Truckload Spot Rates Jump 60% as 89,000 Carriers Exit the Market

Spot truckload rates rose 60% year over year in midsummer, and roughly 89,000 carriers have left the $397 billion truckload market since 2022. That, in a sentence, is the story: pricing power is returning not because freight came back, but because the trucks didn't stay.

The latest State of Logistics Report (SoL) concludes that capacity exits — not demand growth — are driving the rebound. Pricing is "firming even as demand remains mixed," the report finds. It also argues truckload can no longer be read as one national market; pricing and capacity increasingly hinge on regional conditions.

What does this change for shippers?

Quite a lot. Spot rates up 60% and contract rates up 15% year over year mean tendering freight on the open market now costs materially more than it did a year ago. And the pressure is stacking from several directions at once.

First, the exits. The pandemic boom drew a surge of new operating authorities from the Department of Transportation. When demand normalized, the sector was left carrying excess capacity — and it has spent three years whittling it away.

Second, enforcement. Customs and Border Protection has intensified actions involving undocumented immigrants, and more than 3,000 Mexican-born drivers have lost U.S. entry visas as the DOT expands data-sharing with CBP to crack down on cabotage — foreign carriers hauling domestic U.S. freight illegally. Further scrutiny of non-domiciled drivers and possible changes to drug-and-alcohol database requirements could trim capacity more.

Third, drivers. Schneider National president and CEO Jim Filter told analysts: "We would now categorize the market as driver-constrained. The long-haul driver population in the U.S. sits well below long-term averages, and near the lowest levels seen over the last decade." He estimates roughly half the non-compliant capacity is still in the market, with the rest expected to exit through next year.

A recovery nobody has seen before

"We're in a supply-driven recovery," ATA chief economist Bob Costello said on the association's newsmakers podcast. "It's a unique time. We've had situations like this before, but they're not very common."

Kendra Phillips, vice president of transportation management at Ryder System, puts it more bluntly: "We've never had a supply-driven recovery before. Nobody knows exactly how it will play out. It's an interesting place to be as an industry."

The effects are already visible in freight operations. Kent Williams, executive vice president for sales and marketing at Averitt Express — which runs roughly 550 truckload tractors alongside more than 850 dedicated power units — says the tightening has pushed shippers to split loads. "This has caused some shipments that shippers would have preferred to move as one truckload move to be converted into multiple LTL shipments," he says. "Accordingly, this has caused our average weight per LTL shipment to increase recently."

Phillips agrees the driver squeeze is real. "It had been loose, but the supply tightened this year," she says. "I'm sure we'll feel the tightening of supply of drivers."

The K-shaped economy underneath

The macro picture is, at best, neutral. Economists forecast manufacturing output flat to down in 2027, with home construction similarly soft. Data center construction keeps booming, but it generates little truckload freight. Traditional freight demand drivers remain "lackluster — at best," in Costello's words.

"I don't think the recovery is over," he says. "But I would be so much happier if the parts of the economy that drive freight were doing better."

The divergence runs through truckload itself. Flatbed demand is extremely healthy; dry van dedicated freight is picking up; carriers tied to data center construction have had a strong year. Overall TL demand remains flat to down, and the midyear fuel price increase added cost pressure.

Tariffs compound the problem. The effective U.S. tariff rate sits at its highest level in a century, and Mexico volumes declined for the first time since 2003 outside a recession. Old Dominion Freight Line CFO Adam Satterfield's verdict: "I think we're in the early innings of the freight recovery."

The widening price gap between over-the-road truckload and intermodal also gives rail-based providers a shot at long-haul freight. Williams notes the truckload market is typically a leading indicator, and LTL follows: "We're seeing the LTL market show strong, positive growth."

The $604 million question for brokers

Separately, a Dallas County jury awarded plaintiffs $604 million this summer in a "nuclear verdict" against defendants including C.H. Robinson, in one of the first major broker-liability cases since the Supreme Court's Montgomery decision exposed brokers to accident liability.

The sting: the carrier involved held an FMCSA "Satisfactory" rating — meaning C.H. Robinson had selected a carrier meeting federal safety standards. If "Satisfactory" isn't enough, brokers face an uncomfortable question about what standard actually protects them.

Peter Latta, chairman and CEO of A. Duie Pyle, the 16th-largest LTL carrier, calls escalating litigation "a major challenge for the industry that ultimately impacts everyone through higher insurance costs and increased supply chain costs." His fix: eliminate plaintiff attorneys' contingency fees — often a third of the settlement — and make the losing party pay the winner's legal fees, which "would encourage pursuit of only truly meritorious claims."

The open question for 2027: whether this tightening is a cyclical correction or a structural reset. With half the non-compliant capacity still to exit and driver supply near decade lows, shippers may find locking in capacity at slightly higher rates the cheaper option.