Chart of the Week: SONAR Tender Lead Time Index – USA SONAR: STLT.USA Seasonality View
Shipper tender lead times for requesting truckload capacity increased 7.3% to 3.63 days in 2025, up from 3.38 days in 2024. This represents a 39% increase over the average lead time in 2019 and marks the sixth consecutive year in which shippers have given carriers more time to cover contracted loads. While truckload tender lead times may not be a headline statistic, they are a strong indicator that shippers have improved their ability to anticipate freight movements, while also helping carriers keep capacity more readily available.
The SONAR Tender Lead Time index (STLT) measures the time between a shipper’s request for coverage and the requested pickup date. For example, if a shipper tenders a load on January 5 with a pickup date of January 9, the lead time is four days. Generally, an ideal lead time falls between three and six days, as this allows carriers sufficient time to reposition equipment into the pickup market.
The fact that shippers are giving carriers a full day more to position trucks than they did in 2019 is remarkable. Prior to the pandemic, markets with ample capacity typically experienced lead-time compression. In fact, average lead times shrank by roughly 4% from 2018 to 2019 as capacity loosened.
Order lead times can be difficult to interpret, as changes can signal multiple dynamics. Lead times often increase around holidays, as shippers place orders further into the future to secure capacity after holiday disruptions—most notably around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Lead times also tend to rise when shippers anticipate potential challenges securing capacity, but they can shrink rapidly when unexpected demand emerges, making additional context critical for interpretation.
From 2023 to 2024, lead times increased by just 1.1%, the smallest gain of the past six years. This is notable given that tender rejection rates averaged more than one percentage point higher in 2024, suggesting slightly more challenging capacity conditions. While some may have expected a larger increase in lead times, it is possible that the rise in rejection rates was not significant enough to meaningfully alter shipper behavior.
Tender rejection rates measure carriers’ willingness and ability to cover contracted freight. When national rejection rates are below 5%, capacity is generally abundant. Rates above 9% signal a much more challenging environment, where spot market rates tend to rise rapidly.
The average rejection rate in 2025 was just above 6%, compared to just under 5% in 2024. In 2023, the average rejection rate was approximately 3.85%.
Rejection rates increased by a similar magnitude from 2024 to 2025 as they did from 2023 to 2024, yet lead times surged in the most recent year. This may suggest that a threshold for shipper service expectations was breached.
However, the explanation likely extends beyond carrier compliance alone. Escalating trade tensions and unpredictable trade policy incentivized companies to pull imports forward, bringing freight into the country well ahead of schedule.
This gave shippers more time to move freight domestically, contributing to increased intermodal usage and a simultaneous softening in demand for truckloads moving more than 500 miles.
Looking ahead, with no immediate expectation of further tariffs or significant trade escalations, inventory levels appear to be stabilizing alongside order activity. This could reduce inventory buffers and shorten the time goods are staged before fulfillment, potentially compressing lead times if the “abundance of time” dynamic reverses.
That said, this outcome hinges on demand, which exceeded expectations during the recent holiday season. One strong season does not establish a durable trend, and 2026 introduces a new set of conditions for shippers, 3PLs, and carriers to navigate.
About the Chart of the Week
The FreightWaves Chart of the Week is a chart selection from SONAR that provides an interesting data point to describe the state of the freight markets. A chart is chosen from thousands of potential charts on SONAR to help participants visualize the freight market in real time. Each week a Market Expert will post a chart, along with commentary, live on the front page. After that, the Chart of the Week will be archived on FreightWaves.com for future reference.
SONAR aggregates data from hundreds of sources, presenting the data in charts and maps and providing commentary on what freight market experts want to know about the industry in real time
