Excargo Services, an asset-based carrier serving the Port of Houston, has announced its intermodal trucking services built around a stringent qualification process for owner-operator drivers.
More information is available at https://www.excargo.com/truck-driver-shortage/
The announcement comes as industry discussion of trucking capacity centers on a numbers problem. The American Trucking Associations' last published estimate put the driver shortage at roughly 60,000 for 2023. At the same time, ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello has described the issue less as a shortage and more as a matter of driver quality, pointing to accidents and testing records as the variables shippers should weigh.
That framing points to a credentialing gap that is harder to see than a headcount, says the team at Excargo Services. The FMCSA requires training providers to list on its Training Provider Registry, but providers self-certify, and the agency does not approve or certify the quality of individual schools. In August 2026, the DOT removed 110 CDL training schools from that registry, including 13 in Texas. Over the same period, federal regulators canceled more than 30,000 CDL licenses issued to non-domiciled drivers who failed English language proficiency tests, with Texas revoking 6,407 of them. Against that backdrop, how a carrier vets its own drivers becomes a relevant question for anyone buying capacity.
Excargo Services addresses that question directly. Owner-operator applicants must be at least 23 years old, hold a valid CDL, and show a minimum of two years of verifiable tractor-trailer experience, with intermodal experience preferred. Applicants are also held to no more than three moving violations in 36 months, no more than two of those in the last 12 months, and no DOT reportable accidents in the past year.
Qualification is only the starting point, since the company treats its drivers as partners and cites high driver retention alongside an award-winning safety program as evidence of a culture built to keep qualified drivers on the road rather than cycling through new hires.
That driver pool operates alongside equipment built for intermodal work. Excargo Services owns and manages its own chassis pool, including tri-axle and lightweight specialized chassis for overweight containers, and its drivers carry TWIC certification and CT-PAT compliance. The company has moved freight through the Port of Houston since 1979, offering drayage, intermodal trucking, warehousing, and transloading across Texas and neighboring states.
Shippers, importers, and exporters looking to learn more about Excargo Services and its intermodal trucking offerings can visit https://www.excargo.com/