John, give us the general overview.

Well, down the DOE price, the DOE EIA price dropped six cents a gallon this week.

You know, the publisher this morning, effective yesterday, it's $6, 29.2 cents a gallon.

So as I said, down six cents.

But what was far more interesting was that he really, I think I'll use the C word, the collapse in the market yesterday in which ultra low sulfur diesel on the CME exchange dropped 25.45 cents a gallon, if you measure just like the December contract, the December contract.

And it kind of goes to this idea that, The market, there was one analyst on Twitter on X this morning who said, look, everybody knows this whole thing in Iran is going to end someday.

So maybe this is the time.

Do you mind to tell us what is happening in the futures market right now? What insight can you shed for us?

John, give us the general overview.

Well, down.

The DOE price, the DOE EIA price dropped $0.06 a gallon this week.

It was published this morning, effective yesterday.

It's $6.29.2 a gallon.

So as I said, down $0.06.

But what was far more interesting was they really, I think I'll use the C word, the collapse in the market yesterday in which ultra-low sulfur diesel on the CME exchange dropped $0.25.45 a gallon.

Do you mind to tell us what is happening in the futures market right now? What insight can you shed for us?

What are they showing right now? And what all can you tell us about this week?

Well, it's actually, OK, let's put it this way.

It's quiet compared to where it's been since April.

It's not quiet compared to the way it's been in history.

OK, so the DOE number that is usually the basis for most fuel charges, most fuel surcharges.

was at 9.7 cents this week.

Historically, it would be like, oh, what a huge move for one week.

right, John, anything else? What about this? You wrote the piece on the ATRI survey as well, right?

What are they showing right now? And what all can you tell us about the SWIG?

Well, it's actually, OK, let's put it this way.

It's quiet compared to where it's been since April.

It's not quiet compared to the way it's been in history.

OK, so the DOE number that is usually the basis for most fuel charges, most fuel surcharges.

was at 9.7 cents this week.

Historically, it would be like, oh, what a huge move for one week.

Walk us through everything, the ruling, and your current thoughts about it right now.

The problem fundamentally, John, is that there just isn't enough supply of diesel due to our need to export or the global market need to export, and it's not gonna change the supply picture really at all, does it?

Right.

So, so the other part of this that's happened since we last spoke, [laughs] um, is that, um, is that there was this, uh, you know, there had been a lot of talk about two weeks ago that the US was going to, that the US was going to, uh, put an export diesel, uh, a d- a diesel export ban on.

They pulled that back, and in response I guess mostly G7 nations, you know, mostly Western economies, I don't know if it was just the G7, agreed to release more strategic stocks into the market.

You...

One thing you gotta remember is that in a lot of other countries, their strategic stocks are held by private companies.

And so you're required by law to hold a certain amount of, uh, uh, of product in stock.

Do we think the instability around the energy supply chain is going to really play into driving electric vehicle demand and interest?

And it's not going to change the supply picture really at all, does it?

Right.

So the other part of this that's happened since we last spoke is that there had been a lot of talk about two weeks ago that the U.S. was going to put a diesel export ban on.

They pulled that back, and in response, I guess mostly G7 nations, mostly Western economies, I don't know if it was just the G7, agreed to release more strategic stocks into the market.

One thing you've got to remember is that in a lot of other countries, their strategic stocks are held by private companies.

and so you're required by law to hold a certain amount of a product in stock and one thing about product as opposed to crude like you can take crude in the us and stick it in the spr and it just stays there it doesn't go bad products deteriorate over time so you have to kind of recycle what you have so the idea was that you would again this would be putting more oil on the market I think it was like 100 million barrels of crude and diesel, crude and products.

The details were a little bit shaky.

Do we think the instability around the energy supply chain is going to really play into driving electric vehicle demand and interest?

But in an AI world, you do layoffs and Wall Street rewards you.

CH Robinson discloses their headcount every quarter.

So it's not behind a curtain.

So you could see, you could make a very firm mathematical count, even if you're on the outside.

Okay, what's their revenue? What's their volume? Various metrics.

And what's their headcount? See, RxO didn't really have this.

I mean, they've done a lot of layoffs too, but they weren't really coming out with data that showed you what was the impact from all that.

Yeah, no,

Go ahead,

John.

You know, our stock dropped below $11 last November, almost about a year ago.

So it's tacked on.

I'm forgetting the numbers now.

It well got into the 20s.

It had a really good year, but it was still pretty cheap.

Thoughts on that? You know,

[laughs]

"We do not see a resolution.

We, we thought that red lines that would have triggered action by, uh, the Trump administration to dial it back, uh, have been crossed, and it didn't make any difference." Uh, they, those red lines included $100 Brent, included a five, uh, a five handle on the, the 10 year.

Um, what was the other one had, I think $4 gasoline.

Uh, and, uh, none of these seem to have led to any change in policy.

So, uh, it was really remarkable to hear a Wall Street team at a well-respected bank make a claim like that.

Now, you talk about the export ban, which has been gaining some traction, I think, over the last several days.

