This year’s peak season is showing up in the freight market sooner and stronger than expected. The SONAR Truckload Rejection Index (STRI), a new broader measure of carrier load rejects, has already surpassed last year’s traditional Christmas peak just weeks into the season.
That means carriers are turning down contracted loads at a pace we normally only see near the holidays and well above typical post-Thanksgiving levels.
High rejection rates usually signal tight capacity which tends to push rates up. In this case, the bump comes without the usual surge in freight volumes you’d expect during a classic peak season. That dynamic suggests the market could be hitting an inflection point, driven more by shrinking capacity than by booming demand.
Seasonality seems to be playing a trick on us: rather than a clear post-Thanksgiving lull before year-end ramp, carriers are already feeling the pinch. While it’s too early to declare the freight recession officially over, this early “peak” hints that trucking fundamentals are shifting and that planning for capacity constraints might be just as important now as it is in January.
