Trucking News · Nationwide · October 22, 2026

16 Trucking Companies Filed for Bankruptcy in About a Month, Federal Records Show

Sixteen trucking companies in about a month, every one of them in bankruptcy court. That is what FreightWaves found when it reviewed federal bankruptcy records from Sept. 18 to Oct. 21, 2026.

The filings were a mix of Chapter 7, which means liquidation, and Chapter 11, which means restructuring while the business tries to keep operating. They came from courts in Illinois, Texas, Georgia, Oregon, North Carolina, Michigan, Alabama and West Virginia.

Some of the companies on the list

The list includes real fleets as well as very small operations.

• Midwest Expedited Co. of Chicago filed for Chapter 11 on Oct. 6, listing about $2.31 million in liabilities against $108,351 in assets.
• Site2Site Transport of El Paso, Texas, filed for Chapter 7 on Sept. 29. Its filing shows about $2.1 million in gross revenue in 2024, $1.6 million in 2025, and no gross revenue from Jan. 1, 2026, to the filing date.
• KLS Logging Inc. of Lyons, Georgia, filed for Chapter 11 and is listed with 53 power units and 28 drivers.
• Eskil Trucking of Lakeview, Oregon, filed for Chapter 11. Its largest creditor claim is nearly $855,000 owed to another southern Oregon trucking company.

Several of the filers were one-truck, one-driver operations, the kind of business where the owner is the company.

The cost pressure

The filings come at a time of high operating costs. The national average diesel price was $6.276 a gallon for the week of Oct. 19, according to the Energy Information Administration, as reported by FleetOwner.

For a small carrier with little cash in reserve, a jump in fuel prices can be hard to absorb.

An important caveat

FreightWaves is careful to say that these filings alone do not prove that bankruptcies are rising across the whole industry. Sixteen filings in about a month is a snapshot, not a trend line.

Still, each name on the list represents drivers, families and in many cases an owner who put everything into a truck and a business.

What it means for drivers

For company drivers, a carrier's bankruptcy can mean an uncertain paycheck or a sudden job search. For owner-operators, the list is a reminder of how thin margins can be.

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