Diesel Costs Are Squeezing Missouri Trucking Companies

Higher diesel prices are putting renewed pressure on trucking companies in Missouri, especially small fleets and owner-operators that cannot spread fuel costs across hundreds of trucks. When rates remain flat while fuel rises, the margin disappears quickly. A few cents per mile can determine whether a load is worth accepting.

Fuel surcharges help, but they rarely cover every increase immediately. Carriers should review whether their surcharge schedules are tied to current fuel benchmarks, and whether brokers and shippers are applying them correctly. Dispatchers also need to compare total fuel exposure—not just the linehaul rate—before committing to long regional or deadhead-heavy runs.

Minnesota Carriers Face the Same Fuel Challenge

MPR News reports that high diesel prices are also taking a toll on Minnesota’s trucking industry. Northern routes can be especially difficult because of longer distances, weather-related delays, and fewer opportunities to find a strong reload. A truck that spends extra time idling or deadheading is consuming margin without producing revenue.

Small carriers should treat fuel planning as a daily operating decision. Check prices along the planned route, identify reliable truck stops before dispatch, and avoid making fuel purchases based only on habit. Reviewing fuel receipts by truck, driver, and lane can reveal waste that is easy to miss in a monthly profit-and-loss statement. VAU0’s transportation management tools can help carriers keep load, route, and operating-cost information in one place.

The most important fuel lesson is simple: when diesel rises faster than rates, better planning becomes a direct source of margin—not an administrative extra.

AI Reportedly Saves a Trucking Company $53,000 a Year

A FreightWaves report highlights a trucking company that is saving approximately $53,000 annually through artificial intelligence. The figure is significant because it shows where smaller carriers may find practical value: reducing repetitive office work, improving follow-up, catching billing issues, and helping staff make faster decisions.

That does not mean every carrier needs an expensive, fully automated system. The better starting point is to identify one process that consumes time every day, such as entering rate confirmations, checking appointment details, tracking detention, or matching available trucks to loads. Automation should support dispatchers and billing staff—not replace the judgment needed to handle unusual freight, service failures, or safety concerns.

Carriers evaluating AI should measure results against a clear baseline. Track hours saved, billing speed, fewer data-entry errors, and recovered accessorial revenue. Also confirm how customer and driver information is stored. A technology investment is only useful if it improves cash flow or service without creating a new compliance or cybersecurity problem.

Truckers Support Stronger Enforcement of English-Proficiency Rules

Truckers are applauding an FMCSA proposal intended to give enforcement more force when a commercial driver cannot meet federal English-proficiency requirements. The issue has drawn attention from drivers who believe communication problems can create safety risks during inspections, roadside emergencies, loading operations, and interactions with law enforcement.

For carriers, the practical concern is consistency. Drivers need to understand and respond to official questions, read traffic and safety signs, complete required records, and communicate effectively about cargo and vehicle problems. A carrier’s onboarding process should verify these abilities before a driver is placed in service, rather than treating the issue as something to address after a roadside inspection.

Owners should follow the proposal as it develops and avoid relying on informal interpretations. Keep driver qualification and training records organized, and make sure supervisors know how to document coaching without creating inconsistent treatment. VAU0’s compliance resources can help carriers maintain a repeatable review process as federal requirements change.

CVSA Regulatory Update Gives Carriers More to Review

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s September 4 regulatory update is a reminder that compliance work does not stop between major enforcement campaigns. CVSA updates can affect how carriers interpret current rules, prepare for inspections, and communicate changes to drivers. Even when an update does not create an immediate rule change, it may clarify an area inspectors are watching more closely.

Small fleets should assign someone to review regulatory updates and translate them into driver-facing instructions. Do not simply forward a long bulletin and assume the message was understood. Identify which vehicles, records, or procedures are affected, then document the review. Items worth checking include inspection-readiness files, hours-of-service records, maintenance documentation, cargo securement procedures, and driver qualification materials.

Carriers should also compare regulatory guidance with what is actually happening in the field. If drivers repeatedly report confusion about a form, inspection process, or equipment requirement, update the company checklist. A short, current checklist is usually more useful than a large manual nobody consults during a busy week.

What carriers should do this week

• Recalculate fuel cost per mile for every major lane and verify that fuel surcharges are current and being collected.
• Review planned routes for deadhead, idling, tolls, and reliable fuel stops before accepting marginal freight.
• Choose one repetitive office task to measure for possible automation, and track time saved before buying a larger technology system.
• Review driver communication and English-proficiency procedures, then document any training or qualification follow-up.
• Have a manager review the latest CVSA and FMCSA updates and turn relevant changes into a short driver and maintenance checklist.

In 2022, we were running a small fleet and spending approximately $400 per truck per month on software. TMS license, ELD subscription, e-sign service, separate accounting integration. Four different logins. Four different monthly invoices. Four different support teams to call when something didn't work.

None of it talked to each other without manual data entry.

The software evaluation that changed everything

We spent three months evaluating every major TMS and fleet management system on the market. AscendTMS, McLeod, Motive, EZLogz, KeepTruckin, TruckingOffice, Axon. We signed up for demos, trials, and in two cases, paid for actual subscriptions to test them properly.

What we found was consistent across almost all of them: the software was built by people who had never dispatched a truck. You could tell immediately. The terminology was slightly wrong. The workflows assumed steps that no real dispatcher would take. The ELD and TMS were always separate systems that "integrated" — meaning they sometimes shared data, if you configured things correctly, and the configuration broke whenever either vendor pushed an update.

"The best way to evaluate trucking software is to use it under real pressure. Not in a demo. Not in a test environment. On a real load, with a real deadline, when a broker is calling every 30 minutes for an update."

The specific things that were broken

Without naming specific vendors: one major TMS required five screen transitions to update a load status. Not five clicks — five full page navigations. On a mobile browser from a truck stop, that meant 45 seconds to tell a broker the truck was loaded. Another system had beautiful analytics dashboards but couldn't tell you, in real time, how many hours of drive time your driver had remaining without navigating to a separate compliance module.

The ELD market was worse. Most ELD systems were designed to satisfy FMCSA's technical requirements — which they did — while making the user experience as painful as possible. Drivers hated them. When drivers hate their tools, they find workarounds. Workarounds create compliance risk.

The moment we decided to build

The decision was made on a Tuesday afternoon when our dispatcher spent 40 minutes re-entering data from a rate confirmation PDF that our ELD had already captured in a different system. The information existed. It was digital. It lived in three different places that didn't talk to each other, and a human was manually transferring it between systems.

That's not a technology problem. That's a lack of ambition problem. Nobody had decided to solve it because the existing systems were profitable enough without solving it.

What we decided to build instead

One platform. ELD and TMS as the same system, not integrations. AI that reads rate confirmation PDFs so dispatchers don't have to. A dispatcher — eventually an AI dispatcher — that covers nights and weekends so loads don't get missed. E-sign built in, not bolted on.

And priced at zero through 2026, because the goal was to prove the product worked before asking carriers to pay for it.

Two years in: did it work?

The Rate Con AI has a 95%+ accuracy rate on standard broker formats. ERETH ELD passed FMCSA's technical certification. Our AI dispatchers book real loads for real carriers after hours. The carrier dashboard still occasionally has a minor bug — we fix them the same day they're reported.

Would we have been better off just using an existing system and focusing on freight? Financially, in the short term, probably yes. But we would have kept paying $400 per truck per month for software that we knew was mediocre. And we would have missed the opportunity to build something that actually works the way the industry needs it to work.

We don't regret it.