Click through to the map that shows how North America’s infrastructure is already integrated, despite our political disagreements.

For years, port trucking companies in southern California have used lease-to-own agreements with their drivers to avoid costs like fuel and insurance, re-classifying their employees as independent contractors. Now the city of Los Angeles has filed suit to put an end to the practice.

Today prosecutors played a tape of former Pilot President Mark Hazelwood using the n-word and disparaging the citizens of Cleveland, Ohio, and Oakland, California. The other defendants asked the judge for separate trials, but he said a decision would have to wait.

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.

Strong economic fundamentals in the U.S. and globally are driving the second-longest bull market since the 1920s. Could the driver shortage ultimately end it all?

Consumer demand, a dwindling inventory of sites suitable for warehouse development, and intensified two- and same-day shipping are keeping warehouse prices at record levels.

The Trump administration wants to open up nearly all of the outer continental shelf to offshore drilling. That means more energy production, more economic growth, and more truckload miles.

Realtor.com is calling for 7% growth in single-family housing starts for 2018, with activity concentrated in the Southern and Western regions of the country. 

Electric car manufacturers need cobalt for their batteries, a metal that’s scarce, subject to geopolitical threats, and mined by children.

Will the enormous investments in energy grid infrastructure required by Tesla’s Semis be priced into the cost of their cars and trucks? And how will the Semi cope with surge pricing at times of peak demand?

Stifel presented reasons why it doesn’t make sense for Home Depot to buy XPO Logistics, but they still think there’s a 31% upside on XPO Stock over twelve months.

An unstable Polar Vortex first warmed the Great Lakes and then brought Siberian temperatures to the region, creating disruptive snowfalls and historically low end-of-year temperatures. These weather events only add to numerous factors keeping spot rates sky-high.

51% of all returns occur in January, when Americans will send back $30B of unwanted gifts. Reverse logistics represent a huge cost increasingly eaten by retailers, while 3PLs stand to make big margins.

JP Morgan likes FedEx, Schneider, Canada Pacific, and JB Hunt–‘sells’ include Union Pacific, Knight-Swift, and CH Robinson.

XPO Logistics stock shot up to ~$90 on a rumored acquisition by Home Depot, and some analysts think the price will rise much, much higher.

Strong rates and healthy economic fundamentals will pose opportunities and challenges for trucking mergers & acquisitions in 2018.

ELD fine enforcement hit during peak holiday retail season. Watch out for April’s ‘hard enforcement’ period, which will coincide with increased agricultural and construction demand.

The massive tax cut passed by the GOP will benefit trucking companies large and small and will boost economic activity across many sectors.

Frustrated truckers lashed out on ELD companies’ Facebook sites, complaining of technical issues and customer service delays on Dec. 18, the first day of the new mandate.

This afternoon FedEx announced its Q2 earnings for fiscal year 2018, which exceeded analyst expectations. FedEx cited higher base rates, volume growth, and cheap fuel as factors in the company’s performance.

Transport’s carbon emissions have exceeded power plant emissions: the decline of coal electricity generation and consumer preference for SUVs and pick-up trucks help explain the trend.

Target acquired same-day grocery delivery service Shipt for $550M in a bid to boost its online food sales and compete with Walmart and Amazon. Our infographic compares the performance and recent investments made by the three companies.

On Saturday, two days after taking medical leave from CSX, CEO Hunter Harrison died. Investors have serious concerns about the railroad’s commitment to executing Harrison’s vision, while some observers disagreed with his approach entirely.

Bettina Warburg, blockchain researcher, entrepreneur, and educator, has been confirmed as a keynote speaker at future of freight conference Transparency18 in Atlanta next May.

Don Tapscott, business executive and blockchain thought leader, has been confirmed as a keynote speaker for FreightWaves’ Transparency18 conference. Tapscott combines a deep knowledge of the ways that technological innovation has changed business over the past thirty years with his up-to-date network of blockchain researchers.

Target has made a massive investment in Shipt, a same-day grocery delivery service for online orders that relies on personal shoppers. Target hopes to challenge the rapid growth of Walmart’s online food sales and wants to offer same-day shipping for all of its products by the end of 2019.

Morgan Stanley and SIG see great prospects for truckload carrier stocks going into 2018. Large carriers’ valuations should benefit from both the ELD mandate and the GOP tax reform.

The Fed has raised interest rates to 1.25%–rates on new loans, equipment leases, old variable debt, and factoring services will all go up. 

Weak workforce training, high corporate tax rates, poor road & rail infrastructure quality, and a lack of regulatory transparency are all hurting America’s competitiveness as a manufacturing location.

UPS faces a major strike threat from 1,300 disgruntled aircraft mechanics, but the good news is that most Christmas e-commerce orders are already onshore.

