Ford’s sub-$30K electric truck puts the home backup inverter right inside the vehicle
Transportationvia The Verge Transportation
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We're still a few months away from the official reveal of the Ford Fathom, the automaker's first next-generation electric vehicle. While we wait, Ford has been whetting our appetite with news about the sub-$30,000 pickup - including today's announcement about the Fathom's bidirectional charging capabilities. With an increasing number of EVs coming out with bidirectional vehicle-to-home (V2H) or vehicle-to-load (V2L) charging capabilities, Ford is trying to position the Fathom as a key entrant - and one that simplifies the system by making it an everyday reality rather than a $10,000 luxury perk. Unlike the discontinued F-150 Lightning, wh … Read the full story at The Verge.
We’re still a few months away from the official reveal of the Ford Fathom, the automaker’s first next-generation electric vehicle. While we wait, Ford has been whetting our appetite with news about the sub-$30,000 pickup – including today’s announcement about the Fathom’s bidirectional charging capabilities.
With an increasing number of EVs coming out with bidirectional vehicle-to-home (V2H) or vehicle-to-load (V2L) charging capabilities, Ford is trying to position the Fathom as a key entrant – and one that simplifies the system by making it an everyday reality rather than a $10,000 luxury perk. Unlike the discontinued F-150 Lightning, wh …
Chattanooga–The Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) was quick out of the box earlier this year after two key court decisions that didn’t favor the brokerage community, asking the federal government for some sort of guidance for 3PLs: tell us what sort of carrier hiring practices would protect us. Chris Burroughs is the head of TIA and he told an audience at the FreightWaves Broker Compliance Symposium here on Monday that what the TIA is seeking through its request for a federal rulemaking would take a long time to arrive, earlier efforts having stalled out. “It’s no secret that carrier selection has been problematic for a very long time,” Burroughs said in an interview at the FreightWaves Broker Compliance Symposium here. (Full disclosure: the author of this article conducted the on-stage interview with Burroughs). “I’ve been at TIA for 15 years, and we were having these arguments when I first started that hey, we’ve got to figure out and provide more clarity and eliminate the confusion that exists in the carrier selection process.” The issue is now more stark than ever. While Montgomery vs. Caribe stripped the brokerage community of the liability and negligence protection that had (mostly) been afforded under the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (F4A), it became an even bigger issue not that many weeks later when C.H. Robinson was hit with a more than $600 million nuclear verdict–now at more than $700 million–as a result of a jury award involving a carrier hired by C.H. Robinson (NASDAQ: CHRW) that had a Satisfactory rating from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). The TIA’s request for a federal rulemaking on the issue occurred between the Montgomery decision and the nuclear verdict in the case of Lipe vs. Lupus Superior. A long history of efforts Burroughs recapped a long list of efforts on the legislative and regulatory side to get some sort of guidance on carrier selection that could be used as part of a courtroom defense. He described negotiations with the association of trial lawyers that would constantly get sidetracked by their opposition as being like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. The launch of Commercial, Safety, Accountability scores in 2010 was seen as a way to advance guidance on carrier selection, Burroughs said. “That was supposed to be the answer to tie a data-driven product to a safety rating,” Burroughs said. “Ultimately, that never happened.” Chris Burroughs (l) and John Kingston at FreightWaves’ F3 Broker Compliance Symposium Even the brokerage industry’s desire for changes softened somewhat when the industry began winning some cases through the protection of F4A, Burroughs said. Behind the recent petition for a federal rulemaking, Burroughs said, is saying to FMCSA “hey, you are the federal agency that’s in charge of providing safety ratings to motor carriers. We want you to put forward a federal standard, taking it out of Congress’ hands because of the dysfunction and putting it back in the agency’s hands, where we believe it belongs.” But he added, “rulemaking takes a long time.” Guidance would be a help A more short-term answer might be for FMCSA to issue guidance, Burroughs said. The guidance might say, according to Burroughs, “hey, these are the five or six things, whatever they come up, that should be checked prior to selecting a trucking company, and that would serve as kind of a pseudo carrier selection standard.” FMCSA has a private document of high-risk carriers, Burroughs said. One of the requests TIA has made of the agency is to publish that list as well The brokerage community is also the target of lawsuits filed by plaintiffs who are funded by venture capital companies. (It was discussed how Paul Clement, who represented Shawn Montgomery before the Supreme Court, is the “Michael Jordan” of attorneys who argue