Nussbaum Transportation and Roehl Transport are raising driver pay for the second time this year, the two regional truckload carriers confirmed this month. The dual announcement, reported by Heavy Duty Trucking, marks the second driver compensation increase from each fleet inside a single calendar year. Both carriers sit in the regional and mid-haul dry van segment that brokers and shippers lean on most heavily for Midwest-to-coast freight.

What does a second raise in nine months actually signal?

Driver pay is the slowest-moving cost in trucking. When a carrier raises once, it is usually catching up to inflation and prior shortfalls. When a carrier raises twice in the same year, it is responding to a live retention problem. Drivers are leaving for the alternatives — local P&D, regional dedicated, and union fleets with fresh contracts — and the cost of replacing a trained driver now exceeds the cost of keeping one in the seat. That is the math behind two announcements in nine months, not generosity.

Why two regional fleets matter for the broader market

Neither Nussbaum nor Roehl runs a transcontinental mega-fleet. But both anchor the segment that produces spot and contract reloads out of Illinois, Wisconsin, and the Upper Midwest. When two such carriers raise twice in a calendar year, the rest of the market reads it as a leading indicator. Carriers that deferred their first move will now face higher per-driver retention costs than Nussbaum and Roehl just booked. Brokers should expect longer dwell on rejected freight; shippers should expect rate conversations to reopen before the fall produce and retail-peak volumes hit.

How the recoup usually flows through

Linehaul rates are the first lever. Most fleets pass roughly two-thirds of a driver wage hike into base linehaul inside 60 to 90 days. Fuel surcharges and accessorials carry the rest. Shippers who locked multi-year deals in the soft market of late 2024 will find their accessorial schedules repriced before their linehaul. That is the order. Base first, but accessorials move first.

What does this change for shippers, carriers, and forwarders?

For shippers: the next round of contract renewals on Midwest lanes will price retention-driven wage costs into linehaul rates and accessorials. Annual contracts signed in the weak market of late 2024 and early 2025 are now the most exposed positions on the board.

For carriers: the lesson is that waiting costs more. Nussbaum and Roehl will recoup the raise through linehaul and surcharge. Carriers still sitting on first-quarter 2025 wage scales through Q4 will pay the steepest retention bill of the cycle.

For forwarders and brokers: spot capacity on the lanes both fleets run — Illinois and Wisconsin to the East Coast, the Upper Midwest to the Southeast — tightens further into peak season. Expect tender rejections to climb, spot rates to follow, and dedicated renewals to reset higher.

The forward read

Pay raises that cluster in mid-year historically translate into tighter contract pricing by January. Shippers running on 2024-vintage rates on Midwest lanes should reopen talks before the fall produce and retail peak collide with a driver pool that just got more expensive to retain.

Tom Whitfield covers driver economics, capacity, and rates for Waybill Wire.