And ...

So let's talk about what's the latest update on this, uh, LIPA versus Lupa Superior case?

Well, there's not a lot, and that actually is news.

As, as you remember, when the 600, I guess the $604 million verdict came down, it had to be affirmed by a judge.

So I've been checking the docket, which isn't the easiest thing to get into, Dallas County, but anyway, I managed to finally.

Um, and, uh, the only thing that really has happened is that the plaintiffs made their kind of formal request in a brief last week to have the, to have the judgment affirmed.

There's still no, still no action on it.

I mean, it's been probably, what, six, at least six weeks.

Tell us a little bit about what the state of diesel is.

Well, okay, so the, the, the Tues- the, I'm usually on on Tuesdays, and that's because the day that the Department of Energy puts out its weekly average retail price that is the basis for most fuel surcharges.

surcharges.But two things were here a day later.

But that price is almost, I, I won't call it irrelevant, but it's almost like a s- s- a snapshot of a former world.

Uh, the reality is that ultra-low sulfur diesel on CME, which is the kinda like the beginning of, of oil pricing, um, hit its post-war high yesterday.

It is, as far as I can tell, the highest price ever except for one day at the end of April after, um, Ukraine was invaded by Russia, when the price soared on, on like one of the last days of the month, very clearly a short-covering rally.

Um, so that's almost just such an outlier, I won't even count it.

You know, we're, we're basically headed toward the highest diesel prices ever, not adjusted for inflation.

Do you think this peak is truly about finally, uh, inventory levels getting tighter and, and, and the long-term effects on, on diesel and this Ukraine-Russia war?

Can I ask you, what did Braun think? Did he just think that there was a malfunction with the van and it blew up? Or did he believe that somebody had been trying to kill him?

He actually started to worry that someone was trying to kill him.

And so from that point on, he got a pistol, a 9mm pistol, and he kept it in the side compartment of his driver's side door of his Mercedes Benz.

Every once in a while, he would take it into the house with him, but mostly he kept it in the car with him.

as self-defense.

He was somewhere between thinking someone was trying to kill him and thinking it might have been a mechanical failure, but he was leaning towards someone trying to kill him.

So the next group that Moore tried to hire out of Soldier Fortune were from Rochester, New York.

this was a state trial and state investigation for that part of the case, the Spearman murder.

That's a good point.

Well, it's very emotional for me because I think today was the last time that I got to write this story, not that this story is anything particularly amazing.

It's pretty straightforward numbers, but, you know, I'm gonna boast a little bit and say I was the one that dug these numbers out six, seven years ago.

BMO is a huge lender to trucking, maybe the biggest, and, uh, what I somehow stumbled upon the fact that they release every quarter in their earnings figures on not just the size of the book, but also the size of the write-offs, the size of the provisions, the allowances.

So this has been an incredibly transparent look into the credit st- the credit state of, uh, lending and trucking.

I don't think there's any really reason to believe that they would have a significantly different, uh, set of conditions than any other lender.

If anything, you'd think that maybe they'd be better 'cause they probably got a bigger database of, of information and metrics, that kind of thing.

Anything else that we can take from this?

But, um, but, but so John, where, where are we at in terms of oil prices right now in terms of expectations?

Well, the, the, the point here, and it's in the story that's, that's been published on freightwaves.com, is that, uh, the products market is really where it's at.

So the, if you just look at the front month Brent price on CME, uh, CME 9X, and you look at the front month y- ultra-low sulfur diesel price, uh, again, on the same exchange, it's been running about two times.

Uh, diesel two times over the price of Brent, and that is unprecedented.

L- like, Jeff Currie has been their, their, kind of the loudest voice on this.

He's the former head of commodity research at Goldman Sachs, and, uh, now he's o- kind of off on his own.

You know, he's been saying he's been in the business 30 years.

What are your thoughts there?

John, tell us about what, what, what's happening.

Well, the way the market is reacting i- is insane.

First of all, let's get to the numbers.

The DOE/EIA number was $4 57.8 cents.

That's down 9 cents for the week.

It's down 12 out of the last 13 weeks.

It still is a full dollar above where it was.

Is it just refinery capacity that's driving the market right now?

So John, actually, yeah, what inspired you to set up here? What was the aspiration actually?

I suppose initially it would be like to be self-sufficient by myself.

so that I would have food for my family.

I'm very passionate about food and how it reacts with your body.

I'm a homeopath as well, so I have a lot of knowledge on how the body works and stuff like that.

So it was probably my kids would be a massive driving force because they're so important to me and how they grow into the future and to teach them and show them how food is created.

I think it's very important in this everyday life now, you know, that education is being more and more lost, I feel.

there so

Let's talk about that.

Yeah.

Uh, well, and they, and they said that right off the bat, that this is the famous U-turn t- the U-turn case, the, uh, uh, the immigrant from, illegal immigrant from, I'm not, somewhere in South Asia, I don't know if it was India or somewhere else, who made a U-turn on the Florida Turnpike.