before the high court. Burroughs declined with a smile to estimate on what Clement was getting paid by the hour). “They’re seeing blood in the water,” Burroughs said. Tough choices to be made The quandary that C.H. Robinson now faces in Lipe vs. Lupus Superior is that the ruling was not only expensive. It also involved a finding that the driver in the crash, who was killed, was essentially a C.H. Robinson employee. That sort of ruling, if it established a precedent, would open the door to even greater litigation hitting brokers. But the clock is ticking at an annual rate of more than 6% interest on the now $700-million judgement which began at $603 million. A settlement would end the process but leave the finding about the driver’s relationship to C.H. Robinson intact. Burroughs said C.H. Robinson’s strategy is clear: it is going to fight the verdict and not settle the case, which came out of a Dallas County courthouse. “I’ve talked to (C.H. Robinson CEO) Dave Bozeman and (chief legal officer) Dorothy Capers,” Burroughs said. “They’re clearly going through the appeal process. They’re not going to settle the case.” He also expressed confidence based on those conversations that C.H. Robinson can win on appeal. Better news on insurance One of the potential negative impacts from the dual hits of Montgomery and Lipe was expected to be seen in insurance rates paid by brokers. Burroughs said soon after the decision, “there was a two to four week period where rates were extremely high in terms of renewal.” Much of that was timing, he added; TIA members who renewed just before that period “hit the lottery.” But that trend has calmed, according to Burroughts. “We’re not seeing any sort of massive, drastic increase in terms of insurance rates at double digits,” he said. More articles by John Kingston English language rule’s comments bring criticism from Sikh organization FMCSA’s Elison addresses Motus again, still no date on full repair CEO’s letter boasts of lots of arrows pointing up at Triumph Financial The post Federal guidance on carrier selection not around the corner: TIA’s Burroughs appeared first on FreightWaves.
The way courts decide who is responsible when a contracted truck ends up in a wreck is changing faster than most of the freight industry realizes, and the shift is not about one ruling or one eye-popping dollar figure, it is a whole direction of travel that keeps pulling responsibility up the chain toward brokers and the companies that arrange freight, a change that one transportation attorney recently laid out in detail for a room full of freight professionals who sit squarely in its blast radius. The attorney, Matthew Leffler, an adjunct law professor at Michigan State University College of Law who goes by The Armchair Attorney and has practiced for 16 years, was blunt about the stakes. Fielding live questions at a town-hall session of the FreightWaves Freight Brokerage Compliance Symposium, he ranged across broker liability after Montgomery, nuclear verdicts, FMCSA enforcement, carrier vetting, drop-trailer strategy, and the newer category of AI-driven risk, but the thread tying all of it together was one warning. He argued that what is happening right now on the liability front is as profound a shift for freight as deregulation was in the late 1970s, maybe as profound as containerization, and that ten years from now the business will look almost unrecognizable because of the legal pressure building on it. None of what follows is legal advice, and Leffler said as much repeatedly, but the picture he painted and the practical guidance he offered are worth every broker and every small carrier understanding in detail. The Case That Changes The Math The facts, as Leffler described them, are ordinary right up until they are catastrophic. A broker worked with a shipper, sourced a carrier called Lupus Superior, and the carrier moved the load. That carrier held a satisfactory safety rating, which is rarer than most people think, because by Leffler’s count roughly 94 percent of trucking companies carry no safety rating at all, not satisfactory, not conditional, not unsatisfactory. On paper this was about as good a carrier as a broker could ask for. Then the human element broke the chain. By Leffler’s account of the trial evidence, the driver told his dispatcher he was not feeling well, the dispatcher relayed that to the broker, C.H. Robinson, and the question of whether to swap in another driver came up. For reasons that may never be fully clear, the sick driver took the load anyway. The truck hit stopped traffic on Interstate 20 in Mississippi, and the fire that followed killed three people, seriously injured two more, and killed the driver himself. The lawsuit named the driver, the carrier, and the broker. window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []}; googletag.cmd.push(function() { var gptSlot = googletag.defineSlot('/21776187881/FW-Responsive-Main_Content-Slot1', [[300, 100], [320, 50], [728, 90], [468, 60]], 'div-gpt-ad-1709668545404-0').defineSizeMapping(gptSizeMaps.banner1).addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs(); googletag.enableServices(); setInterval(function() { if (!document.hidden) { googletag.pubads().refresh([gptSlot]); } }, 60000); }); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1709668545404-0'); }); Here is where Leffler said brokers need