This week in trucking: Rail merger targets trucking, 17k CDLs on pause

These are the major trucking and transportation industy headlines this week:

Listen to the news on this week's episode of The Fleet Lead podcast here or search for The Fleet Lead on your favorite podcast app.

Summaries of the stories are below:

California is not reissuing 17,000 CDLs

Under pressure from the federal government, California, in early November, issued 60-day cancellation notices to roughly 17,000 non-domiciled CDL holders. The state recently announced that it would reissue those 17,000 CDLs on December 17, then the federal government said it could not, and so California has paused that reissuance until FMCSA allows it.

The nation’s largest rail companies want to take market share from trucks

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are pursuing an $85 billion merger. In the regulatory paperwork, the rail giants outlined their hopes to regain freight demand through a more consolidated network. The companies estimate that the combined entity would convert 2 million truckloads from long-haul trucking to rail. 

In the spot market, last week’s spot rates rose an average of 7 cents.

According to the latest report from FTR Transportation Intelligence, broker-posted spot rates grew to $2.41, the highest single-week gain since October 2024. FTR also noted that this average spot rate was up 8% year over year, the strongest year-over-year comparison since April 2022.