Ocean container and logistics provider CMA CGM today raised $2.4 billion to accelerate investments in its maritime port terminals, which span 10 global properties including the U.S. facilities Los Angeles Fenix Marine Services and Port Liberty terminals in New York and Bayonne.

CMA CGM raised the money by creating a joint venture with the New York-based infrastructure investment firm Stonepeak to manage those properties, and selling a 25% minority stake in the business to Stonepeak itself.

CMA CGM will retain full operational control of the joint venture, called United Ports LLC. The company said it plans to reinvest the money in the continued growth of core businesses, while expanding supply chain capacity to meet the ever-growing demand for state-of-the-art shipping and logistics solutions across sea, land, air and logistics.

The French container company had acquired the New York and New Jersey terminals in 2023 and announced a $600 million upgrade plan to expand their capacity and allow larger ships to dock there.

The full United Ports portfolio currently includes 10 assets: Los Angeles Fenix Marine Services (United States), Port Liberty terminals in New York and Bayonne (United States), Santos terminals (Brazil), CSP Valencia and CSP Bilbao (Spain), Terminal Maritima del Guadalquivir (Spain), TTI Algeciras (Spain), Nhava Sheva Freeport Terminal (India), CMA CGM Kaohsiung Terminal (Taiwan), and Gemalink in Cai Mep (Vietnam).

However, it could grow larger since the joint venture may raise additional funds to acquire new terminal projects in the U.S. and globally, CMA CGM said. As part of the transaction, Stonepeak will have the opportunity to contribute an additional $3.6 billion in funding for future joint terminal projects.

“Container terminals play an essential role in global trade and are among the most difficult to substitute or replicate transportation infrastructure assets,” said James Wyper, Senior Managing Director, Head of U.S. Private Equity, and Head of Transportation & Logistics at Stonepeak. “This joint venture represents a truly differentiated opportunity to invest in a high-quality portfolio of strategically located terminals alongside one of the largest and most respected shipping and logistics groups in the world. We look forward to working closely with CMA CGM’s expert team to support this critical infrastructure.”

After Tesla recently shared plans to ramp up for volume production of its Tesla Semi battery electric truck in 2026, the company has now announced a deal to install specialized battery charging stations at certain locations of the Pilot Travel Centers truck stop network.

To keep those new electric trucks running, Tesla said it would provide Semi Chargers to facilitate heavy-duty electric vehicle truck charging. Expected to open in Summer 2026, the Tesla charging stations will be built at select Pilot locations along I-5, I-10, and “several major corridors where the need for heavy-duty charging is highest,” the companies said.

Specifically, construction of the charging stations will begin in the first half of 2026 at sites across California, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. Pilot travel centers equipped with Tesla Semi Chargers will host four to eight charging stalls and will use Tesla’s V4 cabinet charging technology, delivering up to 1.2 megawatts of power at each stall.

This network will initially focus on providing charging infrastructure only for Tesla’s Semi trucks, but it may be expanded in the future to be compatible with heavy-duty electric vehicles from other manufacturers.

By building the units at truck stops, Tesla says it is matching the technology’s need for long charging sessions with drivers’ regulated resting time. That’s because the majority of a Semi truck’s 500-mile range can be recovered in a 30-minute charge session, matching a normal mandated break period for professional drivers, Tesla says.

The expansion of the charging infrastructure comes at a time when analysts predict that electric vehicle (EV) sales growth in the U.S. is on track to shrink due to White House policies such as reducing federal incentives, charging tariffs on vehicles, and abandoning emissions and mileage standards.

However, the two companies said they are investing in the project at a time when demand for alternative fuels continues to grow across North America, and Pilot continues to diversify its offerings to meet the needs of guests and fleet customers, such as electrification, hydrogen, renewable diesel and higher-blend biodiesel.

On the heels of a massive winter storm that swept across dozens of U.S. states over the weekend, spot rates for trucking freight loads are expected to rise for dry van and, especially, refrigerated equipment, according to a weekly report from Truckstop.com and FTR Transportation Intelligence.

The numbers aren’t in yet, but past winter storms provide a solid comparison, the report said. For example, shippers often seek out insulated refrigerated vans during extreme cold temperatures to haul typically dry van freight that is susceptible to freezing. A similar storm in mid-January 2024 led to sizable spot rate increases for both van types, even as rates typically would have fallen significantly. And rates then resumed their post-holiday normalization the following week.

