White Paper: State of the Industry – October 2025

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Key Takeaways:

  • Maritime carriers are using blank sailings to stabilize container rates, which have been disrupted by tariffs and altered seasonality.
  • Truckload demand is experiencing an unseasonal decline, yet a slow tightening of capacity is indicated by tender rejections and rising carrier rates.
  • Domestic intermodal volume increases are currently compensating for the contraction observed in international intermodal volumes since early July.
  • While manufacturer sentiment is declining, consumer spending has shown surprising strength, and the Federal Reserve has resumed interest rate cuts due to U.S. labor market weakness.
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The October 2025 “State of the Industry Report” — presented in affiliation with Ryder — shares an in-depth overview across the trucking, maritime and intermodal markets, as well as what to expect in the coming weeks. The data contained within the report provides breakdowns of capacity, volumes and rates.

In this report, you will find: 

  • Carriers are struggling to keep container rates stable as seasonality is upended by tariff disruptions, increasingly turning to blank sailings to do so.
  • Truckload demand is on an unseasonal decline, yet tender rejections and carrier rates suggest a nationwide tightening of capacity — albeit a slow one.
  • Although international intermodal volumes have been contracting since early July, rising domestic volumes have more than compensated for this decline.
  • Sentiment among manufacturers is growing darker, but consumer spending has been surprisingly robust throughout the summer so far.
  • Weakness in the U.S. labor market overshadowed strength in other pockets of the economy at the Federal Reserve’s September meeting, after which the Fed resumed its cutting cycle for interest rates.

Download the complimentary report today to access the full insights.

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