How This Freight Cycle Could Last

Freight’s cycle-ending forces are still stacking up, but Reliance Partners’ Chief Revenue Officer Thom Albrecht sat down with us to discuss why this one might last.

Nearly 360 trucking, freight brokerage, and insurance professionals packed the Grand Hyatt Nashville for the 5th Annual Trucking Matters Seminar Series, Reliance Partners’ largest turnout yet for an event that started with 160 attendees in its first year. Over two days, the agenda moved from federal safety policy to cargo theft, credit risk, and the future of freight brokerage. The event opened, as it has in years past, with Albrecht’s signature freight, capacity, and economic update.

Albrecht split his presentation into two parts. The first was a traditional read on the health of the consumer and businesses, along with the broader economy. The second, framed as “a tale of two cities,” dug into the structural overhaul reshaping trucking capacity and why he believes the industry may be entering a freight cycle unlike any in the past two decades.

The economic data paints a mixed picture. Inflation-adjusted wages had strung together 35 straight months of gains after a brutal 25-month stretch of declines until April and May of this year turned negative again. Consumers are still climbing out of a purchasing-power hole.

Category-level inflation is an even messier story than the approximately 3.5% headline CPI figure suggests. As of the 5th Annual Trucking Matter Seminar, Gasoline was up 26.7% year over year even as it fell nearly 10% in June alone; lettuce and tomatoes were up 23.8%; coffee climbed 18.5%. Meanwhile, bacon, used vehicles, and eggs were all down on a year-over-year basis. Savings rates, sitting near 3% against a historical average north of 8%, left little cushion. Credit card delinquencies at 90 days had climbed back to 7.1%, still shy of the Great Financial Crisis peak but well above the lows of early 2022.

Business demand, Albrecht noted, was not robust, but better than in 2025. Customer inventories remained near survey-history lows. That’s good news for freight creation as this year’s replenishment freight has been steadier than a year ago. AI-related capital spending, meanwhile, accounted for nearly 70% of first half 2026 GDP growth. Strip out AI, tech, and government spending, and the rest of the economy actually contracted slightly in Q1 and barely grew in Q2.

Housing has been “stuck” for nearly four years. Existing home sales per 1,000 households had fallen to roughly 26, well below the 44-59 range of the 2000s and 2010s, with affordability consuming an estimated 43% of household disposable income against a more affordable level around 30%.

“A Tale of Two Cities,” a reference to the Dickens line “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” set the tone for the conference. Fraudulent and non-compliant carriers, Albrecht argued, had been thriving for years while compliant fleets absorbed the cost of doing things the right way. 

His data backed it up: compliant carriers operate at roughly $2.38 a mile once insurance, payroll, drug testing, legal CDLs, and maintained equipment are factored in, versus roughly $1.65 a mile for carriers who cut those corners. That means a non-compliant 50-truck motor carrier has up to a $6.5 million cost advantage compared to a compliant 50-truck fleet.

Newly registered DOT numbers for for-hire, interstate, general freight carriers had exploded from a 2010-2019 yearly average of 9,760 to a 2020-2025 average of 36,658, with nearly 60,000 new registrations in 2025 alone. Albrecht’s presentation flagged the telltale signs of the fraud driving those numbers. Carrier phone numbers like 123-456-7890 and 867-5309, single addresses housing hundreds of “trucking companies,” and CDL mills with advertisements in various languages are all recognizable patterns.

Albrecht highlighted that there are still CDL schools advertising obtaining a CDL without English proficiency. Even today, there are several real examples visible online.

Albrecht’s Thoughts on the Potential of a Trucking “Super Cycle”

During the motor carrier panel discussion, Albrecht made the case that this cycle could break from trends in recent history. Freight cycles are typically defined as sustained stretches of rising rates followed by contraction. Albrecht defines a super cycle as one that runs longer than two years and one in which pricing is much stronger than CPI, if not double-digit. The industry hasn’t cleared that threshold since the cycle that lasted from mid-2003 to the fall of 2006.

The 2013-2014 and 2017-2018 cycles both petered out after roughly 18 months, and each was tied to a single regulatory catalyst (an Hours of Service change in the former, the ELD mandate in the latter). And even the recovery after the housing collapse lasted less than 20 months, albeit without any trucking regulatory changes.

