The Panama Canal is auctioning its 2027 dry-season slots in November because it is not sure the water will be there — plus a broker merger, a border out-of-service rule, AI agents that can book freight, and a supplier that wrote a region out of its summer

1. The Panama Canal added capacity back — and is selling 2027 dry-season slots because it is not sure the water will be there

On September 28 the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) added a tenth daily booking slot at the Neopanamax locks for booking dates from October 15, and set the maximum Neopanamax draft at 49.0 feet, effective immediately, citing improving water conditions (Advisory A-36-2026). That reverses part of the August tightening, when the ACP cut Neopanamax slots to nine a day and Panamax slots to 25, then 23 (A-29-2026). The Panamax locks are still at 23.

The ACP’s own data is why buyers should not file this as resolved. In August it reported that rainfall across the Canal watershed for May through August was 34% below the historical average and inflows 44% below, and that forecasts of a potentially severe 2026–27 El Niño raise “concerns regarding water availability during the upcoming 2027 dry season” — January to April. Its September operations summary, issued October 9, says the water deficit continues and that vessels without a reservation “may face indefinite delays” (A-38-2026).

Two dates for anyone with Canal-dependent lanes in Q1 2027 (A-37-2026):

• November 17, 2026: the Neopanamax Long-Term Slot Allocation (LoTSA) competition, for packages covering transit dates January 3 – April 3, 2027.
• November 24, 2026: the first LoTSA for the older Panamax locks, a new sealed-bid pilot.

Customers that win LoTSA packages secure a set of transit slots for the whole period in one transaction. Everyone else competes for the remaining slots in the regular booking periods, or routes around the Canal.

Shippers are already moving. At an October 9 briefing, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said about 5% more cargo is being allocated at origin to Los Angeles because of Suez and Panama constraints, and that September, at 1.04 million TEUs, was the port’s busiest month in its 118-year history (Supply Chain Dive). MarineTraffic data cited by Supply Chain Dive counts 69 container ships that waited more than 100 hours to transit between January and late September 2026, against 13 in the same period of 2025.

So what — before November 17: (1) Ask each ocean carrier or NVOCC on Canal-dependent lanes, in writing: do you hold, or are you bidding for, 2027 LoTSA slots on the services that carry our freight? If not, what is the fallback routing and transit-time change? (2) Read your surcharge clauses now. Find any low-water, draft or canal-congestion surcharge language and who can trigger it, and tie it to a published ACP advisory before Q1 bookings, not after. (3) Re-time Q1 2027 inbound on lanes where a West Coast-plus-rail alternative exists, and price that alternative before the carriers do. (4) Don’t over-correct today. Capacity and draft are better now than in August; the exposure window is January to April 2027.

2. C.H. Robinson is buying RXO. Your contract window is the time before it closes

On October 5, C.H. Robinson agreed to buy RXO in a stock-and-cash deal with an implied value of $5.8 billion. The companies expect to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval and a vote of RXO stockholders. RXO will be integrated primarily into C.H. Robinson’s North American surface transportation division, and the companies are targeting $300 million of net run-rate cost synergies within two years of closing. FreightWaves describes it as a combination of the #1 and #3 U.S. truck brokerages.

If you route freight to both, they would stop competing for it at close. Until then you still have leverage; after close you would have one vendor and its integration program.

The market it lands in. The Logistics Managers’ Index for September, released October 6, put Transportation Prices at 92.7 and Transportation Capacity at 34.4, the tenth consecutive month of contraction on an index where 50 separates growth from contraction. Its aggregate logistics-cost measure (inventory costs, warehousing prices and transportation costs, on a 0–300 scale) rose to 246.1, the highest reading since April 2022. That is the market your 2027 freight bids will price into.

So what — before close, and before your next bid: (1) Read the assignment clause. Can either broker assign your contract to the combined company without your consent? Do you have a termination right on change of control? (2) Ask for continuity in writing: current rates, service levels and named account contacts held for a set period after close, and what changes for portals, load tendering and billing. (3) If both brokers sit in your routing guide or bid list, line up a third bidder before your next freight RFP, not after. (4) Ask for capacity commitments, not just rates: a low contract rate is worth little if tenders are rejected, so ask for tender-acceptance targets and what happens when they are missed. (5) Don’t sign a multi-year award that runs past mid-2027 without those terms.

3. Mexico-sourced freight can now be stopped at the first inspection past the border zone

FMCSA has proposed writing English-language proficiency (ELP) failures into federal rules as an out-of-service (OOS) violation (Docket FMCSA-2026-0826, published August 10; comments closed October 9). For most drivers, the rule would write down enforcement that is already happening. The change that matters to buyers is at the U.S.-Mexico border: under the proposal, a driver who fails ELP is placed out of service unless the current trip stays inside the border commercial zones. A revision to CVSA’s out-of-service criteria on April 19, 2026 already narrowed the old border-zone exception, and FMCSA says that change is already in effect. Roadside enforcement is ahead of the rulemaking.

