Truckload, parcel, and LTL executives address regulatory uncertainty, market fragmentation at CSCMP EDGE

A trio of industry stakeholders—each focused on different areas of surface transportation, including truckload, ground parcel, and less-than-truckload (LTL)—addressed current market conditions for their respective modes, as well as take a look at key priorities shippers need to be focusing on in 2026, at a session at this week’s Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) EDGE conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

The session, entitled “The State of Surface Transportation,” featured Jeff Tucker, CEO of Tucker Company Worldwide, Robert Persuit, Sr. Director, Business Development, ShipMatrix, and Al Webb, Vice President, Sales, PITT OHIO. Mike Levans, Peerless Media LLC Group Editorial Director, served as moderator.

Truckload: In assessing the current state of the truckload market, Tucker pulled no punches, explaining that truckload carriers, brokers, and forwarders are still experiencing freight recession conditions.

Putting that into numerical context, Tucker noted that prior to the pandemic, in May 2019, there were 245,000 active motor carriers in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) database and 2.6 million truck drivers. And as of May 2025, he said there were 325,000 carriers and 3.2 million drivers, marking 30% and 22% increases, respectively. What’s more, despite the increases, data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve FRED Index noted that the truckload industry is hauling the same amount of freight, despite a mild increase at the onset of the pandemic.

“I think most of us in the truckload space saw at the end of last year that we were starting to see maybe a recovery happening,” said Tucker. “Experience shows, though, that the first several months of this year has been not what we expected. There were a number of companies in the pharma space taking in billions of dollars of stock before tariffs kicked in. That doesn't help trucking. We saw a lot of big planned capital projects in the energy industry pushed off. Why? Because the uncertainty around the cost of materials. When a company does a $100 million dollar project and 50% is added on top of that, it blows the budget. But so now a lot of work is being done in maintenance. So right now, I would say that we're still rates are still suffering a little bit.”

On the regulatory front, Tucker said that there are a few key historical occurrences to keep in mind, as they related to impacting trucking, including the 2004 capacity crisis concurrent with the tax credit issued at that time, which was followed by the ELD (electronic logging device) mandate, as the sector was coming out of recession, and subsequently led to the next big capacity crunch, and also the pandemic.

Similar challenges are presenting themselves today, he said, including the White House’s $100,000 fee for H1B visa, whose price will not be met on drivers, said Tucker. Another challenge, he cited, was the White House’s indication that it is going to look at all visa-holding CDL drivers and potentially eliminate those, and also the mandate related to English language proficiency for drivers.

“The big ifs are if the administration can marshal the state law enforcement to enforce these things, estimates are just below 200,000 drivers to as high as 700,000 drivers on a base of 3.2 million for-hire drivers that could exit the industry,” said Tucker.

Parcel: In characterizing the current state of the parcel market, Persuit summed it up in a single word: crazy—on a whole host of fronts—from January onward.

Parcel events related to that, cited by Persuit, included: a January dissolution of the final-mile delivery partnership between UPS and the United States Postal Service (USPS), leading to various outcomes, such as the UPS Mail Innovations product being priced out of the market, as it no longer had access to USPS; UPS changing the name of its SurePost product to GroundSaver; UPS saying they were talking with the USPS about SurePost again; UPS announcing its glide down, with 50% of Amazon shipments in their network, which he said are not high margin shipments and represent a reduction of 1.25 million packages by mid-June 2026 or 300 million packages per year; FedEx averaging 13.9 million daily packages in the last fiscal year, for a 2.4% annual gain, and also DRIVE, its $4 billion cost-cutting initiative, while also targeting another $1 billion in cost savings in the upcoming year; USPS no longer allowing its customers to be its competitors by offering very low DDU injection rates, with the quarter ending December 31, 2024 seeing 16% volume growth and 25% revenue growth, which has gone away; the quarter ending June 30 saw USPS package services revenues up 0.5% and volumes down 6.6%, leading to what he called stalled momentum, coupled with the White House talking about taking the USPS private and a Postmaster General change, from Louis DeJoy to David Steiner; and Amazon still trying to fulfill its promise of third-party, non-Amazon logistics, which started before the pandemic but has yet to gain traction in a meaningful way.

Persuit highlighted how the parcel market share for the largest carriers, UPS and FedEx, has abated in recent years, driven in no small part by the ongoing emergence and growth of smaller, regional players in the market, of late.

As an example, he noted how second quarter 2025 average daily domestic volume for UPS was 16.5 million, whereas for the same quarter in 2022 it came in at 19.7 million, a difference of 3.2 million packages.

“As far little back as 2019, UPS, FedEx, and USPS had 86% of the domestic market by volume, and in 2024 it was 64%,” he said. “So, what is happening? Last year, Amazon became the highest average daily volume deliverer of packages, above UPS and FedEx, but not USPS—but it is kind of ‘cheating,’ because not all of its volume is their own. There is demand being sucked out of the network. Amazon is taking a huge chunk of it; Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in May 2024 that Walmart had delivered 4 billion items same-day or next-day in 2024. That means it is still delivering millions of packages per day with people that show up with their car and the Spark app. That demand is going away. And then we get to the supply; you have the normal players and you have the regional guys like LSO, Speedy, GLS, Super Regional, OnTrac, LaserShip. They're still doing the things they've always done.

There is pressure from the demand and pressure from the supply. And shippers are in heaven because they are no longer waiting three years to renegotiate your contract, they can renegotiate it all year round. And how do you know that? It is because the carriers are instituting new charges monthly. If you can do that, it is good for the goose and good for the gander.”

LTL market: PITT OHIO’s Webb labeled LTL market conditions as exhausted.

“Economic activity is cyclical,” he said. “As a shipper, it is a time to potentially take advantage of pricing, but that could also hurt you in the long run. This is the longest freight recession I think we have been in, and it is going to end sooner or later. When that happens, those who bought strategically are going to align and those who have not will find themselves in a difficult position. We're also antiquated. The LTL industry is not digitized in the way that the parcel is today. It's very easy to integrate and so forth. So, you're finding carriers coming from AS 400 to middleware to what's the next future look like?

I think you'll continue to see LTL organizations invest heavily in technology to increase automation, offer better potential pricing through back-office cost cuts and ultimately find a better experience with customers and carriers combined. Today, 20% of the [LTL] carriers represent 90% of the LTL market. Five years from now, we could be looking at 15 of those carriers represented. I think the stronger gets stronger, the weaker get weak.”

As for what needs to occur to make it to the other side of the ongoing freight recession and back to steady growth, Tucker explained that reaching equilibrium between supply and demand is the top priority. Which is going to be proven out at a yet-to-be-determined point in the future.

He added that in the past regulation has created extremely high demand—and if the regulations being floated, at the moment, come into being and are enforced in a meaningful way, they need to be enforced, not only at the federal level but the state law enforcement have to have the budget and the wherewithal and the direction to be able to do it on roadside inspections.

“If all of those things happen, that'll make a major impact on pricing,” he said. I know that shippers who are looking for that reliable capacity, that relationship. There's when you see the relationship two ways. I value this relationship, then you get that capacity. I think the best carriers with the best service are beginning to get tighter. That's been our experience.”