The FMCSA finally has a regulator who shows up — and the freight market is responding

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Derek Barrs sat down with me and Matt Leffler in our Chattanooga studio this week for a live taping of Freight Expectations.

What I came away with — beyond the hour of substantive policy conversation — was the clearest articulation yet of why this administration is having a measurable, real-time impact on freight markets that previous ones did not. To view the video: The thesis is simple.

For the first time in years, the agency tasked with regulating the trucking industry is doing the job: enforcing rules already on the books, dismantling the self-certification regimes that incentivized fraud, and showing up in person where the industry actually operates. The market is responding accordingly.

Spot rates as measured by SONAR’s National Truckload Index (NTI. USA) have moved above their COVID-era highs over the past several days. window. googletag = window. googletag || {cmd: []}; googletag. cmd. push(function() {googletag.

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push(function() {googletag. display('div-gpt-ad-1709668545404-0'); }); Truckload spot rates continue to surge upward, hitting a new all-time high on the daily chart. $3. 73/mile +$. 04/mile overnight. Today is the Friday before a major holiday, and spot rates always surge, as shippers scramble for last-minute loads set to deliver on Tuesday. … pic. twitter.

com/DPBpw6de5m— Craig Fuller (@FreightAlley) May 22, 2026 That is not a coincidence. All time high records are a result of tight enforcement and a change in market direction at the hands of the regulators.

Why this administrator resonates Barrs is the first FMCSA administrator in my career covering this industry to be recognized by name by working truck drivers. I told him so.

“I have never seen any FMCSA administrator or FMCSA period have been able to accomplish” the kind of response he and Secretary Sean Duffy received walking the Louisville truck show, I said. His answer cut to the operating philosophy. “You have to be engaged. And when you say that you want true partnerships, you have to go where the partners are,” Barrs said.

“Things do not happen sitting behind a desk. You have to be out walking. It’s kind of like managing by walking around, if you will.” That posture extends to the field structure. “Our division administrators, they know what’s going on in their states. They know who their partners are. They know who their association members are.

They’re engaged with the people that they regulate,” Barrs said. He recounted a program from his Florida Highway Patrol days putting troopers in trucks and truck drivers in patrol cars to build mutual understanding. “I want them to respect that.

But then again, I also want that driver to be in the cab or in the car of that patrol car with my trooper to understand the work that they’re doing.” The “why” behind the work is personal. Barrs described, unprompted, his earliest 911 call as a teenage dispatcher — a log truck and a passenger car on an interstate overpass that killed a young woman.

He drove to the scene after his shift. “So I took the 911 call and then I also went there and then I saw what was I was hearing.” Later, as a deputy, he pulled a man out of an overturned van in pouring rain who later died at the hospital. “I learned that he was a father, he was a son, he was a husband, and he was a member of his community.

And if he’d only wore a seat belt that night, he’d still be here.” About 60% to 70% of fatalities in commercial vehicle crashes involve someone not wearing a seat belt. “My point is, this is something we’ve been talking about forever. Put your seatbelt on,” Barrs said. “We have to do a better job.” window. googletag = window.

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collapseEmptyDivs(); googletag. enableServices(); }); googletag. cmd. push(function() {googletag. display('div-gpt-ad-1665767553440-0'); }); Enforcement, not new rules, is doing the work When I asked Barrs what success looks like, he framed it around delivery. “What keeps me up at night is making sure that we deliver.

I want to make sure that we deliver on the things that we say that we’re going to do that are number one is going to enhance safety, strengthen the market, root out the bad actors so the cream will rise to the top.” Then he made the point that every compliant carrier in this industry has been waiting to hear from a federal regulato