Good morning,

Autonomous trucking is moving closer to the mainstream, with Gatik raising $200 million as demand for driverless freight continues to accelerate. The company says it has already completed 85,000 fully driverless orders and is targeting more than 100 autonomous trucks by the end of 2026, moving freight between distribution centers and stores across North America.

Earlier this year at Crossdock, we looked at the rise of autonomous trucking and its potential impact on freight. Check it out here.

Let's dive into the top news.

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Canada will impose retaliatory tariffs of up to 50% on nearly $20 billion (C$28 billion) of US goods from Sept. 8, escalating a trade dispute after President Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian products.

Key Details: The measures cover nearly 900 goods, including steel and aluminum, furniture, clothing, cosmetics, appliances, dairy products, and fish and seafood. Canada said the tariffs were designed to match US measures while targeting products that can be sourced elsewhere to limit disruption to Canadian businesses and consumers.

Backstory: The tariffs follow the collapse of US-Canada trade talks late last week, with both sides accusing each other of making unreasonable demands. The tariffs are expected to raise trading costs for supply chains built around decades of cross-border commerce, potentially increasing prices for businesses and consumers in both countries.

What’s Next: The dispute could widen further, with Trump threatening to raise US tariffs on Canadian automobiles to 50% from Jan. 1. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney accused the US president of seeking to damage Canada's auto, steel and aluminum industries, while the escalation has also raised questions about the future of the USMCA trade agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico.

UPS is investing more than $2 billion through 2028 across its international, healthcare and supply chain solutions businesses.

Key Details: The company said the investment aims to help customers manage increasingly complex global supply chains and respond to disruptions and changing economic conditions.

Planned projects include a new hub in the Philippines, a Canadian facility in Ontario and a new air hub at Hong Kong International Airport. UPS has also expanded its logistics infrastructure with a technology-enabled logistics center in Taiwan and a supply chain solutions facility in Amsterdam combining freight, brokerage and cold-chain services.

Big Picture: The investment also includes UPS’s push into specialized healthcare logistics, following a $48 million investment in 27 temperature-controlled facilities announced earlier this year. UPS said customers are increasingly diversifying their supply chains rather than relying on a single operational network, while new products are creating more specialized shipping requirements.

UPS and the U.S. Postal Service are raising package shipping rates for the 2026 holiday season, adding to shippers' costs ahead of the year-end delivery surge.

What’s Happening? UPS will introduce higher surcharges starting Sept. 27, while USPS plans an average 6% temporary rate increase from Oct. 4 through Jan. 17. Both carriers are targeting the period when parcel volumes and operating costs typically rise.

Key Numbers: UPS will increase fees on bulky, oversized and additional-handling packages, as well as certain international shipments. Its peak demand charges will reach $2.50 per package, while qualifying high-volume shippers can face surcharges of up to $9.35. Large-package and over-maximum-limit fees will also rise, with the highest surcharge reaching $590.

USPS's temporary increase will apply to Ground Advantage, Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express and Parcel Select, with the exact increase varying by service, distance and package weight. The 6% average increase is higher than its 2025 holiday increases.

Big Picture: FedEx has also announced higher peak-season fees, while OnTrac is raising its surcharges from October. With major parcel carriers increasing holiday charges, shippers are facing higher delivery costs as carriers prepare for the seasonal surge in package volumes.

US truckload spot rates fell across dry van, refrigerated and flatbed segments last week as load volumes weakened, according to FTR Transportation Intelligence and DAT Freight & Analytics.

Free Fall: Flatbed rates posted their steepest comparable weekly decline since 2008, dropping 8 cents, while total broker-posted rates fell more than 7 cents to their lowest level since early April.

Better Numbers: Dry van spot rates fell just over 7 cents, with loads declining more than 2%, while DAT’s national linehaul rate dropped 3 cents to $2.25 per mile. Refrigerated rates fell almost 3 cents, with loads down 2%, and DAT’s national linehaul rate declined 1 cent to $2.63 per mile. Despite the weekly declines, dry van and refrigerated rates remained about 35% above year-ago levels, while flatbed rates were up more than 41%.

Big Picture: The declines indicate softer truckload demand in the spot market, with all three major equipment segments recording lower volumes and rates. Flatbed was particularly weak, posting the sharpest comparable weekly rate decline in nearly two decades.