to pay close attention, because two separate strands drove the outcome. The first was ordinary negligence tied to carrier selection, the kind of claim Montgomery made familiar, though the picture here is murkier than a clean selection verdict, since the jury actually answered no to one broker-negligence question and its general negligence finding only left room for a selection theory rather than squarely resting on one. What is not in dispute is the number, because the jury found the broker 23 percent negligent on a 604 million dollar award, which is already staggering. The second strand is the one that should keep brokers up at night, vicarious liability, the old principle of respondeat superior, let the master answer. The plaintiffs argued, and the jury agreed, that the broker had exercised enough control to make the driver effectively its own borrowed employee. Once that happened, the driver’s own negligence, which the jury put at 45 percent, got stacked onto the broker’s share. That brings the broker to 68 percent. And in Texas, where liability over 50 percent triggers joint-and-several liability, being 68 percent responsible means being on the hook for the entire amount. It is worth being precise about where this stands, because no final judgment has been entered. C.H. Robinson has characterized the July 23 result as an advisory verdict that is still subject to post-trial proceedings, and the company has said it will appeal. Leffler’s point was that this is not a narrow, one-off result. If the borrowed-employee theory holds up through appeal, the entire premise of brokerage, that you arrange transportation using carriers who are not your employees, is in question, and by extension so is the model behind companies like FedEx Ground, Amazon’s delivery network, Uber, and DoorDash, all of which exert far more control over their drivers than C.H. Robinson ever did here. He expects the case to be litigated for five or six years, all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, with no clean way around it in the meantime. Why A Tracking App Became A Liability The detail that turned control from an abstraction into evidence was technology. Leffler explained that C.H. Robinson used a proprietary application to track the load, and the plaintiffs convinced the jury that an app living on the driver’s phone for that shipment looked a lot like control, a lot like the driver was furthering the broker’s business, which supported treating him as a borrowed employee. Leffler was candid that he personally thinks the distinction should be legally irrelevant, that a tracking app tells you when freight will arrive and does not actually direct how a driver drives. But he was equally clear that what should matter and what a jury believes are two different things, especially when that jury has just watched dashcam video of a person burning to death. His hard-earned takeaways were specific. He said he would never use a proprietary tracking app again, because all a plaintiff attorney has to do is convince a jury that the app the broker built controls the driver, and most jurors do not understand how the technology actually works. He urged using third-party telematics platforms rather than homegrown tools, framing the data as tracking the load rather than the driver. And he stressed that language matters, that a broker should talk about being contracted with a carrier, never about having hired a driver, because word choice becomes exhibit text in a courtroom. The Wave Is Bigger Than One Case To show what juries are willing to do, Leffler pointed to the Werner Enterprises case, where a truck traveling under the speed limit in icy conditions was struck by another vehicle that crossed a wide median, and the jury still found Werner 70 percent responsible for a 90 million dollar award even though the Werner driver had done little wrong. The appellate story matters as much as the verdict, though, because the Texas Supreme Court reversed and dismissed that result in June 2025, finding that Werner’s truck was not a legal cause of the crash. The same court went the industry’s way again on May 15, 2026, in the matter involving Home Depot, holding that a shipper that simply hands freight to a federally registered carrier owes no duty to the motoring public and ordering the negligent-selection claims dismissed, a point Leffler has made in his own writing. Read together the pair shows a system pulling in two directions at once, juries willing to assign enormous liability and at least one state’s highest court willing to claw it back, which is exactly the kind of uncertainty that makes planning so hard. The economics explain why this keeps happening. Leffler described a plaintiff’s bar that treats freight as a gold mine, working on contingency fees around 33 percent, now backed by litigation-funding investors who buy a stake in the eventual recovery, which gives plaintiff attorneys the budget to run a dozen mock trials where a defense firm might manage one. He reminded the room that civil cases turn on preponderance of the evidence, just 51 percent, not the criminal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, so a jury only has to believe you are slightly more likely wrong than right. Meanwhile the structural backdrop is ugly, with the federal minimum carrier liability insurance still sitting at 750,000 dollars, a number