Uncertain. That’s probably the best way to describe the state of the freight market, according to Eric Starks, chairman of the board for FTR Transportation Intelligence.
Starks made the remark during an October 2 webinar discussing the freight industry’s overall economic picture for the remainder of 2025 and looking into 2026.
In addition, he said, a good deal of the uncertainty faced by the industry is related to tariffs.
“We started the year with (an effective tariff rate on imports) at just under 2.5%,” he said. “It went all the way up above 30%, and it’s been bouncing around since then.”
Not knowing where tariffs will end up makes it difficult to predict prices in months to come. Will retaliatory tariffs imposed by other countries rise? Will a deal be made that keeps tariffs low? Will the courts intervene, changing tariff rates or throwing them out entirely?
“This is why everybody has been kind of on edge and unable to make a decision,” Starks said. “FTR has forecasted that the import tariff rate will settle out between 15% and 20%, but “we don’t know for sure, because of the amount of uncertainty that is out there in the general marketplace.”
Lower employment rate
One concern Starks expressed is for the low payroll numbers coming from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). To illustrate the slowdown: In December 2024, more than 300,000 jobs were added. In August 2025, that figure plummeted to a paltry 22,000.
Mining, construction and manufacturing, along with transportation and warehousing, have all seen job declines this year. Industries experiencing negative growth are producing less product for truckers to haul and pumping less money into the economy through employee wages and benefits.
Those numbers show up in reports on real consumer spending, which was less than a half percent growth in the first quarter and about 1.6% for the second. FTR forecasts consumer spending growth to hover around 1% per quarter for the next three quarters.
“The gist is that we’re going to see weakness in the consumer sector for the next three quarters before we start to see anything pick up,” Starks said. “Generally, we want to see something north of 2%, so this is very lackluster.”
GDP impact on transportation
According to Starks, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which hit negative territory in the first quarter and rose to nearly 4% in the second, was heavily influenced by tariffs.
“We saw the first quarter go negative because we brought in a bunch of imports,” he said. “Second quarter went positive because we didn’t bring in a bunch of imports.”
New tariffs and threatened future tariffs caused a rush to order imports before tariffs could be enacted, causing the negative first quarter GDP result. Once tariffs began to take effect during the year’s second quarter, ordering slowed considerably.
“As we think about the fourth quarter and the first quarter of next year, we clearly see slowdown happening,” Starks said. “We’re not going for a recession right now, but I think there are a lot of signals that suggest we could be moving in that direction.”
That brought the presentation to the GDP Goods Transport Sector, which subtracts out domestically produced products that aren’t shipped and adds back in imported goods, which are shipped. After a fairly strong first quarter — again, due to import numbers — transported goods fell by more than 15% in the second quarter. The FTR forecast calls for growth to remain in negative territory for the next two quarters before a slow climb back to positive territory.
“Traditionally, we need to see above 3% growth for it to actually have an impact on the underlying freight markets,” Starks said.
Finally, Starks noted that post-pandemic food inventories have remained lower than they were pre-pandemic, reflecting the expectation of lower consumer spending.
It’s important to keep in mind that tariffs, in and of themselves, are not “good” or “bad,” but the uncertainty surrounding the change they bring to the market can have an impact, he concluded.
Freight rates & capacity
Anyone who’s involved in the freight industry knows that rates have been bouncing along the bottom of the scale for quite a while.
“For the last three years, the spot market has basically been running at a low level and has been stable,” said Avery Vise, FTR’s vice president of trucking.
Freight volumes have not fared as well.
“Volume, at points this year, has been running below last year, certainly below 2023 levels,” he said. “We see an increase of just under 1% growth in refrigerated and dry van food loadings.”
According to Vise, capacity — the number of trucks available to haul the amount of freight available — is the factor keeping rates at the bottom of the scale.
“We still have a capacity overhang that is driven principally by the small end of the market, one- and two-truck type operations that deal with brokers,” he said. “That segment of the market still has 39% more drivers than it did before the pandemic.”
Statistics from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) Motor Carrier Management Information System database shows that the segment of trucking with one to five trucks peaked at 62.2% above pre-pandemic levels as drivers quit their trucking jobs to purchase their own trucks.
There are more carriers registering between six and 100 trucks, too; that’s about 17.8% more than pre-pandemic levels.
The “101 or more trucks” segment of the industry is in negative territory (1.9%) this year as large carriers downsize. Overall, however, there are still 12.2% more drivers than prior to the pandemic.
Until that excess capacity comes out of the market, Vise explained, rates are likely to rise very slowly.
Starks agrees. “To take 1% of capacity out of the market, you have to take roughly 40,000 trucks out,” he said.
At that rate, nearly a half-million trucks will need to stop running to get back to pre-pandemic levels.
Help on the horizon?
Some help could come from an unexpected arena, however. The FMCSA’s new rule against issuing CDLs to non-domiciled drivers is expected to remove 194,000 drivers from the U.S. fleet in the next two years. Enforcement of English Language Proficiency regulations could remove 20,000 more.
Premiums for trucking insurance have risen sharply, adding to operating costs for small carriers. This could also eventually result in a drop in capacity.
“We do expect that a number of those operations will go out of business later this year, or at least by early next year,” Vise predicted.
Finally, President Trump’s proposed tariffs of 25% on heavy-duty trucks not built in the U.S. will drive equipment costs skyward.
“That might be the breaking point for some trucking operations,” Vise said. “The ATA estimates (the tariff) would add at least $30,000 to the cost of a truck built in Mexico, as 40% of trucks are currently.”
Trucking conditions, without a surge in manufacturing creating an increase in load volumes, are expected to remain stagnant for the next year or longer.
This story originally appeared in the November/December 2025 edition of Truckload Authority, the official publication of the Truckload Carriers Association.
Cliff Abbott is an experienced commercial vehicle driver and owner-operator who still holds a CDL in his home state of Alabama. In nearly 40 years in trucking, he’s been an instructor and trainer and has managed safety and recruiting operations for several carriers. Having never lost his love of the road, Cliff has written a book and hundreds of songs and has been writing for The Trucker for more than a decade.
