Spotlight
‘ Montgomery’ ruling could raise US trucking costs
The unanimous Supreme Court ruling allowing certain state-level negligence claims against freight brokers will likely increase pressure on motor carriers to carry higher insurance limits and could eventually contribute to higher transportation costs, trucking attorneys say. The May 14 decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transports LLC held that freight brokers are not shielded from some state personal injury lawsuits, potentially expanding liability exposure for intermediaries that arrange truck freight. Attorneys on both sides of the trucking industry said the ruling is likely to intensify scrutiny of carrier selection practices and insurance coverage.“ A lot of brokers are going to go to their trucking companies and saying,‘ You’ ve been running loads with $ 1 million worth of insurance. Since we’ re exposed, you can cause a lot more than $ 1 million worth of damage,’” Ed Leonard, a partner at San Diego law firm Tyson & Mendes, which represents trucking companies in civil litigation, told the Journal of Commerce. Leonard said brokers are likely to require higher liability coverage from carriers moving freight, particularly smaller operators with marginal safety records.“ They’ re going to be asking these trucking companies to buy more insurance,” he said.“ This is going to cost more money to get things done.” The ruling could also tighten trucking capacity if higher insurance premiums force some smaller fleets and owner-operators to exit the market.
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emerging in the form of an imbalance between the dominant trade lanes of head-haul corridors and non-dominant lanes. Habben Jansen said growth on the dominant legs of a trade lane is what drives capacity needs, not the overall market growth, noting that strong growth on dominant trade lanes— 10 % in 2024 and 8 % in 2025— was helping to offset the impact of new supply on rate levels.“ In 2026, the growth on the dominant legs will be higher than the additional supply that comes into the market, acting as a mitigating factor against overcapacity,” he said during Hapag-Lloyd’ s earnings call.
Bloated container ship orders near 40 % of fleet
The global container ship order book continues to swell, with total capacity on order currently at 12.3 million TEUs, 37 % of the in-service fleet, according to Seaweb, a sister company of the Journal of Commerce within S & P Global. Sea-web data shows just over 1 million TEUs of capacity via ships over 10,000 TEUs is scheduled to be delivered this year, contributing to capacity growth of 4 % amid market predictions for demand growth of 2 % to 3 % this year. About 2.3 million TEUs of capacity
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are due for delivery in 2027 and 3.4 million TEUs in 2028. Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Maersk’ s Gemini Cooperation partner Hapag-Lloyd, also pointed to vessel management levers such as slow steaming and blank sailings, as well as increased scrapping, to limit the effects of excess tonnage. But he noted that another capacity-absorbing factor was
IMO carbon pricing‘ dead in the water’: DNV
The pricing mechanism that is a core pillar of the International Maritime Organization’ s( IMO) net-zero framework is“ exceedingly unlikely” to be accepted by the US, according to maritime classification society DNV. At a meeting of the IMO’ s Marine Environment Protection Committee( MEPC 84) in London in late April, Washington reiterated its opposition to the economic mechanism in the net-zero framework( NZF) that is meant to provide crucial fund-
6 Journal of Commerce | June 1, 2026 www. joc. com