Automotive Logistics — 2026-09-30
Automotive Industry
Finished vehicle logistics in North America is operating under a combination of pressures few networks have had to absorb at once. US on-highway diesel reached a record $6.53 a gallon in late September, up 71% since February, according to the EIA. The Supreme Court's Montgomery ruling in May has tightened carrier vetting across the sector. A proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger remains before the Surface Transportation Board, while consolidation among auto haulers continues to narrow the options available to OEMs.
At Automotive Logistics & Supply Chain Global 2026 conference in Michigan, experts made clear that the constraint is no longer demand. It is the supply of reliable capacity, and the cost of every vehicle that stops moving or arrives damaged.
Planning for growth in a volatile network
"We're 18 months now of consecutive growth. I don't think there's another OEM that's had the same growth over that time period," said Todd Myers, director of finished vehicle logistics and logistics purchasing at Nissan Group of the Americas. Nissan recasts its forecast at every financial milestone because, as Myers put it, "that's only good the day that it's printed".
Ford's experience was the opposite kind of test. "We've seen it all in the last 18 months," said Michael Arnold, senior manager for North American vehicle logistics strategy, planning and quality at Ford. The carmaker is leaning on a defined core of strategic partners and flexing around the edges with spot capacity, while some asset-based car haulers are adding owner-operators to absorb surges.
The pressure points are regional as both OEMs flagged vessel bunching at Vancouver, which Myers said has "caused a lot of delays, lack of processing capability, and basically a backlog of units".
In Mexico, tri-level railcar shortages mean costlier bi-level loading. US rail metrics are improving, but Myers warned that unannounced changes, such as a ramp moving from space allocation to first-come-first-served, surface late: "you hear about them 6 or 9 months when everybody's kind of at a point of frustration."
Consolidation cuts both ways
Consolidation has already narrowed the field, with Jack Cooper's exit last year taking a major carhaul network out of the market. Arnold saw upside in better-capitalised carriers investing in drivers and equipment, but put the onus back on them to fix a long-standing inefficiency.
"We've been talking about empty miles and route optimisation and driver inefficiencies," he said, noting OEMs have long pushed car haulers to partner up and fill empty miles. "My challenge to these companies or to these consolidated companies is how are we going to solve for this… you have now a much broader network." The regional risk is real, though: "we don't like to see consolidation… We like the options."
What has changed is how carriers are judged. "Cost is there, but it can also hide some things," Arnold said, pointing to quality, claims, contract compliance and milestone data alongside price. The stakes are reputational as much as operational: "for our dealers, the car hauler is the only one that they actually interact with."
Myers put a marker down for providers - Nissan has run a make-versus-buy study in Mexico, and "there will be a tipping point to where it does make sense to do it yourself versus try to procure the service." The logic is commercial: "Our cash registers don't ring unless we're delivering our product to the market."
OEMs and partners are now moving damage management from the claims desk to the point where damage happens. GM described moving from manual reporting, spreadsheets and email to real-time visibility, with the aim of managing every vehicle through distribution rather than dealing with exceptions six months to a year later, by which time costs can compound into millions of dollars.
It argued the problem is not a lack of data but bringing it together across modes, locations and partners, and that the industry would move faster if OEMs and partners agreed common standards, including for safely handling heavier vehicles and EVs.
From claims to every VIN
Rail remains the biggest blind spot and Casie Boullard, FVL senior quality engineer at Nissan North America, pointed to two-to-three-week transits: "There are very limited inspection points along those routes." Some partners still record damage on pen and paper, and her request was blunt: "Send me the data. Any data you have. I want to see it," because "if you're going off of an assumption, you're already stepping off on the wrong foot."
Jason Blood, chief commercial officer at Sphere Global, said the technology gap is closing fast. He described a digital passport for each VIN: "I don't just mean images, I mean anything that's happened on that vehicle." He co-chairs a working group standardising digital inspection, down to camera distance and image resolution, because no equivalent of AIAG damage codes exists: "not just one OEM. It's the whole bucket of people that touches that vehicle."
For Yanni Arvis, managing director of DRS North America, the weak point is the gap between signal and action. A broken window left uncovered "can very easily become water damage very quickly", turning a repair of a couple of thousand dollars into a $20,000 one.
He also challenged OEMs defaulting to the same repair vendors: "if it was only one OEM, one manufacturer making cars, we would still all be driving, you know, black Model Ts." The panel agreed consistent data should end the blame game. "We want to know this not to blame somebody," Arvis said. "We want to know this so we don't have 10 more cars broken."
Drivers, yards and the cost of silence
On labour, the panel highlighted a structural shift which is forcing OEMs to design networks around drivers who want to be home at night. "We're seeing a fundamental shift away from those long-haul drivers," Arnold said.
Ford's Benjamin Pohl, manager of FVL origin operations, mentioned that Ford ships "to more destination railheads than anyone else" to create short turns, but when a railhead blocks, "it starts to back up into the network, and that causes a larger macro issue for the entire industry."
Drivers also lose hours hunting for vehicles in yards. Myers, a former CDL holder who talks to drivers in Nissan's yard, stated: "people don't quit companies, they quit people," and "I don't want to hear about it after I've lost 7 drivers." Ford and Nissan have already sent joint teams to fix a shared rail ramp, but Myers said such collaboration happens only "on an isolated kind of case-by-case basis".
Mike Matousek of the American Trucking Associations' Automobile Carriers Conference said "there's been 10,000 CDL training providers that have been removed from the system over the last year or 2," and "vehicles are heavier now than they used to be". Nick Delic, founder of Eve International Logistics, said Montgomery has forced stricter vetting: "that's limiting our capacity also." He expects spot rates to climb another 20% into peak season.