set back in the 1980s, a national out-of-service rate around 22 percent for commercial vehicles, and brokers now moving close to 30 percent of the nation’s freight. Underinsured carriers, deferred maintenance, and a public that has no idea how any of this works add up to an environment where even winning can cost millions and years. The Survival Playbook Leffler is not a fatalist, and he closed with concrete guidance that brokers should validate with their own outside counsel and insurers. The centerpiece is a written policy that gets updated regularly and, above all, gets enforced rigidly. His warning was that a great policy you do not follow is worse than no policy at all, because the moment you deviate from it on the load that ends in a fatality, a plaintiff attorney will hold up your own written standard and tell the jury you lied. He was unsentimental about enforcement, saying that if people deviate from the written process you write them up, and if they keep doing it you let them go, because a single person freelancing at 2 a.m. on a Saturday can sink the company. window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []}; googletag.cmd.push(function() { var gptSlot = googletag.defineSlot('/21776187881/fw-responsive-main_content-slot3', [[728, 90], [468, 60], [320, 50], [300, 100]], 'div-gpt-ad-1665767553440-0').defineSizeMapping(gptSizeMaps.banner1).addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs(); googletag.enableServices(); setInterval(function() { if (!document.hidden) { googletag.pubads().refresh([gptSlot]); } }, 60000); }); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1665767553440-0'); }); The rest of his advice followed the same logic of limiting control and controlling information. Route all communication through dispatch and avoid speaking directly to drivers whenever a carrier has a dispatcher, because direct driver contact opens the door to knowledge you do not want, like learning a driver is unwell and then being blamed for letting them roll. Understand that indemnification clauses in shipper contracts only protect you if you are still solvent when the litigation ends, so an indemnity from a bankrupt broker is worthless. Carry real liability coverage beyond the mandatory 75,000 dollar surety bond, including contingent auto and cargo protection, because fighting one of these cases without insurance can run 20,000 to 30,000 dollars a month. And assume that every record in your transportation management system will be discovered and read back to a jury, so the metadata trail needs to match the policy you claim to follow. Leffler was honest about the bind this creates, that following every rule to the letter can leave a broker at a competitive disadvantage against those who cut corners, and that the pressure to keep a long-trusted carrier or customer moving is real. His answer was that brokers and small carriers are not adversaries in this, they exist because of each other, and the real winners of this liability wave are the large asset-based carriers who have carried this kind of exposure for decades and simply raise their insurance towers and move on. The operators most exposed are the small brokers and small carriers who can least afford a single catastrophic claim. Why It Matters A jury’s 604 million dollar finding against a broker over ordinary brokering, with a clean carrier and a routine tracking app and before any final judgment has even been entered, tells every broker and the small carriers they depend on that the old assumption of being insulated from a crash several steps down the chain is gone, and that control, communication, and documentation are now the difference between surviving a claim and being bankrupted by one. The practical response is not to panic but to build and rigidly enforce a written compliance process, rethink proprietary tracking and direct driver contact, and carry enough real insurance to still be standing when the litigation ends, because in this environment the goal is not only to do everything right but to be able to prove it years later in front of a jury that does not care how freight moves. This article is based on a town-hall session with attorney Matthew Leffler, an adjunct professor at Michigan State University College of Law known as The Armchair Attorney, at the FreightWaves Freight Brokerage Compliance Symposium. Case details, figures, and guidance are as presented by the speaker and reflect his analysis, not legal advice. The C.H. Robinson result is an advisory verdict subject to post-trial proceedings and appeal, with no final judgment entered. The Werner and Home Depot verdicts referenced were later reversed by the Texas Supreme Court. window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []}; googletag.cmd.push(function() { var gptSlot = googletag.defineSlot('/21776187881/fw-responsive-main_content-slot4', [[300, 100], [320, 50], [728, 90], [468, 60]], 'div-gpt-ad-1709668086344-0').defineSizeMapping(gptSizeMaps.banner1).addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs(); googletag.enableServices(); setInterval(function() { if (!document.hidden) { googletag.pubads().refresh([gptSlot]); } }, 60000); }); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1709668086344-0'); }); The post The Biggest Shift In Freight Liability Since Deregulation Is Here, And Few Are Ready For It appeared first on FreightWaves.
