After years of volatility, players across the transportation industry are holding hope that 2026 brings equilibrium. Many analysts forecast 2026 to be a reset year, representing a realignment more than a dramatic boom or bust.
Today, capacity is normalizing somewhat due in part to stricter compliance enforcement. This has spurred a marginal spot rate increase. Volumes, however, remain suppressed, creating a precarious market that lacks foundational support.
This type of market is especially challenging for brokers because it creates an environment where shippers and carriers can more easily reach a consensus on rates, cutting brokers out of the equation.
“Normally, when spot rates increase, it happens because volumes are increasing relative to recent conditions. This demand shock allows brokers to reset their rates with their shippers, knowing that the shippers don’t have a ton of alternatives.” FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller wrote in a recent article.” In this climate, that isn’t possible. Due to slow volumes, large asset carriers have plenty of available capacity and are willing to accept the loads on offer, so long as the rates are nominally higher than where they’ve been trending.”
The challenge ahead for freight brokers
With low volumes and rising spot rates squeezing margins, the traditional brokerage model becomes more fragile because the spread between what brokers can charge and what they must pay carriers narrows.
In addition, fuel, insurance, maintenance, and equipment expenses continue to climb, squeezing margins even further. Also, new regulatory changes and safety metrics are prompting carriers to demand greater operational discipline from their brokerage partners. Meanwhile, shippers expect speed, visibility, and high-quality service while managing their own disruptions and cost pressures.
Freight brokers are entering 2026 under pressure from both sides: tighter margins and higher expectations. The brokers who survive and thrive will be the ones who proactively build resilience, instead of hoping conditions improve on their own. A “wait and see” mindset won’t cut it.
While carriers and shippers may see 2026 as a year of stabilization, freight brokers should view it as a resilience-building year. It’s a time to reset operations, reinforce capabilities, and prepare intentionally for what comes next.
Why strategic planning matters in 2026
To build resilience in 2026, strategic planning is no longer a nice-to-have perk. It’s a competitive requirement.
It’s time to get disciplined about cost control, especially labor and overhead. Think about how you could automate anything that slows you down, whether it’s quoting, booking, billing, or communication. Focus on building deeper, data-informed relationships with your shippers and carriers and diversifying with purpose rather than chasing every load.
Additionally, start treating your tech stack – especially your TMS platform – as a central part of your business strategy, instead of just a daily operating tool.
When it comes to strategic planning, instead of finding time to plan, protect a regular block of planning time. Setting aside a dedicated window each week to work on the business — not just in it — helps keep the bigger picture front and center and prevents strategy from getting lost in day-to-day work.
Analyze current business performance
Before planning for 2026, you need an honest picture of where your business stands today.
Start by using your 2025 performance measures to pinpoint which areas drive margin and which erode it. This will help you understand how market shifts affect your customers and carriers. It also gives you the opportunity to identify inefficiencies that drain time, labor, and cash flow – and set realistic priorities for the year ahead.
Review your 2025 KPIs with hard questions.
- Where are margins consistently strong?
- Which lanes or modes underperform and why?
- Are quotes accurate and competitive compared to actual buy rates?
- Which reps are using tools most effectively?
- Are we losing loads due to speed, inaccuracy, or lack of capacity?
- How much manual work is still eating into productive hours?
Moving forward, the results of your 2025 KPI review should also be considered in light of expected 2026 conditions, including:
- Continued carrier consolidation
- Higher operating costs
- Increased shipper demands
- Regulatory pressures
- Growing AI adoption
You will use this analysis to determine where to invest, where to cut and what to test. These results can also lead you to better, more nuanced technological adoption in the new year.
Assess your team’s efficiency
Your 2026 strategy will only succeed if your team can execute it. Now is the time to test whether your team’s skills, habits, and workflows match your existing business needs.
Start with clear role expectations. Every role in a brokerage, from operations to customer sales to carrier sales to dispatch to billing, should have clear responsibilities and measurable goals that support your short and long-term strategies.
From there, develop team metrics that reflect your 2026 priorities. These metrics should measure more than your team’s output. They should also help identify repeatable daily workflows that will carry the brokerage forward.
Brokerages can use consistent check-ins to reinforce these metrics and identify skill gaps. High-performing brokers create a culture where feedback isn’t stored up for quarterly or annual conversations. Regular, structured check-ins help your team review progress toward goals, identify roadblocks, offer you the opportunity to provide coaching, and reinforce to everyone what’s working.
Evaluate and build your 2026 tech stack
Teams work faster, more accurately, and with less stress when they’re supported by technology explicitly designed for freight brokers. In 2026, automation will be your fastest path to profitability.
At the very minimum, your tech stack should empower your team to work faster and smarter by eliminating manual inefficiencies. It should also provide clean, contextual data that drives accurate decisions. If it can’t do these things, it won’t support your company’s resilience or long-term growth.
The foundation of a strong tech stack is a well-equipped TMS. A good TMS should be able to automate entire workflows. It should centralize quoting, lane history, communication, paperwork, and billing. A TMS that only moves loads from point A to point B is no longer relevant. Instead, your TMS should help you run a more efficient and effective business.
Beyond your TMS, focus on building a tech stack that eliminates complexity in 2026. Many brokerages still rely on a messy collection of tools that don’t integrate or share data. This leads to slow or missed quotes, lost loads, rating and invoicing errors, and a team that works harder than they need to.
In 2026, your tech stack should be integrated, with processes working together without manual entry, screen switching, or multiple logins. It should also be highly-automated. If a task is repeatable, automate it. It should be intelligent so that you can filter all data to make it contextual and decision-ready. Lastly, your tech stack should be unified. Your team should spend most of their time on a single platform rather than bouncing between systems.
Building a strong tech stack means making tech adoption a priority. The best tech stack in the world can’t help you if your team won’t use it. Assigning clear workflows, setting expectations and providing consistent, role-specific training can go a long way in promoting adoption.
Future-proofing your business
Next year won’t reward speed alone, but it will reward resilience. Future-proofing your brokerage means building an operation that stays stable in turbulent markets and accelerates the moment conditions improve.
Whether the market tightens or demand surges in the years to come, the brokers who have prepared will win. Fewer errors mean better margins. Faster quoting means more loads won. Stronger communication means better customer service. Trusted carrier relationships mean more capacity. Automated processes mean more efficiency.
Future-proofing is both an insurance policy against volatility and a competitive edge when opportunities arise.
In the next year, you’ll have an opportunity to strengthen your operations before the next major shift. The work you put into refining your processes, aligning your teams, modernizing your tech stack, and grounding decisions in clean data will determine your success in 2026 and beyond.
Don’t wait for conditions to improve. Design a business that operates with confidence in every market. Click here to learn how Tai Software can help.
