For three years the freight market had too many trucks. The people who run the biggest truckload fleets in the country now say the opposite problem has barely begun. Speaking at Morgan Stanley's annual Laguna conference this week, Schneider National president and chief executive Jim Filter said the capacity correction is still in the "early innings," FreightWaves reports. Werner Enterprises executives put it at the second or third inning. Filter's summary of where that leaves a large carrier: "With the amount of supply that has exited, it has created enough demand for our services. We don't necessarily need more demand."
From 60,000 carriers to 14,000
The most concrete number of the week came from Schneider's brokerage. Filter said its list of approved carriers is down to about 14,000, from 60,000 at the peak. The company started cutting a couple of years ago to fight cargo theft and has kept going. "I can tell you that there aren't 100,000 carriers out there that I think any of us would be able to look at and say, 100,000 carriers are safe and should be out there on the road," he said.
Filter tied the exits to enforcement. "There was no standard for entry-level driver training," he said of the drivers who poured in during the last boom. Since then sham CDL schools have been shut down, the pipeline of new entrants has narrowed, and FMCSA's removal of non-compliant ELDs has made it harder to run past the hours-of-service limits. Those steps, in his words, keep removing drivers who "were not playing by the same rules as everybody else." On Werner's July earnings call, chief executive Derek Leathers said about one-third of all ELDs were either gone or on the way out, which he described as "dismantling shadow capacity."
The courts changed who gets the load
Both companies pointed to the same legal turn. On May 14 a unanimous Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II that federal law does not shield freight brokers from state negligent-selection lawsuits when a carrier they hired is involved in a crash. Werner's team also cited a recent Texas Supreme Court decision that dismissed Home Depot from a suit over a fatal crash involving a Werner truck hauling its freight: the court found the retailer met its duty by hiring a reputable carrier.
Put the two rulings together and the incentive is plain. A broker that picks a carrier carelessly can be sued; a shipper that picks a well-established one is protected. FreightWaves reports that shippers and brokers are now less willing to tender loads to new motor carriers that have no safety rating. Filter went further: he expects that a large group of carriers will be unable to get liability insurance at all, or only at a cost they cannot carry.
What the numbers show
FreightWaves' national Outbound Tender Rejection Index, the share of contract loads that carriers turn down, climbed to 14.32% in the days after Labor Day. During the three-year downturn it sat below 5%. Analyst Zach Strickland said the rise showed up in nearly every major market at once, including Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta and Harrisburg, with dry van leading the move. "Capacity still has not grown in any meaningful way," he said, and he told shippers not to expect the usual post-Labor Day drop in rates: "Watch out on the spot market here."
Werner's own guidance points the same way. It expects its one-way rate per total mile to be 10% to 13% higher in the third quarter than a year ago, after a 10% gain in the second quarter, and it told investors to expect "strong" contract rate increases in the 2027 bid season, which opens in the next 30 to 60 days, right as peak season makes trucks hardest to find. Schneider said shippers are already running mini-bids to lock in capacity for their most important months. Werner added that private fleets, facing rising insurance bills and the largest truck replacement cycle they have ever had, are asking about handing their freight to dedicated carriers.
The rate is going up. So is the bar.
Every truck that leaves makes the remaining ones worth more, and that is as true for a one-truck carrier as for Schneider. The difference is access. Large carriers are being handed freight because a shipper's lawyers like their name on the bill of lading. A small carrier has to prove the same thing with paperwork: a clean inspection record, real insurance, a registered ELD, an authority with some age on it. Diesel at $6.45 a gallon is thinning the field from the other side, because a spot rate with no fuel surcharge stops covering costs sooner. The carriers still standing in 2027 will be paid more, by customers who checked them harder.
Checklist
How a small carrier stays on the approved list
Look at yourself the way a broker's compliance desk does: pull your own FMCSA record, check your inspection and out-of-service history, and fix any wrong address, phone number or contact before someone else flags it as a fraud signal.
Confirm your ELD is still on FMCSA's registered list. A revoked device means logs that do not count.
Talk to your insurance agent before renewal, not at renewal. Ask what the Montgomery ruling is doing to liability premiums in your state and what would lower yours: cameras, a driver training record, a cleaner inspection history.
Bid season for 2027 opens within two months. If you have direct shipper freight, or want some, this is the strongest negotiating position small carriers have had in years. Bring your on-time and claims numbers.
Price fuel into every spot load at today's pump price, including the deadhead miles. A higher rate that still loses money at $6.45 diesel is not a rate increase.
Sources: FreightWaves, "Truckload carriers: Capacity exodus growing, not slowing," September 17, 2026; FreightWaves, "Freight Market Alert: Why US Tender Rejections Are Skyrocketing," September 17, 2026; FreightWaves, "Werner CEO Leathers: just the 3rd inning in driver attrition," July 28, 2026; Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, U.S. Supreme Court, May 14, 2026; In re Home Depot U.S.A., Texas Supreme Court, 2026; AAA national average fuel prices, September 18, 2026.
The freight market, from the driver's side of the desk
Rates, capacity and the rulings that decide who gets the load, for carriers, owner-operators and fleet managers, on Qrylo.