Walmart has patented an ‘unattended retail storefront’ that would be located in customers’ homes and stocked by autonomous vehicles, part of its quest to compress or eliminate delivery delays altogether.

Warehousing employment surges as Amazon and Walmart are swamped by holiday online orders; UPS aircraft mechanics threaten to go on strike.

FedEx and UPS are squeezing e-commerce shippers with more expensive DIM pricing, accessorial fees, and tough rate negotiations. 

Judge Collier has decided to let federal prosecutors play a “vile, despicable” tape of Mark Hazelwood’s racist rant against black people, the Cleveland Browns, and the entire population of Cleveland, Ohio.

Total accepted loads from LA to Seattle have dropped 60% in a week; spot rates in and out of Los Angeles are up by as much as 35% in seven days.

Tesla is losing investor support as losses continue to mount as competition from the Chevy Bolt stiffens and Model 3 production issues linger. This might impact their ability to compete in the commercial vehicle market 

The EPA has canceled a rule that would have subjected glider kits to the same emissions standards as newly manufactured heavy duty vehicles. Glider truck assemblers lauded the announcement while environmental advocate groups protested.

FedEx Express has announced the second planned purchase upgrading its feeder fleet–a more powerful Cessna that can haul twice the freight and fly faster than the old Caravan 208s.

FreightWaves launches its Women of Transportation series with Part 1: truck drivers. We spoke to Ellen Voie of Women in Trucking and Stephanie Klang, who’s been driving with CFI since the 1980s, about issues women drivers face and what’s being done to improve work environments.

ZIM, MTI, and Maersk have all announced trials of blockchain-based solutions for shipping, from bills-of-lading to cybersecurity protections. 

CMA CMG and MSC have entered orders for a total of 20 record-breaking 22,000 TEU ships, reflecting a long-term trend toward consolidation in larger vessels and growing confidence in maritime shipping rates.

American oil production and the number of rigs should reach record highs in 2018. This is good news for trucking: both demand for truckload miles and overall economic growth will increase.

Velodyne LiDAR in San Jose, CA, announced this morning the release of its ground-breaking new sensor for autonomous vehicles, the VLS-128, which offers double the range and 10x the resolution of its previous industry-leading sensor.

Pilot CEO Jimmy Haslam III insists he had no knowledge of the fuel rebate fraud scheme his company perpetrated against thousands of its customers. But why does his name keep coming up in court?

Electric vehicles have a hidden carbon footprint: their intensive use of aluminum and copper, and the dirty electric grids that charge their batteries, make them much less environmentally friendly than their boosters admit.

On Black Friday, Morgan Stanley released its research report “Blockchain in Freight Transportation: Early Days Yet but Worth the Hype”–we break down the key takeaways, from lists of current use cases to potential obstacles to implementation and how they’ll be overcome. 

TMW’s Tim Leonard has been at the forefront of big data in transportation for decades. Now he’s leading the charge on developing blockchain business applications. Yesterday, Leonard spoke to FreightWaves about his recent product demos.

Walmart’s commitment to digital sales, grocery pickup, and two day delivery mean a newly intensified supply chain: more truckloads to its stores, which are now acting like fulfillment centers, more expedited service in the holiday shopping capacity crunch, and more demand for last-mile delivery to its customers’ homes.

On Monday Uber announced its agreement to purchase 24,000 self-driving Volvo XC90 SUVs for $1.4B, accelerating the auto industry’s shift to shared, autonomous transportation-as-a-service.

On Thursday night, Elon Musk announced Tesla’s new Semi tractors. Although the promised range of 500 miles impressed industry observers, the event left analysts and investors with even more questions about the truck’s specifications and Tesla’s production capacity.

Executives at V3 Transportation, one of the nation’s largest expeditor fleets, spoke to me about how the ELD mandate will change their segment of the industry.

Today SAP SE, a global leader in enterprise management software, announced their partnership with the Blockchain in Trucking Alliance (BiTA). SAP is a German multinational corporation with 84,000 employees serving 365,000 business and public sector customers in 180 countries.

Asian shippers are siding with the Notorious B.I.G.’s declaration of regional loyalty from the 1997 hit “Goin’ Back to Cali”: “If I got to choose a coast, I got to choose the East.” The expansion of the Panama Canal that doubled its capacity has started shifting freight to east coast ports, which have invested billions in dredging, construction, and equipment purchases to take advantage of the increased flow.

Boeing patented a design for an intermodal container-carrying plane that can pick up and drop off boxes directly onto the airport runway. This plane embodies an intermediate mode between currently existing high priority, high cost air freight and low priority, low cost railway and ship freight.

Steadily rising global copper prices have spurred US production, up 21% since 2011. Although Chinese demand has softened somewhat, copper from mines in the Southwest should flow into Texas, Florida, and California as they rebuild from natural disasters.

