FreightWaves Today | September 18

Craig Fuller (0:24)

Welcome to a Friday edition of FreightWaves Today. Julie, I'm so excited with the weekend. It's been a long couple of weeks post-Labor Day, sort of getting back into it. You know, the freight economy does feel a little softer. We've talked about that. The rail volumes are certainly off. Now, the question is how much of that is holiday, Labor Day related, which is certainly a piece of it.

But it does feel like we're headed into, we're headed towards peak, we'll say the momentous peak. There isn't any signs that really peak is coming. We're gonna talk about that on our Sonar Update. A little bit, yep. Because it's important, but we're gonna have a very, we have a very special episode today for two reasons. One is we're gonna talk about one of my favorite subjects, which are GOP1s, these weight loss drugs that are being used for people, everything from cosmetic purposes, but also health purposes, we'll talk about the health benefits, but also talk about, probably for our audiences, the more impact on consumer buying behaviors and freight. So not only are people losing weight, but our trucks are also losing tonnage.

Julie (1:25)

Changing their habits.

Craig Fuller (1:26)

Exactly. And that is, show it up in the data, we've got the data to talk about and discuss that. And then we're gonna get into the FreightTech100s, our big awards this time of year. The award ceremony for the FreightTech25 is at F3, so you can get your tickets if you have not signed up, so please do so. But the FreightTech100 is our opportunity to recognize the most innovative companies in freight. Look, when it first came out, it was viewed as a tech award, but what we found over the years is that a lot of companies that are in logistics actually apply for it. I think one of the more interesting ones that applied for it years ago is Domino's, who would argue they're not only a logistics company, but they're a tech company that happens to deliver pizza.

And it's gotten better.

Don Everhart (2:10)

I buy it.

Craig Fuller (2:11)

Are you a fan of Domino's?

Don Everhart (2:13)

Not really.

Craig Fuller (2:15)

Because of GLP1s, I don't eat pizza at all anymore. We're gonna talk to Ryan Schreiber about the impact of pizza. My wife, Friday night is pizza night at the house. Papa John's the preference.

Julie (2:25)

You've never eaten pizza there.

Craig Fuller (2:27)

Pizza is one of the, even though it has cheese on it. Oh, really? It's one of those few foods that I will eat that has dairy in it.

Don Everhart (2:33)

I assume you didn't.

Craig Fuller (2:34)

No, ice cream being the other, because it's mozzarella and I can sort of deal with that. Anyways, I don't want to get in, I'm not gonna bore anybody with my personal diet. I do have it, because it's not there. But we're gonna talk to two people who are in our industry, are well-known folks in our industry today, and we're gonna talk about their own journeys with GLP Ones. We have Ryan Schreiber, he's the Chief Growth Officer of MetaFora.

Ryan has been around this industry, has seen more brokerages than probably anybody that I know. And we've got Don Everhart, who one of the great things about Don is he works at Transflow, which is a technology company, Don has also seen the insides of the largest truckload carrier, was at Swift before he decided to go into technology and knows what it takes to deliver freight. Well, he's going to talk about delivering weight loss through GLP-1, his own journey, going to share that, and then we're going to talk about the impact freight. Lots to get into. But before we do, let's go to the headlines.

Julie (3:35)

We kick things off with Tesla setting its sights firmly on the European freight market. The electric vehicle giant will begin European demonstrations of the SEMI in the first half of 2027 and is targeting customer deliveries by the end of that year, according to Dan Priestley, head of SEMI at Tesla. The first European trucks will be built at the company's plant outside Reno, Nevada, which is designed for 1,000 trucks a week or 50,000 a year.

The European SEMI is rated at 550 kilometers of usable range, about 342 miles, and can accept 800 kilowatts of charge, recovering more than 60 percent of range in 30 minutes. To support the rollout, Tesla will open its European mega-charger network next year, with more than 100 stalls equipped with the megawatt charging system, each capable of 1.2 megawatts. Over on the rails, Norfolk Southern is arguing that the future of intermodal dominance isn't just about beating trucks on price. According to Shawn Tireman, Vice President of Automotive and Intermodal Marketing at Norfolk Southern, the railroad's proposed combination with Union Pacific is central to removing structural friction from the freight network. The proposed transaction would create a single-line railroad connecting major West Coast markets with the Southeast, Northeast, and other Eastern markets. Under the proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern combination, the railroad said about 10,000 existing lanes could shift from interline service to single-line service. The application filings also project the elimination of approximately 2,400 rail car and container handlings and 60,000 car miles per day. Norfolk Southern's intermodal volume rose 13.7% year-over-year this past week, pointing to evidence that rail can capture business from the highway when its service offering is competitive. Finally, freight brokers are getting a powerful new tool to evaluate carrier safety in real time. Cambridge Mobile Telematics has officially launched Freight Safety Intelligence, which analyzes driving behavior from the previous 90 days, and generates a carrier level safety score. The platform uses data from carriers' existing telematic systems rather than requiring them to install new hardware, and carriers have the choice to opt into the program and control what specific information they share.