Tender rejections near 13.9% are breaking shippers' 2022-era bid playbooks

Truckload tender rejection rates held near 13.9% in mid-October — more than double the under-6% level of peak season 2025 — and shippers still bidding as if capacity were abundant are paying for it. Loads sit uncovered, brokers price more than a year of rate risk into bids, and routing guides bleed freight, according to Craig Lough, director of strategic planning at A. Duie Pyle, the family-owned West Chester, Pennsylvania carrier expanding its LTL network beyond the Northeast.

"They're sticking to the old, 'You've got to sign up long-term, there's no flexibility,' but then they're on the market asking for additional capacity," Lough told FreightWaves in an Oct. 8 interview. He has worked in freight since 2003 and leads Pyle's non-asset brokerage division.

How long are bid terms stretching?

Lough has seen bids that lock rates for a month with fuel adjustments, and others that hand brokers lane data five months before go-live, then ask them to hold rates for a year after it.

"So, you're talking like a 17- to 18-month risk profile in probably either the first or second most volatile market that we've seen this century," he said. The shippers demanding the longest terms get what Lough calls paper rates from a good share of the capacity bidding on them — numbers that will not hold when trucks are scarce.

Lough sorts shippers into two camps: collaboration and consequences. Some open by saying where they need capacity. Others lead with fines. One bid he described opened with a 98% tender acceptance expectation and a $1,000 penalty for late delivery. Other bids remove providers from the routing guide for declining freight below a set threshold.

"What works in a falling market is a giant red flag in a tightening point," Lough said.

What is happening on the spot side?

Price-focused shippers are tolerating weaker service for lower rates, in some cases because they locked their own customers into full-year prices built on old freight costs before the market flipped. Lough said Pyle priced loads on a Monday for same-day movement, then saw the same loads posted by other brokers through Tuesday and Wednesday.

Quote requests increasingly arrive cold, without lane details. When Lough asked for information on shipping hours, consignees or delivery windows, some shippers stopped responding. "I think you have some supply chain professionals that started in a loose market and haven't really had those collaborative conversations before," he said.

Small carriers failing Pyle's standards have contacted the brokerage "left and right" in the weeks before the interview — a sign, Lough argued, that other companies tightened carrier vetting and pushed that capacity back onto the market. "I almost think that there's two markets that are going on right now," he said. English-language proficiency enforcement pulls about 2,700 drivers out of service a month, per FreightWaves SONAR data, and Pyle sees significant pricing premiums into areas with traditionally heavier enforcement that standard pricing tools miss.

Pyle blends the two markets: some lanes run on carriers locked in for years — "some lanes that carriers have been running for us for eight years," Lough said — while spot carriers, whom other brokers avoid, take the rest. "Whoever needs the truck the most is going to pay that carrier the most and ultimately get it moved," he said. Carriers with strong reputations are not hauling at prices they took two or three years ago.

What should shippers do before peak?

Lough's advice starts with phone calls, video meetings and site visits centered on service and capacity, not just price. "If you're sending out lists of loads every day at 11 o'clock in the morning that aren't covered, what are you going to do here?" he said.

He has also pitched a transparent cost-plus model — Pyle shows what it pays the carrier and adds a markup — so a shipper targeting $1,000 learns whether the market demands $1,200 or $1,300. No shipper has taken it yet, he said.

Blast emails to roughly 50 carriers backfire in tight markets, Lough warned. A couple of months before the interview, one Baltimore-to-remote-New-England lane was posted 41 times by 27 brokers on load boards. Even three or four brokers on one load mislead shippers: carriers call each in turn, and a truck offered at $1,100 in the morning wants $1,400 by 3 p.m. "In reality, it's just the same truck making offers to four brokers," Lough said.

His deadline: talk to carriers and brokers before Thanksgiving, because Northeast freight gets harder every year from then until January as winter weather stacks on peak demand. With enforcement still pulling drivers out of service, shippers betting on capacity returning before their contracts reprice will keep pushing freight onto a spot market where duplicate postings and late-day quotes raise what they pay.