The three main segments of the U.S. trucking market continue to swing in different directions as carriers struggle for revenue amid a cloudy economic outlook and muted peak expectations, according to a report from AFS Logistics and TD Cowen.
Specifically, the latest data shows that truckload carriers are struggling with persistent excess capacity and low rates, less truckload (LTL) carriers are using pricing power to maintain profitability in a soft market, and parcel carriers continue to deploy so-called “self-help” in the form of surcharges and other pricing changes to squeeze more revenue from soft volumes.
“Although the initial shock and awe caused by the high-profile tariff announcements has subsided since earlier this year, businesses are still grappling with the impacts of changing policies,” AFS CEO Andy Dyer said in the fourth quarter (Q4) 2025 release of the TD Cowen/AFS Shipping Index. “We are also in the third year of an unusually long downward freight cycle, and carriers are relying on hard-earned lessons from the past to prioritize profitability and stay in the soft environment.”
Parcel carriers, broken down by sector, have had their own luck with rate changes, implementing ground fuel surcharge rates of 26.1% year-over-year (YOY) in the third quarter of 2025, adding surcharge structures for the holiday season, and moving away from traditional package metering estimates to a new model of rounding up — rather than down — to set rates by the size of each box.
In LTL, carriers have continued to flex their pricing power, keeping freight costs steady at elevated levels since the second quarter of 2023 — a period of nine consecutive quarters.
But times are tougher for truckloads, which continue to face headwinds from sluggish demand and changing trade policies, which do not indicate an easing of the excess capacity that has suppressed interest rates for nearly three years. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the truckload load per mile rate is expected to be 6.1% above the January 2018 baseline – a modest increase of 0.1% quarter-over-quarter and 0.9% year-over-year, but the 11th consecutive quarter with rates at or below 6.2%.
