Most people would like to forget the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trucking companies, which enjoyed a surge in freight demand during the pandemic as people stuck at home bought goods online, would like to forget the years that followed.
The freight recession from 2022 to 2025 — a period when demand plummeted as consumers spent instead on vacations, ballgames, concerts, and the like — is showing signs of turning around in 2026.
But the trucking industry has encountered fresh challenges: Top industry voices who gathered in Kansas City for Lockton’s biannual transportation summit on Oct. 5 and 6 cited higher fuel costs, growing operational expenses, and an uncertain economic landscape.
The outlook for the trucking industry is mixed. Supply and demand are approaching equilibrium, which may help reverse four years of rate pressure after the pandemic. But carriers face increasing operational costs, expanding liability exposure, and an imbalanced economy — all of which add up to a fragile recovery for the industry.
Industry outlook
The U.S. economy, on balance, continues to grow. But the growth is unevenly distributed.
Investments skew heavily toward artificial intelligence and the infrastructure that supports emerging technology, particularly data centers.
Without artificial intelligence, the U.S. economic growth may well be flat. Production would barely register a blip without AI and aerospace. For trucking companies hauling freight for those industries, times are good. For those moving food, chemicals, housing materials, or other outputs, the environment is more challenging.
Tariffs, which peaked at an effective rate of 16% in 2025 and remain well above historical averages at 11% in 2026, have not resulted in a wellspring of new factory and manufacturing jobs that the policy was supposed to bring about. Factory spending is down in 2025 and 2026, partly because input prices have risen due to tariff policies.
Consumption continues to grow at a modest rate. Online sales are doing well, which helps the freight industry, but is partially offset by more tepid activity in restaurants and brick-and-mortar retail. Consumers are still spending, but middle- and low-income consumers are increasingly dipping into savings or credit to fund their purchases.
The most immediate challenge to trucking is soaring energy prices. The Middle East conflict has constrained the flow of 20% of the world’s oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, contributing to diesel prices reaching $6.50 a gallon.
The bottom line for the trucking industry is that its demand-based recovery is dependent on the performance of the broader economy. Some pockets are booming, particularly AI and data centers, but much of the rest is flat or barely growing. While trucking demand, as measured by truckload contract loads, spot market load posting, and less-than-truckload tonnage indexes, has stabilized in 2026, all remain well below 2022 levels.
Latest industry developments
Federal enforcement efforts targeting ineligible drivers, manipulated electronic logging devices, and poorly regulated trucking schools have reduced driver supply since 2025. Some estimates put the decline at 40,000 drivers, which increases competition and pay for qualified operators with clean records.
Autonomous, driverless trucks are emerging in the market, but it’s early days for the technology, and insurers are still grappling with the implications of autonomous fleets.
Cargo theft
Cargo theft increasingly involves cybercrime rather than physical break-ins to trailers and trailer yards. Hackers may alter transport manifests for unsuspecting drivers, causing them to deliver freight to unauthorized locations and recipients.
Trucking companies and freight brokers are working with cybersecurity firms and federal law enforcement to prevent such schemes and to track and apprehend repeat perpetrators.
The Supreme Court’s Montgomery ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court in May ruled in Montgomery v. Carbide Transport II LLC et. al. that freight brokers can face state law negligence claims (opens a new window) if they brokered freight to an insufficiently vetted carrier that then caused an accident.
Before Montgomery, brokers often relied on a federal exemption to shield them from state-level liability. Post-Montgomery, freight brokers will have to take reasonable measures to scrutinize the safety records of carriers to which they direct freight.
A challenge for brokers is interpreting what “reasonable” means, as the court ruling did not establish a legal test and federal transportation agencies have not adopted a standard.
For now, juries may decide if brokers acted reasonably, which could turn on the quality of a broker’s policies and procedures for evaluating carriers, how thoroughly employees were trained to follow the policies, and whether and why they deviated from those policies.
A challenging litigation environment
Plaintiffs won $3.4 billion in verdicts against the trucking and automotive industries in 2025, tripling the amount obtained the year before, according to Marathon Strategies.
While plaintiffs have long targeted the trucking industry for potentially large verdicts, these companies' ability to build insurance towers to mitigate risk to their balance sheets has become more challenging.
Excess casualty insurers, mindful of their own exposure to large verdicts, have responded by lowering their limits. While towers used to involve perhaps three or five carriers, they may now require 20 or more. And when more carriers are involved, there’s more finger-pointing and avoidance of responsibility to cover losses, complicating how an insured can manage a catastrophic claim.
At the same time, plaintiffs’ firms are increasing their social media activity, advertising, and data collection to pursue trucking accident claims and drive up case value.
Deploying alternative risk programs
Some trucking companies have adopted or are considering captive insurance programs to manage their risk and premium spending.
Forming a captive may require a year or more of analysis involving legal, finance, tax, and risk specialists.
Companies may form a captive to handle a specific line or two but may expand it over time to cover other risks.
Trucking companies, particularly those with loss histories that have resulted in substantial premium increases, may consider multiyear structured insurance programs. These programs often last three to five years and require the insured to assume an initial self-insured retention (SIR).
The risk for companies is that they pay for losses until the SIR is exhausted before insurance steps in. But the advantage to insureds is that they can count on a single premium rate for three years or more, can benefit from positive loss experience, and they avoid annual renewal cycles with a more long-term approach.