US truckload tender rejection rates have climbed to roughly 14% — about three times their 2023 levels — even as overall volumes grew just 9% over three years, according to a Tuesday Sonar market update by analyst Julie Van de Kamp.

The arithmetic is brutal: carriers are rejecting nearly four times as many loads on roughly the same amount of freight. In a normal cycle, that gap closes as new trucks enter and rejections fall. This time, it has not.

"The price signal is there, but capacity response isn't," Van de Kamp said.

Why are rejections so elevated?

Total for-hire tractors fell approximately 51,000 in August alone. New fleet tractor counts, which peaked near 47,000 in mid-2022, have continued to decline despite a full year of elevated rejections.

The data points to a structural supply squeeze rather than a demand-driven freight cycle. Volume is essentially flat, but capacity is leaving the market faster than new equipment can replace it.

Are new carrier authorities adding real capacity?

Net carrier authority additions turned positive in 2026 and hit a five-year high above 2,000 per week in late August and September. On the surface, that looks like expansion. Van de Kamp urged caution.

During the last capacity boom, authority counts rose 51% while actual tractor counts grew only 12%. The same gap is opening now. New authority grants in 2026 ran about 17% below first-quarter levels, and only two in three new interstate registrants purchased liability insurance — compared with nine in ten during the 2019 cycle.

Van de Kamp attributed much of the recent spike to noise around the FMCSA's new MOTIS registration system, which paused deactivations and cleared application backlogs.

What's blocking new supply?

Three constraints are compounding across the spot and contract market:

• Driver availability. More than 202,000 CDL holders sit sidelined for drug and alcohol violations. The non-domiciled CDL rule affects more than 194,000 drivers over time, and English-proficiency enforcement removes roughly 2,700 drivers from service each month.
• Fleet growth limits. Schneider described the market as driver-constrained in its most recent earnings. Knight-Swift and Werner said driver availability is capping fleet expansion, pushing their focus to yield and utilization instead.
• Cost barriers. Insurance premiums rose about 4% in 2025 and another 4% to 6% in early 2026, even as crash rates declined. Liability and litigation exposure, not safety performance, are driving the increases.

About 10% of carrier trucks are parked. Those units can return to service only if compliant drivers are found — an outlet Van de Kamp does not currently see.

What should shippers and brokers watch?

Van de Kamp expects the truckload market to remain tight at least through early 2027, and potentially considerably longer, even without a demand spike.

For shippers and brokers, she recommended ignoring net authority headlines. The leading indicators to track are tractor counts, fleets reporting miles, and the gap between tender rejections and tender volumes. Those metrics will signal any eventual capacity turn before contract rates move.

For commercial buyers, the implication is direct: contract renewals face upward pressure through 2026, and spot exposure is unlikely to deliver relief until driver supply or equipment counts turn.