t realize that Scott (Moscrip, Truckstop’s founder) was sitting across the aisle from me. “Cori, please say that louder.”

So, I did. and it was kind of a turning point. (My idea was) Truckstop has matured. It’s grown. It’s a good-sized company now. Let’s have the image and the logo and the marketing behind it to support that.

If you ask Scott, he says I called his 18-year-old baby ugly. That’s how he took the comments. We laugh and joke about that quite frequently.

Truckstop has always strived to be a partner, a partner with both carriers and brokers. Very on the medium ground: they want to be at service to the industry. It’s very evident of when you talk to somebody within Truckstop on any level of the team, they are “how can we better help you?”

I think that’s key because they’ve always valued customer input, and I think that’s the partnership that goes a long ways in this industry.

Happy 30th birthday, Truckstop. We appreciate everything you’ve done for NATCO Transport and the transportation industry over the years. Looking forward to the next 30 years together.

⏤⏤

You can watch Cori’s tribute to Truckstop.com HERE.

The post At the Truckstop (Meeting) appeared first on NATCO Transport.

And, well, the commercial transportation industry finds itself in a familiar, yet no less serious, pickle.

First, some numbers from the report:

• The United States relies heavily on truck drivers, as they moved roughly 72.6 percent of the nation’s freight (by weight, in 2022).

• Since 2011, truck drivers alone have accounted for approximately 2.2 percent of the workforce.

• In 2024, 3.58 million people were employed in truck driving roles, with some 57.6 percent of them working as tractor-trailer truck drivers.

• The remaining drivers primarily operate in local, last-mile, or direct-to-customer roles.

So far, so good. Right? Not exactly.

For example, “During moderate to strong economies, nearly every motor carrier will decline profitable revenue loads due to a lack of truck drivers; this reality creates a ‘de facto’ driver shortage that is not easily addressed by motor carriers alone.”

Other challenges include an aging driver pool, women accounting for only 4.1 percent of truck drivers, the average truck driver age now at 47 years old, and a faster pace of retirements.

So far, pretty bad, Right? Again, not exactly. Over the next select entries, we’ll dig into the downsides and upsides of the industry’s always-fluid driver situations ⏤ that’s situations, plural, because there are always variables that complement and compete.

Autonomous Trucking. Former Foster Youth. Justice-Involved People. With so many current and potential ways to get deliveries from point A to point B, there’s always friction among the actual competition and whatever’s on the horizon.

That said, NATCO’s success with driver acquisition and retention is still hiding in plain sight. We always emphasize clear communication, and we always treat our drivers with the respect and the appreciation they deserve.

Part of that approach is rooted in our rich history in the transportation industry. Cori Eckley — VP of NATCO’s operations since 2005 — represents the fourth generation in the family business. The value of transportation drove Eckley family dinner conversations then as surely as it drives Cori’s business strategy today.

Watch this space, and we’ll show you how that Eckley dinner talk has contributed to transportation.

The post Who’s Driving That Truck? appeared first on NATCO Transport.