The Great Freight Recession was not over in March 2025: excess capacity, weak rates, elevated costs, and shrinking cash reserves meant carriers needed immediate financial, operational, and network action rather than waiting for a rapid recovery.
Three years of depressed freight rates and inflation across trucking had produced resignation rather than recovery. Shippers still held the upper hand because ample truck capacity kept contract rates low, while spot volatility offered little sustained upside. Insurance, driver pay, and equipment costs remained elevated, and operating losses continued to consume cash.
Optimism at the beginning of 2025 had faded. Without a meaningful contraction in capacity or a change in freight demand, recovery remained elusive amid economic uncertainty, consumer-spending shifts, and high interest rates affecting construction and manufacturing.
Financial Engineering: Preserve Cash and Extend Liquidity
Carriers should scrutinize every expense, distinguish essential costs from deferrable spending, and determine the cash runway needed for at least the next 12 months.
Restructure Equipment Payments
Ask lending partners for payment deferrals, interest-only periods, or extended terms that reduce near-term cash outflow.
Optimize Working Capital
Review the current working-capital facility, including advance rates on collateral and covenant requirements. Potential actions include:
- Negotiating a higher advance rate.
- Eliminating liquidity-based covenants.
- Considering a move from an asset-based lending facility to factoring, which may not carry the same covenant requirements.
Renegotiate Supplier Contracts
Seek improved pricing and payment intervals from fuel providers, maintenance vendors, and insurers.
Cut Non-Essential Expenses
Eliminate or defer discretionary spending while protecting activities required to operate safely and serve customers.
Improve Financial Reporting and Benchmarking
Prepare internal financial statements promptly and compare performance with credible industry benchmarks, including the TCA Profitability Program, ATRI, and FreightMarks.
Actively Manage Cash
A cash-flow model covering at least 13 weeks should include predictable large payments such as vehicle registrations, license tags, insurance renewals, fuel, driver pay, and maintenance. Modeling these obligations helps prevent cash shortages and improve working-capital decisions.
Operational Engineering: Evaluate Capacity and Utilization
Carriers should examine whether current assets and operating practices are reducing losses or merely preserving familiar routines.
- Local trucks: Determine whether local tractors and drivers contribute to profit or mainly provide convenience. Consolidate or reallocate them if they do not improve margins.
- Drop trailers: Measure whether reduced driver delay and improved efficiency justify the equipment cost. If not, consider live loads or changes to freight agreements.
- Driver domiciles: Map driver homes against the primary freight network. Out-of-network domiciles add cost and inefficiency, regardless of tenure, loyalty, or perceived productivity.
- Profitability by operation: Use meaningful profit-and-loss reporting by operation to direct equipment, people, and capital toward stronger segments. Underperforming groups must improve, shrink, or be restructured.
Freight Network Engineering: Improve Freight Quality
Define and Enforce the Network
Analyze actual freight patterns and establish the geographic area in which the trucks should operate. Repeated exceptions gradually expand the network beyond profitable boundaries. Consistently operating outside core lanes may also indicate excess capacity.
Double Down on Direct Customer Freight
Sales and business-development efforts should focus on outbound freight from key markets to destinations inside the defined network. Short-term pricing may not be ideal, but consistent shipper-controlled headhaul freight can improve the network's total rate per mile.
When demand strengthens, incumbent carriers with direct customer relationships will be better positioned to negotiate higher rates. Unlike many costs, sales and business development should not be indiscriminately cut during the downturn.
Manage Broker Freight Holistically
Before the downturn, carriers typically moved 10% to 15% of loads through brokers. By early 2025, that share had climbed to 20% to 35%, making brokers collectively the largest customer for many carriers.
Despite the volume, broker freight was often managed by employees whose objective was simply to cover a truck. Without training in negotiation or network management, those employees could protect the broker's margin at the carrier's expense.
Appoint a Director of Broker Improvement
One person should be accountable for all brokered freight moved on company assets. That leader should:
- Enforce profitability strategies.
- Have authority to accept or reject loads.
- Train and hold accountable everyone who interacts with brokers.
Coach Employees on Load Selection
Employees evaluating broker offers should treat the following as non-negotiable:
- Prioritize network fit: Reject loads that pull trucks into unprofitable or out-of-network lanes.
- Use spot freight as a backstop: Broker loads should fill backhauls, reduce deadhead, and improve utilization, not dictate the network.
- Use market data: Understand rate trends in key lanes rather than bidding too low merely to move a truck.
- Build reliable broker relationships: Favor brokers that consistently offer freight in core lanes and provide stability.
Require Broker Load Logging
Every broker offer should be recorded in a centralized system. The log should include:
- Date offered.
- Broker contact information.
- Mileage.
- Offered rate.
- Negotiated rate.
- Margin including deadhead.
- Acceptance or rejection.
The director can use that ledger to review decisions, coach negotiation, enforce accountability, and prevent brokers from exploiting inconsistent practices across the organization.
Take Control, Adapt, and Survive
Survival depended on decisive action. Carriers that controlled their costs, capacity, freight network, and broker transactions would be better positioned to endure the downturn and compete when the market recovered.
These Actions Are Ongoing, Not One-Time Fixes
Financial discipline, operational review, network control, and broker management should become part of daily operations. The article's urgency was direct: carriers not already following these practices needed to begin immediately.