FreightWaves’ readers made the past year a great one for our young brand. Today, we take a fond look back at your favorite articles from 2017.
1. U.S. Rep. Brian Babin: ELD law is the ‘Dodd-Frank law of the trucking industry’
The ELD mandate—which infuriated drivers, excited data nerds, and perplexed industry analysts—was the year’s biggest story in trucking. When Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) took up the cause, truckers everywhere cheered him on. Read more
2. Mother of all truckload capacity shortages coming
2017 started off slow for trucking rates, but in late summer, an unusually active hurricane season exposed the market’s underlying capacity issues. Rates have been sky-high ever since, and we called it. Read more
3. Tesla releases Semi price and increases deposit to $20,000
Elon Musk thrilled a crowd of fanboys at the Tesla Semi unveil in Hawthorne, CA, but left out some really important information. When the prices finally came out, trucking analysts got to work. Read more
4. Nikola Motors calls Elon Musk “full of it”. Report suggests Tesla pre-orders are anemic
Truckers are skeptics and cynics, and started asking hard questions about the Tesla Semi’s price, range, power consumption, and payload. Initial orders were lackluster and there still isn’t any transparency into the deposits carriers have made to reserve Semis. Read more
5. Peloton set to debut truck platoons this year
FreightWaves has made a name for itself covering the technology that is revolutionizing trucking and our story on Peloton, a California start-up that links together driverless trucks to save fuel was a reader favorite. Read more
6. Is Buffet making the right bet on trucking?
We weighed the downside risk of Buffet’s big bet on truck stops and travel centers when Berkshire Hathaway acquired a major stake in Pilot Flying J: what happens to Pilot when autonomous trucks are introduced? Read more
7. CSX continues to disappoint ag shippers
FreightWaves called out the beleaguered railroad for delays and misdirected railcars that caused multiple plant shutdowns, and the story went viral. Read more
8. With a 500-mile range, Tesla Semi arrives with great promise
We sent a correspondent to the Tesla Semi unveiling and jumped on the hype train for a minute, just to see what it felt like. Read more
9. Truckload rate increases will feel like a rocket ship
A few weeks after predicting the mother of all capacity crunches, we doubled-down and raised expectations for huge year-over-year gains in spot and contract rates. So far we’ve been absolutely right. Read more
10. What a fleet or driver should expect running FEMA loads
FreightWaves’ insights are drawn from our team’s deep experience in all aspects of trucking and logistics: in this hurricane season piece, Craig Fuller presents lessons he learned running disaster relief loads for FEMA. Read more
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