The numbers, from FMCSA’s own analysis:

• January 1 – June 24, 2025: 7,812 ELP violations nationwide, 33 of them OOS orders. June 25, 2025 – March 19, 2026: 60,399 violations, 19,045 of them OOS orders.
• In the border zones over that second period, 41,563 violations were issued. FMCSA estimates 16% of them would also have become OOS orders under the proposal — about 9,000 OOS orders a year.
• FMCSA prices the carrier cost at about $14.4 million a year, assuming roughly $800 a day for an average two days to get a replacement driver to the truck. It says the estimate “does not consider potential spillover effects to the broader economy from late shipments.” The shipper’s cost of a stranded load is not in the number.

So what — if you buy from Mexican suppliers or run nearshore lanes: (1) Map who drives each border leg: whether freight changes hands at the zone edge by transload or driver swap, or the same driver takes it through to the interior. Through-moves carry the new exposure. (2) Ask carriers and brokers how they qualify drivers for ELP and what their OOS rate has been since April, in writing. (3) Put stranded-load terms in the contract: re-power time, and who pays detention, expediting and line-down costs when a driver is placed out of service. FMCSA’s two-day assumption is a planning floor, not a guarantee. (4) Check delivery buffers on critical inbound parts on lanes that rely on through-drivers.

4. Your freight forwarder now takes bookings from AI agents. Who approved that spend?

In late September, Flexport launched a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. It lets a shipper’s AI assistant — Flexport names Claude, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and in-house tools — track shipments, search active contract and spot rates, and create a booking from inside the assistant. Flexport says an administrator must first enable the connection for the organization; after that, each person connects their own assistant under their own login, the assistant can reach only what that person can already reach, and administrators can see every connected assistant, revoke a user, or switch the whole organization off.

The question is not specific to Flexport. Any supplier that exposes ordering to AI agents moves the point of commitment from a person in a portal to whatever an employee’s assistant does.

Your purchase controls assume a person places the order. An agent booking against a negotiated rate looks like a normal booking on the invoice. Commentary in The Loadstar (October 6) argues that under U.S. contract law and Flexport’s terms, the cost of a wrong booking falls on whoever connected the agent. That is one writer’s reading, not a ruling: confirm it with your counsel, and plan as if it is right.

So what: (1) Ask each logistics provider whether agent or API ordering exists and whether it is enabled for your account; for Flexport, check the administrator view of connected assistants. (2) Decide who may connect an agent, and treat it like granting purchasing authority: named users, written approval, the same spend limits a person in that role has. (3) Ask what approval steps or caps the provider supports, and require human sign-off above a set value or for spot (non-contract) rates. (4) Ask whether bookings are tagged by channel, so audit can match an agent booking to a PO and an approver. (5) At the next renewal, add language on agent-originated orders: who is bound, how errors are unwound, and what audit trail the supplier keeps.

5. When a supplier writes a region out of its own summer

In a letter posted in October, Taylor Farms founder and CEO Bruce Taylor said the company will “indefinitely suspend” harvesting and processing iceberg lettuce from central Mexico for sale in the U.S. or Canada during the CDC’s defined Cyclospora season. CDC defines that season as May 1 through August 31. The company, which cites 25,000 team members in North America, will also increase irrigation-water and crop testing in the region.

The trigger was this summer’s outbreak. FDA’s final count for the Cyclospora outbreak linked to recalled shredded iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico is 12,883 illnesses, 570 hospitalizations and 2 deaths. CDC declared the outbreak over on September 11, and FDA closed its investigation on October 2. FDA says there is not enough evidence to conclusively determine how contamination occurred, though it found Cyclospora in a processing-plant wastewater tank and in a grower’s drainage ditch.

Two details buyers should notice:

• The recall reached labels that weren’t “Taylor.” openFDA’s enforcement records for the July recall (Class I, 21 product entries) list foodservice packs sold under distributor and restaurant-chain labels. Buyers who never contracted with Taylor Farms de Mexico still had its lettuce in their kitchens.
• It was not the group’s only Class I recall this summer. A separate Class I recall by Taylor Fresh Foods Inc., for potential Salmonella in salsas, pico de gallo and dips, was initiated August 7 and posted September 23 (25 product entries, listed as ongoing).

FDA also says that before the 2027 growing season it will increase Foreign Supplier Verification Program inspections, to check that importers are considering Cyclospora in their hazard analysis.

So what — if you buy fresh-cut produce or prepared foods: (1) Ask every fresh-cut supplier for its May–August 2027 sourcing plan by region. Taylor’s exit takes central-Mexico iceberg out of those four months, and that demand will land somewhere. (2) Ask who packs your private-label and distributor-brand produce: the label on the case is not the plant that processed it. (3) Write recall-notification and cost-recovery terms that follow the product, not the brand, so a co-packer’s recall triggers your supplier’s obligations. (4) If you import produce yourself, ask your FSVP owner whether your hazard analysis addresses Cyclospora before FDA asks. (5) Price summer 2027 now rather than at the spring bid.