Minivan plowed into him, three people killed, just a terrible story.

And of course, it also had lots of politics with it because it was an illegal immigrant.

It was during the, uh, the crackdown on, on, on immigrants holding CDLs.

He had a California CDL.

So John, where do we go from here? What does the second half look like in terms of energy prices?

John, what's up, sir? How are you?

Well, really the question is what's down, okay? The price of oil is down.

And the Department of Energy Energy Information Administration average weekly retail diesel price which is the basis for most fuel surcharges, dropped below $5 a gallon for the first time since, you know, in a long time, 483.2.

The futures market is about where the lowest it's been.

I think it's probably going to settle out today at the second lowest it's been since the war started.

So I'm kind of amazed at this.

I will tell you that I think that the It seems the trading community is just completely accepting that everything's going to be normal.

What has your eye the most right now, John?

But give us an update, John.

I mean, Brenton and diesel are way down from their highs on the commodities markets that were recorded in March.

And they're certainly way down.

And diesel alone, diesel alone is down like 30 cents in the last couple of days, a little higher this year.

But now the fun starts.

Now the fun, which is.

What's going to dominate here? This morning, the International Energy Agency, which is the big, well, it's exactly what it sounds like.

That's what they say.

I just wanna know from yesterday, how did it all play out in your lens?

Well, I was talking to a lawyer last week about it, and he said he thought it might be a five-four vote, and he thought that the swing vote was Amy Coney, Coney Barrett.

So I was reading back her, her questioning, um, which was pretty deep legal stuff, to be honest.

I mean, I was, I had to read it two or three times to fully understand the point that she was making.

And then of co- And, and, and the expectation really for most lawyers was this'll come out in June.

You know, when that, that end of, end of session rush when you get a whole lot of decisions.

Instead, it comes out yesterday, which I don't think anybody was really ready for.

What, what is this gonna look like with these big kind of brokers? And then also, a, a question behind that, these smaller entities, what do you see in terms of, uh, of their performance as well over the next 12 to 16 months?

I just wanna know from yesterday, how did it all play out in your lens?

Well, I was talking to a lawyer last week about it, and he said he thought it might be a five-four vote, and he thought that the swing vote was Amy Coney, Coney Barrett.

So I was reading back her, her questioning, um, which was pretty deep legal stuff, to be honest.

I mean, I was, I had to read it two or three times to fully understand the point that she was making.

And then of co- And, and, and the expectation really for most lawyers was this'll come out in June, you know, when that, that end of, end of session rush when you get a whole lot of decisions.

Instead, it comes out yesterday, which I don't think anybody was really ready for.

And of course, the, the other biggest shock was that it was nine-nothing.

What, what is this gonna look like with these big kind of brokers? And then also, a, a question behind that, these smaller entities, what do you see in terms of, uh, of their performance as well over the next 12 to 16 months?

I heard somebody got vomited on.

Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, so this is Operation Sideswipe.

That's what the prosecutors called it.

It is the case that goes back years.

I mean, I think the testimony in the trial revealed that the first accidents were maybe in 2011.

The modus operandi was pretty simple.

And just give us the overall highlights of this and what's currently happening with the pump prices.

But just walk us through the big things and the things that our listeners and viewers should be really keeping their eyes on right now.

Well, it was really very positive for the freight market.

The data supports it.

It wasn't just theory.

They were able to roll out, as you can see there on the screen, various data flows from Sonar that showed the tender rejection rate well above 13%, which is, you remember something, what, six months ago? It was probably down around three or four.

So they were able to talk about that data.

Craig talked about the whole...

Why is this happening and why is this important for not only just the entire industry but specifically brokerages right now?

What originally drew you to cover this panel at Trimble? I mean, walk me through, as well as the listeners and viewers, what exactly caused you to cover this? And walk me through the highlights of it.

Well, that is a good point.

There's so much at the Trimble.

Trimble Insider is part of the Trimble Transportation Group.

That's who it's put on by.

And there's just so much going on there that you have to pick and choose where you're going to go.

So I went through all the various presentations and I looked at this one and I thought, this looks like it might be interesting.

Now, another question for you here is what jobs are the biggest ones that you would call kind of in that yellow to red zone and being at risk to potentially be replaced by AI? Like, obviously I'm thinking off top of my head, you know, invoicing specific jobs, operational facing jobs, things that aren't necessarily people-centered, but are there specific roles and the research and just the knowledge that you have that would be at risk that people need to be aware of?

I mean, what do you believe triggered such an immediate steep market response with this?

I think the fact that things just did not get any better.

You know, RxO has a problem in that it has a peer in C.H. Robinson.

It is an apples to apples comparison.

You know, there were no, for example, really truckload carriers that did significantly better or significantly worse than everybody else.

They all kind of did lousy.

But in the case of RxO, they've got this comparison to C.H. Robinson, which has been a Wall Street darling now for well over a year and a half.

Now, looking forward, if RSO doesn't address some structural things, you know, realistically, what scenarios do you think can play out within the next 12 to 18 months?