Police recovered approximately $54,000 in stolen Hot Wheels merchandise following a freight train burglary in Colton, California. A witness called 911 around 3 a.m. Thursday, October 22, reporting suspicious activity near railroad tracks. Officers spotted a black Chevrolet Silverado leaving the area and initiated a traffic stop. The investigation ended with one arrest and 350 boxes of toy cars in police custody. According to video released by the Colton Police Department, the caller reported people stealing merchandise near Maple Street. An officer positioned himself near Seventh Street and La Cadena Drive while monitoring the surrounding roads. Footage shows authorities following the pickup before stopping its driver. The man exited with his hands on his head, and officers took him into custody. The department confirmed the recovery in its October 22 Facebook announcement. Authorities booked the suspect into West Valley Detention Center on suspicion of burglary, grand theft and possession of stolen property. The department did not identify the individual in its public announcement. In a response to FreightWaves, Colton Police Department representative Jillian Nunez provided additional details about the investigation. Officers discovered an open Maersk shipping container and additional merchandise along nearby railroad tracks. Investigators identified Mattel as the cargo owner, while BNSF Railway took possession of the recovered property. Nunez confirmed that authorities will return the merchandise to its owner through the appropriate process. window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []}; googletag.cmd.push(function() { var gptSlot = googletag.defineSlot('/21776187881/FW-Responsive-Main_Content-Slot1', [[300, 100], [320, 50], [728, 90], [468, 60]], 'div-gpt-ad-1709668545404-0').defineSizeMapping(gptSizeMaps.banner1).addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs(); googletag.enableServices(); setInterval(function() { if (!document.hidden) { googletag.pubads().refresh([gptSlot]); } }, 60000); }); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1709668545404-0'); }); Another rail cargo theft in Southern California The Colton, California, arrest follows several freight theft investigations involving BNSF Railway shipments across Southern California. In August, deputies recovered $150,000 in New Balance shoes following a boxcar burglary near Daggett, California. In September, a container caught fire during a burglary aboard a moving BNSF train near Riverside, California. In October, Los Angeles detectives uncovered $1 million in stolen BNSF and Union Pacific merchandise at a Whittier, California, retailer. The Colton Police Department maintains an active enforcement contract with BNSF Railway to address cargo theft and related criminal activity. Nunez confirmed the agreement in her response to FreightWaves. Officials did not disclose the contract’s duration or specific enforcement responsibilities. Investigation leaves questions about container access Colton police believe additional individuals may have participated in the theft. Nunez confirmed that detectives reached that assessment through witness statements and information gathered during the investigation. Authorities continue examining the circumstances surrounding the burglary under case number 26-07172. The department declined to speculate about possible connections to other Inland Empire cargo thefts. Investigators have not confirmed whether thieves accessed the container while the train was moving or stationary. Police also have not explained how suspects opened the equipment or whether they recovered every missing item. Authorities have not disclosed the shipment’s intended destination. FreightWaves contacted BNSF Railway for additional comment, but the railroad had not responded before publication. Why it matters A witness’s 911 call helped officers intercept a vehicle carrying $54,000 in stolen merchandise. The incident highlights the importance of timely reporting and coordinated responses to suspected rail cargo theft. window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []}; googletag.cmd.push(function() { var gptSlot = googletag.defineSlot('/21776187881/fw-responsive-main_content-slot3', [[728, 90], [468, 60], [320, 50], [300, 100]], 'div-gpt-ad-1665767553440-0').defineSizeMapping(gptSizeMaps.banner1).addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs(); googletag.enableServices(); setInterval(function() { if (!document.hidden) { googletag.pubads().refresh([gptSlot]); } }, 60000); }); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1665767553440-0'); }); Click here for more articles on cargo theft and freight fraud by Phil Brink. Feds charge driver in alleged $12M cargo theft scheme built on hijacked carrier identities – FreightWaves Nearly $1M in Pokémon and sports cards vanish from FedEx truck, driver discovers missing lock – FreightWaves Failed CDL exams, $3,000 payments and Bluetooth cheating scheme lead to federal charges – FreightWaves window.googletag = window.googletag || {cmd: []}; googletag.cmd.push(function() { var gptSlot = googletag.defineSlot('/21776187881/fw-responsive-main_content-slot4', [[300, 100], [320, 50], [728, 90], [468, 60]], 'div-gpt-ad-1709668086344-0').defineSizeMapping(gptSizeMaps.banner1).addService(googletag.pubads()); googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs(); googletag.enableServices(); setInterval(function() { if (!document.hidden) { googletag.pubads().refresh([gptSlot]); } }, 60000); }); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1709668086344-0'); }); The post Police recover $54K in Hot Wheels after BNSF freight train burglary in California appeared first on FreightWaves.