This year, as one measure of the broad impact of “Winter Storm Fern” on national logistics flows, federal regulators on Saturday issued a Regional Emergency Declaration providing temporary hours-of-service (HOS) relief for certain motor carriers and drivers due to severe winter storms and extreme cold impacting multiple states. Such moves are typical before large storms, but this one was notable for its sheer size, covering 40 states (AL, AR, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, MD, MA, MI, MS, MN, MO, MT, NE, NH, NJ, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VT, VA, WV, WI, WY), according to the Federal Motor Carrer Safety Administration (FMCSA).

Likewise, transportation provider Averitt on Monday announced that pickup and delivery locations had been affected across 14 states (AL, AR, GA, KY, LA, MS, MI, NC, OH, OK, SC, TN, TX, VA).

And even as those impacts continue to ripple across the country, emergency recovery group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) said Winter Storm Fern had brought heavy snow and ice to approximately 35 states, causing substantial disruptions affecting supply chains, including:

• thousands of flight/rail service cancellations
• widespread power outages
• suspended trucking operations, and the
• restricted flow of critical goods like food, fuel and pharmaceuticals

That much is typical for major weather events, but ALAN said Fern’s impact could linger. “However unlike other winter storms, it has affected most of the country rather than one or two states or regions. And for some areas, there is no imminent end to the dangerously cold conditions that could delay both recovery efforts and the ability to get back to ‘business as usual’,” ALAN Executive Director Kathy Fulton said in a statement.

The group plans to post requests for recovery help in coming days as post-storm assessments are completed, using its Disaster Micro-site and Supply Chain Intelligence Center.

A growing number of voices from the freight transportation field are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hold that federal law preempts state-law negligence claims against freight brokers.

The issue is the core of a case called Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC. And according to logistics experts, it has significant implications for wholesalers and distributors that hire motor carriers or rely on freight brokers to move goods across state lines.

Specifically, the Supreme Court will soon decide whether the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA), 49 U.S.C. § 14501(c), preempts state negligent-hiring claims against brokers for selecting motor carriers. The outcome will determine whether wholesalers and distributors operate under uniform national transportation standards or face a patchwork of state tort rules.

According to The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW), a patchwork of rules would increase costs and legal uncertainty. So the group recently filed a brief to the court stating that opinion. NAW warns that allowing negligent-hiring claims to proceed would expose brokers to unpredictable liability, prompting narrower carrier selection and higher insurance and litigation costs—costs that would ultimately be borne by wholesalers, distributors, and consumers without improving safety outcomes.

“Trucking is a key mode of transportation for America’s wholesaler-distributors,” Brian Wild, Chief Government Relations Officer at NAW, said in a release. “Subjecting brokers to state-by-state negligence lawsuits for performing that core service would reduce carrier options, would raise freight costs, and make it harder for distributors to serve customers efficiently and competitively.”

Likewise, C.H. Robinson filed a similar brief last week in the case, saying that it looks forward to presenting its oral argument before the Supreme Court on March 4. “For nearly a century, federal law has provided one clear set of rules for how freight moves across the country. That clarity matters for safety and for the economy,” said Dorothy Capers, Chief Legal Officer, C.H. Robinson. “Our brief asks the Court to reaffirm that framework so responsibilities remain where they belong—and goods keep moving reliably for families and businesses nationwide.”

And third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) also submitted a brief, arguing that state-level liability conflicts with federal transportation policy, and that expanding liability would force market consolidation, raise shipping costs, harm small businesses, and disrupt supply chain efficiency without improving safety.

Following news that CMA CGM Group would reroute its container ships out of the war-torn Red Sea route and return to a much longer path around the southern tip of Africa, analysts warned that the lingering unpredictability of changing supply chain patterns could echo through global freight markets.

“Shippers crave predictability in supply chains,” Destine Ozuygur, Senior Market Analyst at Xeneta, said in a release. “Carriers taking the decision to return to the Red Sea then reversing that decision—even if it is done for important safety reasons—still risks undermining confidence in schedule reliability and eroding trust in partnerships.”

Ocean container lines hauling freight between Asia and the North American east coast had previously abandoned the shortcut through the Red Sea and Suez Canal in 2023 after rising violence by militia members targeting western ships, meant to protest Israel’s handling of its war against Hamas militants in Palestine. A shaky ceasefire agreement in 2025 has done little to sooth those fears.

Instead, ships from the major container lines avoided the threat of missile attacks by sailing a longer route around the Cape of Good Hope, trading safer waters for the costs of extra transit time and added fuel costs.

