Key Takeaways:
- Knight-Swift CEO Adam Miller said federal actions against noncompliant carriers and training schools are helping rebalance trucking supply and demand after a multiyear downturn.
- Miller said the crackdown is removing unsafe capacity that has depressed rates and contributed to a recession that has lasted more than three years.
- He said the company will keep building its LTL network and noted that a proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger could speed intermodal service if approved.
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ATLANTA — The federal crackdown on noncompliant carriers and driver training schools is helping to rebalance supply and demand in the trucking industry, according to the CEO of the largest truckload carrier.
Adam Miller, CEO of Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings, applauded the ongoing work by the Department of Transportation and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to “clean up some of the unsafe capacity in our industry.”
In addition to the safety implications, he said this push to remove “bad actors” also is chipping away at excess freight hauling capacity, which has depressed freight rates and contributed to a “really tough” recession in trucking that has endured for more than three years.
“I think the work from this administration is very welcome and we couldn’t be more supportive,” Miller said. “I look forward to seeing that continue into 2026.”
He specifically cited government actions to shut down noncompliant driver training schools, impose stricter rules for non-domiciled commercial driver licenses and enforce English-language proficiency requirements.
“I think all of them together, collectively, will start to have a meaningful impact,” Miller said. “I think what we’re doing collectively is going to make us a much stronger industry, a safer industry, and probably creates a bit more balance in the network.”
Miller shared his perspectives on industry conditions and outlined Knight-Swift’s business initiatives during a Jan. 26 session at SMC³’s Jump Start 2026 conference. Like many other speakers, Miller joined the event virtually amid travel disruptions caused by Winter Storm Fern.
While navigating a soft freight market during the past few years, Knight-Swift has focused on managing the costs it can control.
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“It has to be kind of cultural,” Miller said. “It has to be something that your people are focused on at the ground level at every single terminal.”
He resisted calling an inflection point in the freight market but expressed cautious optimism.
“It does seem like the worst is behind us,” Miller said. “We may be in a better position here in the near term, particularly on how capacity has come out of the network most recently.”
For the past several years, Knight-Swift has diversified its operations by expanding in the less-than-truckload sector through its 2021 acquisitions of AAA Cooper and Midwest Motor Freight and its 2024 purchase of the LTL operations of Dependable Highway Express.
The company recently unified those LTL brands under the umbrella of AAA Cooper and remains intent on extending its reach to the Northeast to complete a national LTL network.
Miller said that could happen through either acquisition or organic growth, but the company isn’t rushing to do so immediately.
“Right now, we’re kind of taking a breather as we develop some density in the terminal network that we have currently,” he said.
Miller also briefly addressed the proposed merger of Class I railroads Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern and its implications for intermodal freight. The combination, if approved by the Surface Transportation Board, would create a transcontinental freight railroad.
Miller said the merger has the potential to speed up transit times and potentially attract new customers to intermodal.
“I think it could be good for what we could offer at Swift Intermodal,” he said. “Ultimately, I think it would help the industry, and I think that it would really help our customers.”
Knight-Swift, based in Phoenix, ranks No. 7 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America.
