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This week’s top stories in trucking

Freight Market Hits Inflection Point: Traffix Sees Double-Digit Rate Hikes Through 2026

The soft market is officially over. Traffix’s Q2 2026 Market Update confirms a full market turn, with March volumes up 8 percent year-over-year and linehaul rates surging approximately 30 percent independent of fuel.

“It’s pretty clear we’re heading into a new cycle,” said Alex Fuller, senior director of revenue management and solutions at Traffix. “For the next six to 12 months, rates will continue to stay high and potentially get higher.”

Capacity exits from 2023 to 2025, regulatory constraints on drivers and tender rejections above 10 percent are creating structural tightness. Shippers should budget 10 percent to 20 percent cost inflation and lock in contract capacity now.

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Landstar Signals Start of Trucking Upcycle

Freight broker Landstar System is calling it: the market has entered an upcycle. First-quarter earnings of $1.16 per share beat estimates, with consolidated revenue hitting $1.17 billion — up 2 percent year over year.

The real story is yields. Total truck yield rose 0.2 percent sequentially, defying the typical 4 percent seasonal decline. April revenue per load is running 13 percent higher year over year — “significantly above” normal patterns.

Heavy-haul demand (data centers, energy, aerospace) drove 18 percent revenue growth in that segment. Owner-operator retention improved, and variable contribution posted its first year-over-year gain since the third quarter of 2022.

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Freight Recession ‘Officially Over’ as Summer Surge Looms

The freight downturn has ended and capacity is tightening fast, according to FreightWaves’ April State of Freight webinar. Tender rejection rates sit at 12.7 percent — levels not seen in years — while volumes are up 11 percent to 13 percent year over year.

“There is no freight recession right now … we are clearly done with it,” FreightWaves chief executive officer Craig Fuller said.

The upcoming Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance International Roadcheck could spike rejections into the 16 percent to 17 percent range as enforcement pulls capacity off roads. Industrial activity, not retail, is driving the cycle heading into June’s peak shipping month.

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‘Phantom Capacity’ Reshaping Cross-Border Trucking

The U.S.-Mexico trucking market is tightening in early 2026, but not from surging demand. Security and compliance constraints are creating “phantom capacity” — trucks that exist on paper but can’t reliably move freight.

“There’s not really a driver shortage — it’s more a compliant driver shortage,” said Zeid Houssami, senior vice president at Uber Freight.

Northbound demand runs two to three times higher than southbound, forcing rapid equipment repositioning. Shippers are responding defensively with mini-bids and hybrid procurement strategies, while uncertainty over the USMCA has put nearshoring investments in a holding pattern until July.

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Aurora, Hirschbach Plan 500-Truck Autonomous Fleet

Aurora Innovation and Hirschbach Motor Lines are dramatically scaling their autonomous partnership, with plans for the Iowa-based refrigerated carrier to own 500 trucks powered by Aurora’s virtual driver starting in 2027. The memorandum of understanding projects 500 million driverless miles and hundreds of millions in multi-year revenue for Aurora.

Hirschbach will subscribe to Aurora’s Driver as a Service model, owning assets while Aurora supplies the technology.

“The Aurora Driver will provide consistent 24/7 service to our customers, making it an important growth lever for our business,” said Richard Stocking, chief executive officer of Hirschbach Motor Lines.

The hybrid network strategy assigns autonomous trucks to long-haul Sun Belt routes while human drivers focus on shorter hauls closer to home.

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SONAR spotlight: Flatbed rates jump, reefer get a bump, dry van slumps

(Source: SONAR)

Summary: Flatbed spot rates remain elevated at record levels according to the SONAR Flatbed Truckload Index (FTI). The FTI measures all-in flatbed spot rates. While flatbed rates fell 2 cents per mile in the past week to $4.03, they remain 3.9% higher than last month. The headline number is the year-over-year comparison, where the FTI is $1.28, or 46.5%, higher than last year.

Dry van and reefer spot rates saw mixed weekly results, with dry van rates falling 4 cents per mile to $3.05 while reefer rates rose 6 cents per mile to $3.31. Both equipment types have substantially improved compared with last year. Dry van rates are up 85 cents per mile, or 38.6%, year-over-year. Reefer rates saw a slightly larger jump, up 86 cents per mile, or 35.1%, year-over-year.

For trucking capacity and its impact on demand, the upcoming annual Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance Roadcheck from May 12-14 will be the next litmus test. In addition to the mechanical scrutiny via enhanced inspections, the 2026 focus also includes electronic logging device (ELD) tampering, falsification or manipulation.

This could have an outsized impact, with more fleets sitting out the week. Issues such as misuse of adverse driving conditions, personal conveyance and errors or omissions on logs can immediately harm carriers’ safety scores. Being placed out of service for days due to a falsified log violation can also prove costly.

While the event is expected to boost spot rates, the persistently higher tender rejection rates are worth watching. This suggests that one mechanism shippers used to rely on before putting their excess freight on the spot market is no longer in their toolkit. Routing guide failure with rejection rates over 10% means that an even smaller amount of trucking capacity is needed to leave the market to produce an outsized boost in rates.

While truckload demand continues to fluctuate, the critical driver of the current upcycle, for now, appears to be truckload supply and the added regulatory scrutiny on it.