In recent days, CMA CGM had finally returned to the Red Sea route, but today announced it would return again to the longer path. “In light of the complex and uncertain international context, the CMA CGM Group [is] constantly and closely monitoring all potential impacts on its operations. As a result, the CMA CGM Group has decided for time being to reroute vessels deployed on our FAL 1, FAL 3 and MEX services via the Cape of Good Hope,” the company said in a release.

That decision adds about a week to the trip, Xeneta said. According to the firm, full loop transit times on the FAL1 service—which connects China and Singapore to six European ports including two dedicated calls to Southampton—decreased from 105 days to 98 when ships began transiting Suez Canal again. And transit time from Port Qasim in Karachi to New York on CMA CGM’s INDAMEX route fell from 40 days to 36 days after returning to the Suez Canal.

According to Xeneta, shippers can adjust to that extended sailing time if they know it’s coming, but they struggle to cope with changing schedules. “Unpredictability is toxic for supply chains,” Ozuygur said. “Shippers want certainty over when containers arrive at port, even if that means longer transit times around Cape of Good Hope. Ironically, CMA CGM’s decision to play it safe and return services via Cape of Good Hope may lead shippers to perceive them as the riskier choice against their peers.”

A proposed merger between Class 1 railroads Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern is on pause after federal transportation regulators ruled that the companies’ application was incomplete, and instructed them to decide by February 17 if they plan to refile.

The U.S. Surface Transportation Board (STB) said Friday night that “the UP-NS major merger application submitted on December 19, 2025, is incomplete because it does not contain certain information required by the Board’s regulations. Under the law, the Board therefore must reject the application. This decision is solely on the incompleteness of the December 19 application and should not be read as an indication of how the Board might ultimately assess any future revised application.”

Rail sector analysts said they expected Union Pacific to “move swiftly” to make necessary changes and refile its application. According to TD Cowen, the missing details included an analysis of future competitive impacts and a summary of merger agreement disclosures covering issues such as conditions, contracts, and timing. Once the updated application is filed, the STB should issue its final decision in 2027, the firm said.

In the meantime, several voices in the rail industry continued their opposition to the deal, applauding the regulators’ move to delay the deal, and saying they hoped the second version of the application would meet the same fate.

In a statement, shippers trade group the American Chemistry Council (ACC) lauded the STB’s decision, saying the merger would concentrate too much power in a single company. “Decades of experience make one thing clear: excessive consolidation in freight rail drives up costs, erodes service, and undermines the resilience of America’s supply chain. When competition shrinks, affordability suffers. U.S. manufacturers, farmers, energy producers—and ultimately consumers—simply cannot absorb another merger that tightens the grip of a few dominant railroads and leaves shippers with nowhere else to turn,” the ACC said.

Neither Union Pacific nor Norfolk Southern have issued public statements about the decision.

FedEx has taken two steps closer to its goal of spinning off its FedEx Freight division, saying when the new company launches on June 1, it will instantly become the country’s largest less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier.

First announced 12 months ago, the plan has met with approval from financial analysts and from stock market investors.

To reach that goal, FedEx said Friday it had filed a Form 10 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the planned spin-off of FedEx Freight.

“Today’s Form 10 filing reflects the strong progress we are making toward the launch of FedEx Freight as a focused, industry-leading LTL company,” said Raj Subramaniam, FedEx Corp. president and CEO. “This separation will create two world-class companies, positioning both FedEx and FedEx Freight to better serve customers and unlock long-term value for all stockholders.”

Also Friday, FedEx announced the names of the 10-member board of directors for FedEx Freight, saying they include “veteran leaders with transportation and logistics, financial, and technology expertise.” Those directors will work with R. Brad Martin, the planned chairman of the board of FedEx Freight and current executive chairman of the FedEx Corp. board of directors.

In decades past, a warehouse was simply a large building used for storing goods and materials you didn’t need to access anytime soon. The best place to build these facilities was in rural areas far from cities, where land was cheap and back roads were good enough to support the occasional truck making a delivery.

But today, those facilities are more often known as distribution centers, and they’re located near major highways close to the urban areas in order to support high inventory turnover and enable lightning-fast deliveries to homes and stores. And one more thing has changed: They increasingly need access to large amounts of electrical power to run the automated systems and robotics inside that allow them to operate at such high speeds.

In fact, commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield has pointed to the cost and availability of electrical power as a growing concern for companies seeking sites for modern DCs. Meanwhile, logistics real estate giant Prologis recently boasted of building a DC in the Netherlands that was designed to solve that problem by making and storing much of its own energy on site through a large-scale solar network. In Prologis’ words, “Across the world, companies are running into the same problem: They want to grow—but the power grid can’t keep up. From the U.S. to Europe to Asia, grid congestion has become a barrier to progress, slowing projects that could bring jobs, innovation, and investment to local communities.”

