Issue 20 · September 29, 2026

What a check-call bot really saves

We read every vendor's own numbers. The one per-load figure: about a minute.

By Aman Singh · Editor

Freight/Signal

Vol. 1 · No. 20 · Tuesday, September 29, 2026

AI in Freight · A Logixtecs Publication

Good morning. Last week we promised the agents answering check calls, and the minutes they save, in the vendors’ own numbers.

We read every number we could find. Here is what they add up to.

The Cold Open

On September 16, McLeod said it will offer voice agents inside its TMS by year-end, and it has certified six AI vendors to plug in. For a lot of brokers, the check-call bot is about to become a menu option.

So we collected what the vendors publish. The headlines are percentages: 87% of loads, “up to 100%” of calls. The one figure we could divide by a load came to about a minute.

“It’s a very low percentage of the number of calls.”

RXO CEO Drew Wilkerson, asked what share of its calls AI makes · Q1 earnings call

Read the McLeod report →

The Market Read

EIA weekly diesel $6.529 third record in a row · +24.4¢ · week of Sep 21	Dry van contract $3.22/mi DAT monthly, fuel included · Sept to date
Dry van spot $2.99/mi DAT monthly, fuel included · Sept to date	Load-to-truck 10.83 dry van, weekly · was 10.6

INDICATIVE FIGURES. NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR PAID INTELLIGENCE.

The Call

Third record in three weeks: $6.529 is 71.9 cents above June 2022’s high. The White House is weighing a diesel export ban, but nothing is decided and the Energy Secretary opposes it, so don’t price a ban into a quote. Alabama paused state dyed-diesel enforcement for 120 days; the federal penalty still applies.

Run your own: fuel.freightsignal.ai — the surcharge math is free and needs no account; pricing your own lane needs a Google sign-in (name and email only). Fuel Signal is ours (Logixtecs).

Three Signals

The federal file ran a week late — and one vendor has worked around a gap since May.

Truckstop’s RMIS closed last week’s notice on September 21; by our count, its census file went about a week without an update. Highway’s status page goes further: it has not used FMCSA authority-history or insurance updates since May 14, citing “incomplete and inconsistent information in Motus,” and names authority-age calculations as the main impact.

What to do If your onboarding rule turns on authority age, ask your vetting vendor which date it is counting from. Get the answer in writing.

An owner asked Claude one question about her own data.

Pam Polyak, who runs a small local fleet near Chicago, had Claude read her Samsara telematics and found one hourly driver averaging more than 110 minutes a shift on duty in the yard. She puts the cost at $53,000 (FreightWaves; no working is given, so it is her figure). The same pass found a $50 toll gap per load between drivers on one lane.

What to do Export a month of telematics, ask the one question you already suspect, and check the answer against the raw rows before acting.

Motive opened remote engine shutdown to other software.

On September 21 Motive added API endpoints that let “authorized customer integrations” immobilize and restart a vehicle’s engine, not just its own dashboard. Each company has to have the feature switched on, and an app needs the engine_immobilizers.manage permission. It’s a real theft tool, and a new key to guard.

What to do If you run immobilizers, list every app holding a Motive API key. Grant that permission only where it’s needed.

Sources: Truckstop/RMIS and Highway status pages (Highway is an interested party); FreightWaves, Sep 23; Motive developer changelog.

The Deep Dive · AI in Freight

Where the minutes come from

Read the product pages closely and the best-documented agents share one design. Descartes MacroPoint’s check-call agent “calls drivers if a load is not tracking or stops tracking.” Augment’s reads the telematics first, “only reaching out when that data goes quiet.” The agent doesn’t replace every check call. It replaces the ones you make when the ELD or the app has gone dark.

So the saving is two numbers multiplied: the share of your loads that go dark, and the minutes you spend chasing each one. No vendor publishes either.

What the vendors publish

Descartes: “up to 100%” of manual check calls; 30% more no-touch tracking on average.
NTG (Augment case study): 87% of track-and-trace volume; a third less time on status updates.
Armstrong (one rep): “more than an hour each day” across 50–70 loads — about a minute a load, our arithmetic.

C.H. Robinson’s 350 hours a day is real, and a different job: chasing missed LTL pickups. Nobody publishes a price per call either, so no minute converts to a dollar.

Two more questions before you sign. The FCC ruled in 2024 that AI voices are “artificial” under the TCPA, and such calls must identify who is calling — ask how the agent does. And ask whether it knows a driver on a 10-hour break is not a load gone dark.

Our verdict on the category: WATCH — until a vendor prints minutes per call and a price.

Tool of the Week

ADOPT

A one-week check-call log

Type

A spreadsheet

Effort

10 sec a call, 5 days

Risk

None

Four columns: the load, why you called (tracking dark, customer asked, appointment, other), minutes on the phone, and whether it changed anything. Keep it open for one week.

On Friday you have the two numbers no vendor publishes: the share of your loads that go dark, and what a chase costs in minutes. Multiply them and you know what an agent can save you before a salesperson tells you.

If most of your calls say “customer asked,” the fix is a tracking link, not a bot.

On the Horizon

Kodiak — driverless on I-45

Stage

Observer in the cab

Backers

Public (Nasdaq: KDK)

Lands first

Dallas–Houston

Kodiak says it will run unsupervised driverless freight on the 219-mile Dallas–Houston lane by the end of 2026. Today a safety observer rides every run; Kodiak says the observer never touched the wheel. Its readiness gauge reads 93%, a measure Kodiak defines and scores itself.

What is driverless now: 35 trucks hauling for one customer, Atlas, in the Permian. The roadside is moving first: PrePass now passes Kodiak’s CVSA enhanced-inspection results to weigh stations in Texas and Louisiana for bypass.

Kodiak’s announcement →

Rule Watch · next 30 days

Thu Oct 1	UCR fees rise for the 2027 registration year: 0–2 trucks and every broker, $46 → $55.	2 days
Thu Oct 1	Teton Pass (WY-22): vehicles over 10,000 lb must self-certify online (WYDOT SAFE PASS).	2 days
Fri Oct 9	FMCSA’s warning-beacon waiver for driverless trucks expires; a 7th Circuit challenge is pending.	10 days
Thu Oct 15	Driver Medication Form comments close (a voluntary form; FMCSA-2026-0760).	16 days
Wed Oct 28	PHMSA rule allowing ASME Section XII for cargo tanks takes effect.	29 days
Pending	D.C. Circuit on non-domiciled CDLs. The rule stays in force until it rules.	Watch

Question of the Week

How many of your check calls last week were for a load that was already tracking?

A guess is fine. I will print the pattern, not the names. Hit reply.

Off the Dock

Corrections. Last week we said J. J. Keller’s 25C003 and ZED ELD had just left the ELD registry. We re-counted: both were already revoked, undated, in our August count. September’s actual self-revocation was Counting Trucks ELD (CTELD1), on the 14th. We also printed October 1 and 15 as Wednesdays; they are Thursdays. The registry today: 937 registered, 386 revoked.

Next Tuesday — Tools & Software. Every app connected to your ELD holds a key. What each one can do with it, and how to take it back.

— Aman Singh, editor

If someone on your team makes check calls, forward them the Tool of the Week — one week of logging answers what no vendor will. Free, nothing to sign up for.

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Freight/Signal

A Logixtecs Publication · Established 2026 · California
Vol. 1 · No. 20 · Primary sources cited inline