Truckload Contract Resets Now Landing 13% Above Prior Rates

Shippers resetting truckload contracts are paying 13% more than the rates they replaced. That's the Oct. 22 reading from SONAR's new Contract Rate Change Direction index (CRCD.USA), which stood at 13.11%, up from 3.53% a year earlier.

The index measures the average percentage difference between a new contract base rate and the one it replaced within an established shipper-carrier relationship. It counts a change only when the old rate had held steady for more than 90 days, filtering out short-term noise and isolating true bid-cycle repricing. It runs as a seven-day rolling average, updated daily.

Why strip out route guide noise?

The metric deliberately excludes temporary route guide waterfalling and contract-plus pricing to show durable rate changes. Route guide failures say a lot about market pressure. But the rates they produce can overstate what eventually becomes the sustained cost.

Two caveats matter. The index measures only contracts that are changing, making it largely agnostic to volume. Readings thin out when few contracts reset. And CRCD does not account for whether a carrier moves up or down in a shipper's routing guide after a rate change.

That gap showed up in 2025. Contract resets ran at roughly 3% to 4% starting in late 2024. Yet the average contract rate index (VCRPM1) showed flat to slightly lower invoiced rates through most of the year.

Do the increases stick?

Pairing the two indexes shows how successful carriers' rate increases have been, or not. CRCD leads invoice data directionally. But it doesn't predict whether increases will stick. That carriers were pushing for increases a year before the recent cycle turned should be a cautionary tale for shippers now navigating a period of extreme rate inflation.

The current 13% reading shows most contract changes are landing well into the double digits, nearly a year after tender rejection rates jumped above 9%. Contract rate changes lag rejection rates, which suggests it takes a sustained period of elevated rejections before contract rate increases follow. With rejection rates averaging close to 13% over the past few months, increases are still coming in above 10%.

Note that CRCD is not an annualized rate. It measures the average change in contracts when they move, and a change does not register until it's implemented.

What's next for shippers?

Carriers are still securing strong rate increases, and VCRPM1 suggests those increases are sticking. The average increase should moderate as carriers move onto more financially healthy contracts.

But capacity hasn't responded the way textbooks say it should. Both FMCSA and tender data indicate capacity has not grown meaningfully over the past 12 months despite elevated rates. That means it may take time for the curve to flatten.

For shippers heading into bid season, the message is straightforward. The repricing cycle that began with the rejection-rate spike has fully translated into contract terms. Any moderation depends on capacity entering the market — and so far, it hasn't.

The FreightWaves Chart of the Week is a chart selection from SONAR, FreightWaves' freight market data platform, chosen from thousands of potential charts to help participants visualize the market in real time. Each week a Market Expert posts a chart with commentary on the FreightWaves front page, with archives kept for reference. SONAR aggregates data from hundreds of sources, and FreightWaves' data science and product teams release new datasets each week.