However, even a widescale shift to solar won’t provide nearly enough power to support another type of technology that’s becoming increasingly crucial for warehouse operations—artificial intelligence (AI). Many forecasts for 2026 say that AI will begin to take over large swaths of logistics tasks currently done by company employees, whether it’s answering phones, forecasting inventory needs, or planning delivery routes. To meet the expected demand, major tech companies are rushing to construct the infrastructure that supports AI, which runs on graphical processing unit (GPU) chips inside powerful computer servers located in another kind of DC—the data center. And as we’ve all heard by now, data centers consume staggering amounts of electricity.

If AI expansion comes anywhere close to those projected levels, the estimates for those new power needs are stunning. At a recent trade show in New York held by the enterprise software vendor IFS, speakers said society will need a 50% increase in electrical power production by 2030 to support AI. Another speaker set the bar even higher, projecting that demand for electricity would triple by 2050 when those AI power demands are added to “the electrification of everything,” the term for global decarbonization efforts aimed at switching households, transportation operations, and industry from carbon-based fuels to electricity, according to Sabine Erlinghagen, CEO of Siemens Grid Software.

The limitations of electrical grids are already beginning to slow the development of one kind of DC—the distribution center—and will soon start to restrict the growth of the other type of DC—the data center. In coming years, both of those bottlenecks could have major effects on the entire supply chain industry.

PlusAI, the California-based provider of artificial intelligence (AI) software for autonomous trucks, says that improvements to its platform over the past year have kept it on track to launch factory-built commercial autonomous trucks in 2027.

PlusAI plans to launch its first factory-built autonomous trucks in the Texas Triangle, followed by expansion into additional freight corridors in the U.S. and Europe. In preparation, PlusAI is currently conducting a commercial pilot in Texas with one of the top-ten largest carriers in the U.S., as well as public road testing in Sweden.

It plans to build the vehicles through cooperation with its OEM partners, TRATON GROUP’s Scania, MAN, and International brands, IVECO, and Hyundai, who plan to integrate the SuperDrive platform into their vehicle platforms at the factory-level. These partnerships are critical for large scale commercial deployment of autonomous trucks given the safety, reliability, and long-standing fleet relationships, PlusAI said.

To demonstrate its progress toward those goals, the company said its latest update on “commercial readiness metrics” show that since first sharing its key performance indicators (KPIs) in July 2025, PlusAI has now advanced its virtual driver SuperDrive across safety validation and operational efficiency. Through the second half of 2025, PlusAI’s Safety Case Readiness (SCR) has reached 90.1%, Autonomous Miles Percentage (AMP) is at 99.2%, and Remote Assistance Free Trips (RAFT) increased to 79.0%, up from 86.1%, 98.6%, and 76.2%, respectively, in the first half of 2025

“Our performance on the Safety Case Readiness and Remote Assistance Free Trips metrics demonstrate that SuperDrive™ is advancing toward commercial readiness,” David Liu, CEO and Co-Founder of PlusAI, said in a release. “Safety and system maturity as well as operational efficiency are foundational requirements for deploying factory-built autonomous trucks at scale. We continue to make consistent, measurable progress on both as we get closer to our planned 2027 commercial launch.”

Shippers faced a more challenging environment in November, as freight transportation analyst first FTR said its Shippers Conditions Index (SCI) fell to -2.9 from a near-neutral 0.3 in October.

Three reasons for the change were higher rates, tighter capacity, and a brief period of higher fuel costs, although diesel prices have since begun to fall, the firm said.

“We have been forecasting a freight market shift in 2026 that would be mildly unfavorable for shippers, and trends and data over just the last month offer greater confidence in that outlook,” Avery Vise, FTR’s vice president of trucking, said in a release. “Van spot rates in trucking were notably stronger than seasonal expectations in December. Even if that strength proves temporary, it indicates tighter overall capacity. Preliminary employment data also points to lower capacity in trucking than current figures indicate. One positive situation for shippers is that diesel prices are near four-year lows, but most other key factors suggest a tougher market in the coming months.”

The index tracks the changes representing four major conditions in the U.S. full-load freight market: freight demand, freight rates, fleet capacity, and fuel price. Combined into a single index, the resulting number tracks the market conditions that influence shippers’ freight transport environment. A positive score represents good, optimistic conditions, and a negative score represents bad, pessimistic conditions.