America's Trucking 'Super Cycle' Arrives — Not From Booming Demand, But From Vanishing Trucks

The freight downturn that flattened American trucking for the better part of four years is over, and the recovery reshaping the market has almost nothing to do with a surge in demand.

Spot truckload rates hit an all-time record in early June, jumping nine cents per mile overnight to $3.83, according to FreightWaves data — the highest figure ever recorded. Contract rates followed. But the story driving those numbers is one of disappearing capacity rather than roaring freight volumes, a distinction with heavy consequences for shippers who spent years enjoying rock-bottom prices.

The engine of the squeeze is regulatory. An aggressive Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration enforcement push — targeting English-language proficiency requirements, improperly issued commercial licences and a stricter carrier registration regime — has removed roughly 40,000 trucks from service over the past year. Brokers and shippers, wary of liability, are now refusing to tender freight to marginal "conditional" carriers at scale, tightening the vice further.

The Logistics Managers Index captured the shift in stark terms, reporting that transportation prices are expanding at the fastest rate in the benchmark's near-decade history. Tender rejections, a barometer of how often carriers walk away from committed loads, have climbed above 17 per cent. The van load-to-truck ratio is up more than 90 per cent year on year; flatbed nearly triple.

Diesel remains a complicating cost, with the national average around $5.35 a gallon and California above $7, though fuel has cooled even as rates climb — proof, analysts say, that the inflation is structural rather than a pump-price pass-through.

FreightWaves chief executive Craig Fuller offered the blunt verdict now circulating across the industry: "Welcome to the trucking super cycle." Whether it lasts into 2027, as some forecasters warn, will hinge on whether the vanished capacity ever returns.