For most of 2023 and 2024, shippers moving freight across the United States and Canada held the upper hand.
Trucking capacity was abundant, carriers were undercutting each other for loads, and spot rates sat well below contract prices. That balance of power has reversed.
Heading into the second half of 2026, truckload rates are climbing sharply, spot pricing has overtaken contract pricing in many lanes, and shippers are being told to book earlier and plan for less flexibility than they have seen in years.
According to C.H. Robinson’s July 2026 freight market update, dry van cost-per-mile is now tracking roughly 34 percent higher than a year ago, with spot pricing near $2.33 a mile, up from an earlier peak-summer projection closer to $2.10.
Uber Freight’s second-quarter market report tells a similar story: truckload spot volumes on its network jumped 44 percent quarter over quarter, and the company now expects spot rates to run 20 to 25 percent above last year’s levels for the remainder of 2026.
The shift is significant because it reverses a trend that had held for two full years. Through 2023 and 2024, truckload pricing was deflationary as capacity built up during the pandemic-era freight boom slowly worked its way out of the market.
Many forecasters, including analysts at Argon & Co, expected that oversupply to correct gradually through 2026, with rates rising only 3 to 4 percent for the year.
Instead, the correction has arrived faster and harder than most models anticipated, catching shippers who had grown used to a buyer’s market off guard mid-year.
Carrier capacity is shrinking faster than demand
The single biggest driver behind the increase is supply, not demand. Years of thin margins have pushed smaller trucking companies out of the market, and that exit has continued into 2026.
Fewer active carriers means fewer trucks available to cover the same volume of freight, and it takes only a modest disruption for that tighter capacity to show up as a sharp rate spike.
This is what analysts describe as a supply-driven inflection point, distinct from the demand-led freight booms of the past.
Freight volumes, as measured by the Cass Freight Index, have actually been negative year-over-year for fourteen consecutive quarters, though the pace of decline has slowed in recent months.
In other words, rates are climbing even though overall shipping volumes remain historically soft, because the capacity available to move that freight has shrunk even faster than demand has.
Flatbed trucking stands out as a partial exception, benefiting from a wave of data center and industrial construction that has kept specialized capacity unusually tight regardless of the broader freight cycle.
That dynamic played out clearly during May 2026’s Roadcheck Week, an annual multi-day enforcement blitz that pulls trucks off the road for inspection.
Route guide failure rates, the percentage of loads that cannot be covered at pre-negotiated contract prices, broke through 7 percent, the highest level since the New Year’s holiday period.
Long-haul freight over 600 miles was hit hardest, with route guide depth 20 percent worse than April and 32 percent worse than the same month in 2025.
Spot rates have overtaken contract rates
One of the clearest signals of a tightening market is the relationship between spot and contract pricing.
For most of the past two years, contract rates sat above the spot market, giving shippers little incentive to chase short-term capacity. That has now flipped.
Spot rates have moved above contract rates for the first time in several years, and tender rejection rates, the share of loads carriers decline to accept at the quoted price, recently exceeded 15 percent, the highest level since early 2022.
When carriers start turning down freight at agreed prices, it is a strong indication they can find better-paying loads elsewhere, and shippers are forced to renegotiate.
New licensing rules are tightening the driver pool
Regulation has added to the capacity squeeze. In February 2026 the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration finalized a rule tightening how commercial driver’s licenses are issued to non-domiciled applicants, closing gaps that previously allowed some foreign nationals to obtain a US CDL without proof of long-term work authorization.
The rule took effect in March 2026 and has made it materially harder for part of the existing driver pool to keep working in the for-hire truckload market, further reducing the number of trucks available at a time when demand is already firming.
Fuel costs and an early peak season
Diesel has added another layer of cost pressure. US average diesel prices pushed above $5 a gallon for much of the first half of the year, before easing slightly following a ceasefire between the United States and Iran that took some pressure off global oil markets.
Even with that relief, diesel remains well above year-ago levels, up from roughly $3.54 a gallon at the same point in 2025, and carriers continue to build that cost into freight pricing.
Demand has also arrived earlier than usual. An unusually early produce season, particularly in the Southeast and Texas, has pulled capacity toward agricultural freight ahead of the traditional summer peak, tightening conditions in refrigerated and dry van markets alike.
Uber Freight’s Nathan Adams described the current environment as peak-season behavior appearing before demand has fully ramped, a combination that leaves the market more exposed to disruption because there is little spare capacity to absorb it.
Freight is shifting to intermodal and LTL
As over-the-road pricing climbs, shippers are actively rerouting volume to other modes. Intermodal demand has been running roughly 10 percent above its five-year average, with freight in the 550 to 1,500 mile range increasingly shifting back to rail as the cost gap with truckload widens.
Less-than-truckload carriers are seeing a similar effect, with LTL networks absorbing freight that would previously have moved as full truckloads, giving LTL carriers room to push through their own rate increases through the rest of 2026.
A regional and cross-border divide
The pressure is not evenly distributed. The western United States has been the most stable region, while the Northeast has seen the sharpest deterioration, with route guide performance around 40 percent worse than a year earlier.
Cross-border freight is diverging too: Mexico routes are tightening quickly as export volumes grow, pushing pricing higher and creating longer border delays, while freight moving into and out of Canada remains comparatively soft, weighed down by muted demand and continuing uncertainty around the USMCA trade agreement.
What it means for shippers
Analysts are broadly aligned that this is not a short-lived spike. FTR data shows contract rates began climbing in late 2025 and are projected to keep rising through at least mid-2027, putting 2026 contract pricing roughly 8 percent above last year.
Ryder’s June State of Transportation report points to the same conclusion: capacity exits, rising tender rejections and a spot market back above contract levels all point toward a more inflationary transportation market for the rest of the year.
For shippers, the practical response has been to move away from pure spot-market buying toward dedicated transportation and longer-term contracts that lock in capacity, even at a higher price, in exchange for reliability.
Dedicated fleet arrangements, in particular, are being positioned by providers such as Ryder as one of the strongest-performing segments of the market for the rest of 2026, precisely because they offer shippers a way to secure trucks without competing for them on the open spot market every week.
For businesses moving goods to or from North America, including African exporters and freight forwarders managing US and European-bound cargo, the lesson is the same one now being repeated across the industry: book earlier, diversify transport modes where possible, and treat total landed cost, not just the headline linehaul rate, as the number that matters.
A shipment that clears customs on time via a slightly more expensive but more reliable dedicated lane may still cost less overall than one delayed by a route guide failure on the cheapest available spot rate.
With most analysts pointing to continued tightening rather than relief through the rest of 2026, that discipline is likely to matter for the remainder of the year, not just through the current peak season.
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