Amazon is developing a new warehouse concept called Project Tetromino that aims to fully automate delivery stations, the final facilities where packages are sorted and staged for drivers.

Key Details: According to Business Insider, Amazon plans to invest $103 million in an initial pilot in 2028, followed by five sites in 2029 and 10 more in 2030. The report said each 2029 site could cost about $85 million and that Tetromino could process packages at roughly 2.5 times the rate of Amazon’s existing delivery-station design.

Challenging Task: The project targets one of the more challenging parts of warehouse automation: organizing packages and loading them onto delivery vehicles. The planning document identified AI and robotics startup Boxbot as a potential technology provider, with its system designed to move packages from conveyors to trays, retrieve them and sequence them for delivery.

Ocean carriers are pushing through higher rates and peak-season surcharges on the trans-Atlantic trade despite weakening demand.

Key Details: MSC will raise its Antwerp-North America spot rates by $1,000 per FEU from Sept. 1, which, if fully implemented, would take Antwerp-New York rates to $7,700 and Antwerp-Houston to $7,600. CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd have also announced rate increases and surcharges for North Europe, the Mediterranean, Turkey and Mexico.

The Disconnect: The increases come as carriers withdraw capacity even though shippers are not seeing the demand or congestion that would normally support higher rates.

North Europe-US import volumes fell 2.6% year over year in July to 193,700 TEUs, while Mediterranean-US volumes declined 1.9% to 152,220 TEUs. Carriers responded with blank sailings, removing 45,201 TEUs, or nearly 9% of capacity, from Europe-North America services in August.

Big Picture: The capacity cuts are set to continue, with available capacity on the North Europe-North America trade expected to fall another 9% in September.

The amount of container capacity stranded by port congestion has reached a record 4.31 million TEU, surpassing the previous peak of 4 million TEU recorded in 2022, according to analytics firm Linerlytica.

What’s Happening? Delays at ports across China and elsewhere in Asia, along with persistent disruption in Europe, are leaving more vessels tied up and reducing the capacity available to carry new cargo.

Key Numbers: With ships tied up in port, the industry has little spare capacity to absorb further delays: only 55 of more than 5,400 active vessels are idle, representing 164,000 TEU. About two-thirds of ships are currently operating on schedule, with average delays exceeding five days.

Chain Reaction: The capacity squeeze has helped drive freight rates up 156% since the start of the Iran war and has strengthened charter rates. Further delays are expected as Panama Canal restrictions tighten, while vessels taking longer routes around Africa continue to absorb capacity. Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and MSC are shifting some services back to the Suez Canal and Red Sea.

Descartes Systems Group will acquire Tai, an AI-powered transportation management software provider for freight brokers, for $100 million. The deal marks Descartes’ third acquisition of 2026.

Key Details: Based in Huntington Beach, California, Tai’s TMS manages the full shipment lifecycle across truckload, less-than-truckload, drayage and cross-border freight. Descartes said the Tai acquisition expands its transportation management capabilities for freight brokers while adding more data to its logistics network.

Shopping Spree: The acquisition follows Descartes’ earlier-this-year purchases of Pittsburgh-based AI-driven fleet safety platform Idelic for at least $28 million and Chilean last-mile delivery management software provider Drivin for $30 million.

In 2025, the company acquired TMS provider 3GTMS for $115 million, final-mile software specialist PackageRoute for $2 million, and cloud-based inventory management specialist Finale Inventory for at least $40 million.

The Panama Canal will cut daily vessel transits from 36 to 34 starting Sept. 4 and 32 from Sept. 15, as below-average rainfall threatens water supplies ahead of a potentially severe El Niño. Rainfall across the canal watershed was 34% below historical averages from May to August, while water inflows were down 44%.

Key Details: The restrictions are already adding pressure to vessel traffic. 124 ships were waiting to transit the canal, up from 115 earlier in the week, while vessels without reservations faced average waits of about eight days.

What’s Next: The tighter capacity comes as the canal is already dealing with higher traffic linked to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, increasing the risk of further delays for global shipping. To manage limited capacity, the authority will change its auction system and give priority to larger full-container ships based on TEU capacity.

The canal has also imposed draft restrictions on larger Neopanamax vessels, limiting how much cargo they can carry.