Truck transport prices will be reduced in the third quarter, where the American shipping market is still in the recession, steeped in the lengthy low demand while companies are waiting to find out how advanced commercial policies are revealed, according to the analysis of AFS Logistics and TD Cowen.
This data shows the tenth consecutive of the pricing of the truck troop depression, while the tankers are less than the truck load (LTL) carefully manages profitability of weak sizes and parcel carriers transforming the power of pricing in their favor. These expectations come from the third quarter (Q3) 2025 from the TD Cowen/AFS shipping version.
“Despite a lot of international travel by world leaders, commercial policy is still an unstable image and companies choose the approach to waiting, vision and delaying spending decisions,” AFS CEO of AFS said in a statement. “With no incentive to ignite the demand, some transport companies flow under the pressure of low sizes that are not softening while others publish all the mechanisms available to capture revenues.”
The report found that the numbers would be the worst for the truck loading sector. After the peak of 25.7 % higher than the foundation line in January 2018 in the first quarter of 2022, truck load rates began continuously, reaching only 4.3 % above the foundation line in the second quarter of the following year. The latest index now displays the tenth quarter in a row with prices in or near the bottom, with Q3 2025 expect a 5.6 % higher than the 2018 foundation line, which is a slight decrease in the quarter (QOQ).
On the LTL side of the market, transport companies face challenges such as “inevitable reality” of soft demand and changing trade policies. In response, the frescent fleets of revenue management are tightly, closely monitored the corridors, and define profitability priorities. In the second quarter of 2025, the weight of each charge decreased by 5.1 % on an annual basis (YOY), but the cost per shipment decreased by only 2.9 %, indicating the success of transportation companies ’revenue strategies. The LTL rate for each Q3 pounds index to be the seventh quarter in a row with a positive YOY direction, as it reached a new increase of 65.9 % higher than the foundation line in January 2018, partially driven by seasonal factors and carrier pricing procedures.
“Although there is some evidence that the steady decline we have noticed in weight for each shipment is partially calling for the transformation of the situation, it also indicates a simpler truth – the tankers that move lighter platforms due to the demand for soft LTL,” says Aaron Lagank, Vice President of Shipping Services.
In the truck transport area, the pressure to meet Wall Street’s expectations in the face of the opposite winds such as the high costs of employment and the low demand is to increase the increasingly aggressive efforts by UPS and FEDEX to leave the back control of the price of the two trucks. The researchers found that the intense opponent who played a major role in parcel prices for more than a year has finally started to dilute, UPS takes an aggressive approach in particular, reform the logic of classification and putting new additional fees.