This cycle has the potential to be different, Albrecht argued, because it isn’t riding on one rule change. He also acknowledged the danger in stating that “This time is different” given the history of failed proclamations throughout history.  “Thus far there have been a handful of regulatory changes during this cycle , and more changes are expected, both as new regulations and also to tighten enforcement of existing regulations where ‘loopholes’ have been exploited.  I look for more than a handful of NPRMs in the next couple of quarters,” Albrecht said.  NPRMs are Notices of Proposed Rulemakings from the FMCSA.

Changes that have already impacted the market include English Language Proficiency enforcement, non-domiciled CDL restrictions, and cabotage rules already in effect, with a proficiency exam for new-entrant motor carriers advancing through the rulemaking pipeline. FMCSA signaled on July 27 that it is moving forward on new entrant proficiency exam rulemaking. The FMCSA also announced the elimination of self-certification of CDL entities and ELDs.  While nearly 8,000 CDL entities have been removed from the system, thousands more could also be removed.  In 2019, according to Albrecht, there were approximately 6,000 entities in the TPR (training provider registry) and on November 30, 2025 there were 39,554 and today that number is still above 30,000.

In terms of ELDs, “simply announcing that third party certification will be required is insufficient”, Albrecht said, “and I expect more details later this year or early in 2027 around what the certification process will look like.  With approximately 1,000 ELDs in the United States, compared to just 41 in Canada, I believe that once third party certification is in place, that there could eventually be barely 30 approved ELDs in the U.S.”

“Also, when I think about the new entrant spigot, a written exam to show proficiency around hours of service, hazmat driving, what to do in the event of a crash, selected maintenance issues, and other topics, would be an improvement over simply applying for and receiving a DOT number,” Albrecht said.

“Aside from raising the price to obtain a DOT number and requiring more thorough verification of the identity of the new carrier, including authenticating the principal place of business, ownership, multiple DOT and MC numbers, etc.,” Albrecht said, “written exams would demonstrate some start-up knowledge that would obviously need to be accompanied by an onsite audit around the 1-year anniversary of a new motor carrier.”

“However, for a true super-cycle to occur, more needs to be done. If the FMCSA were to stop pursuing changes today, the cycle would be over by late 2027 or early 2028, meaning it would be like all the cycles since the last super cycle over 20 years ago,” Albrecht said. “More needs to be done. Right now, we’re in a boat with numerous holes. We have to plug those holes to improve safety and compliance and to ensure a cycle that lasts more than two years.”

What shippers and carriers are watching

The conference’s motor carrier and shipper panels reinforced the numbers with on-the-ground sentiment. Fleet leaders from Christenson Transportation, Apex Transit Solutions, Crossett Inc., CB Freight, and Excel Trucking described a freight market that’s currently healthy but historically prone to losing steam after 18 to 20 months. The consensus is that this time, structural capacity losses may be permanent.

Shippers on the panel, including representatives from General Mills, Shaw Industries, Simmons Foods, Armada Supply Chain Solutions, and KBX Logistics, said service levels have deteriorated and several are actively rebuilding relationships with small and mid-sized carriers after leaning too hard into mega-carrier capacity. Many expect the gap between spot and contract rates to close by early 2027 and are bracing for double-digit rate increases, even if no one on stage would commit to a number.

The event’s newest addition was a live Q&A with FMCSA Deputy Administrator Jesse Elison, and it gave attendees direct access to the agency shaping that regulatory pipeline, fielding questions on enforcement priorities and the road ahead for commercial motor vehicle safety policy. A new freight brokerage panel on the fallout from the Montgomery Supreme Court ruling, featuring leaders from Backhaul Direct, FreightVana, Steam Logistics, and Axle Logistics, tackled the murkier legal terrain brokers are now navigating. Litigation panelists from The Sloan Firm and Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary noted that with the finer points of “safe carrier” case law still undecided, plaintiff attorneys have little incentive to leave freight brokers out of discovery.

Reliance Partners has now brought shipper representatives to Trucking Matters for three consecutive years, which sets the event apart from other industry gatherings that are built primarily around carriers and brokers.

The 6th Annual Trucking Matters Seminar Series is set for July 14-15, 2027, back at the Grand Hyatt Nashville.

Learn more at reliancepartners.com.