Freight Leaders Decode Trucking’s Uncertain Market Outlook

At shippers’ confab, defining a “fragile” trucking market

NEW YORK — The U.S. truckload market is not experiencing the demand surge that defined the COVID-era freight boom, but it may still be vulnerable to sudden changes in capacity, according to SONAR analysts speaking to shippers Tuesday at the TWA Hotel near John F. Kennedy International Airport.

FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller and Zach Strickland, director of market intelligence, described the current market as “fragile.” They emphasized that the term does not necessarily mean the market is deteriorating. Instead, it reflects a system operating with little room for disruption, where a relatively small change could affect truck availability, tender rejections and service reliability.

The gathering was sponsored by SONAR and Cass Information Systems. It followed a series of State of Freight discussions earlier in 2026, when market indicators were generally moving higher. This time, the analysts focused on a market that had shown more uneven behavior.

The SONAR Tender Rejection Index, or STRI, had fallen below 14% after exceeding 17% in June, according to Strickland. Tender rejections occur when a carrier does not accept contracted freight under the terms of its agreement with a shipper. Because the measure tracks carrier acceptance rather than price, Strickland said it offers a useful way to evaluate market strength without the effect of inflation in freight rates.

“Rates have inflationary pressure on them,” Strickland said. “Tender rejections do not. So it’s a little bit more of an apples-to-apples comparison.”

Although rejection levels had declined, the index moved sharply higher in the days before the event, rising about 75 basis points in one week. Strickland said that movement suggested the market had not settled into a dependable new normal.

“This market is so fragile,” Strickland said, “even though we’re having these periods of stability.”

He said the initial increase in rejections over the previous eight to 10 months reflected carriers recognizing that available capacity was becoming harder to manage. After the market adjusted, rejection levels eased. Later disruptions, including Roadcheck week, the Memorial Day period and the legal issues raised by Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, added new uncertainty involving broker liability, carrier selection and capacity.

Strickland also said a shift of some freight from highway service to intermodal rail may have contributed to the recent decline in truckload tender rejections. That change could make the truckload market appear more stable without necessarily indicating that underlying capacity conditions have become durable.

Fuller said he had discussed the market with J.B. Hunt CEO Shelley Simpson, who also characterized trucking as fragile. Fuller said Simpson’s use of the term was not intended as a warning that conditions were poor. Rather, it reflected the possibility that a disruption could quickly expose how little excess capacity is available.

“Capacity is so tight that any disruption could cause a significant increase in rejections, a significant tightness in capacity, trucks not showing up,” Fuller said. “So I think the word fragility is important to define because when I hear fragile, I usually think bad.”

For professional drivers and carriers, that distinction matters. A fragile market can remain orderly while still producing abrupt changes in lane availability, dispatch patterns and the number of loads that are offered to the spot market. It does not automatically mean a return to the severe shortages and congestion seen during the pandemic.

Fuller said some Wall Street contacts were concerned about a “disorderly” supply chain similar to the COVID period, but he rejected that comparison as a forecast for the current market. The key difference, Strickland said, is demand. The pandemic freight crisis was driven by an extraordinary surge in consumer purchases, while the SONAR Tender Volume Index does not show a comparable increase today.

Fuller pointed to several factors that could be limiting freight demand, including immigration cutbacks and deportations. He also cited the growing use of GLP-1 medications, saying they may be affecting consumption of products such as beer and soda. Those comments were presented as possible contributors to softer demand, not as evidence of a single cause.

Regulation was another major topic. Fuller said he remains in contact with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Administrator Derek Barrs, whose stated view is that profitable carriers are better positioned to invest in maintenance, training and properly regulated drivers.

That approach could continue to remove capacity from the market, Fuller said, as carriers and drivers face greater compliance and enforcement pressure. Any reduction in available drivers or operating equipment would be more significant in a market already showing sensitivity to relatively small disruptions.

The discussion left shippers with a market that remains broadly manageable but less predictable than its recent stability might suggest. For drivers and carriers, the same conditions mean that freight volumes, rejection rates and regulatory changes may continue to shift unevenly by region and lane rather than moving in one clear direction nationwide.