A 2017 study by the RAND Corporation found that shifting UPS’s lightest 20% of packages in an urban setting to drone delivery would only result in a 5.7% savings in total energy-use. As the shipping industry transitions to electric trucks, the drones’ advantage in carbon emissions would also disappear.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has come to trucking, generating data that improves safety and efficiency for carriers while at the same time giving shippers and customers realtime visibility into the location and condition of their goods.

Riskpulse predicts a somewhat colder, wetter winter for the western and northwestern US; warmer, drier conditions should prevail in the southeast and eastern seaboard.

Tuesday morning, Pilot’s army of defense lawyers got their chance to re-frame the case as one of government overreach, where federal prosecutors relied on dubious witnesses to tar Pilot’s executives with guilt-by-association. 

On Monday in Chattanooga, federal prosecutors presented their opening arguments in the conspiracy and fraud trial of former Pilot Flying J employees Mark Hazelwood, Scott Wombold, Karen Mann, and Heather Jones.

Toyota unveiled a new fuel-cell car at the Tokyo Motor Show wearing an airless tire concept from Sumitomo. There are a number of airless tires used in specialized applications, despite issues with weight and rolling resistance.

Amazon has written a provision into the National Defense Authorization Act that could funnel huge amounts of Department of Defense procurement through their platforms, giving them even more leverage over suppliers.

This is what being “deep in production hell” looks like. Yesterday Tesla reported wider-than-expected losses of $671M for the third quarter, the largest quarterly loss in the company’s history, which comes right on the heels of a $336M loss in Q2.

Sayfullo Saipov, the 29 year old Uzbek immigrant who has been charged with using a Home Depot rental truck to kill 8 people in Manhattan on Wednesday, was a CDL holder who had attempted to start multiple trucking companies in the U.S.

An FMCSA pilot program to study the impacts of allowing drivers more flexibility in determined when they rest is being welcomed by many in the industry.

Riskpulse, the leader in providing weather risk analytics for supply chains, has issued a retrospective report discussing how they advised their customers during the historic 2017 hurricane season.

Rolls-Royce envisions a future of autonomous cargo and naval vessels controlled from futuristic shore facilities. Click through to watch their sci-fi style film about how a Finnish shore control center responds to losing contact with one of its ships.

Heightened tensions in the South China Sea over territorial disputes threaten $5T in shipping and $1.2T in US-only imports and exports.

Californians are about to see huge increases in the fuel taxes they pay at the pump. California’s Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017, was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) in April and will begin taking effect this Wednesday with a 12 cent jump in the gasoline base excise tax and a 20 cent spike in the diesel fuel base excise tax.

Last Friday afternoon, Stifel Financial Corp.’s John Larkin hosted a conference call with Blockchain in Trucking Alliance (BiTA) Founder Craig Fuller, President Chris Burruss and 228 industry participants to discuss how BiTA will work as a forum to create standard protocols and procedures for supply chain participants as the industry shifts to blockchain over the next 3-5 years.

The recent run up in bitcoin price has not kept the critics at bay. One thing that most agree is that blockchain technology, the underlying technology of bitcoin, promises real-world applications and game-changing outcomes. 

Penn State issued its 22nd annual 3PL study and the overriding theme was about the importance of data transparency in the supply-chain. Shippers are demanding more transparency in all of their vendors, but since logistics is the life-blood of a supply-chain, 3PLs must accelerate their investments and offerings for shippers. 

The future of transportation is not found in Silicon Valley or Detroit. Singapore will lead the next century of transportation innovation. 

Stifel sees stable, strong market fundamentals across transport. Click through for a recording of Stifel’s Friday afternoon BiTA conference call.

Winter is coming. The National Weather Service is call for several inches of snow to blanket Minnesota, Wisconsin, and parts of the Dakotas this weekend, with over 90% confidence.

Cargo and passenger vessels on the high seas face a multitude of threats and risks that affect decision-making, from delays at canals to illegal migrant traffic, major weather events, and even disease outbreaks. A new emergency notification system is hoping to reduce those dangers.

Trump clears regulations for commercial drone flights in the US, ushering in a new age of airfreight drones. 

McKinsey & Company has issued a landmark report predicting sweeping changes amid steady growth in the container shipping industry over the next 50 years.

One of 2017’s biggest stories in the emerging autonomous vehicles industry—Waymo’s $2.6B lawsuit against Uber over stolen trade secrets—revolves around a single piece of technology that is currently fueling a frenzied global competition for investment dollars, engineering expertise, and manufacturing capacity.

While legislative wheels are starting to turn, there is little reason to expect major movement on any infrastructure bill in 2017. The most optimistic timelines being floated on Capitol Hill call for the law to be signed in 2018, with funds released in 2020.