Topic: Rates and Pricing

Wells Fargo’s 2025 Supply Chain Report reveals a sector adapting to tariffs, shifting inventory strategies, and transportation complexity.

The report observed that truckload (TL) activity accounted for 72% of second quarter broker activity, followed by Miscellaneous (which includes ocean, air, warehousing, and special services), at 14%, less-than-truckload (LTL), at 11%, and intermodal, at 3%.

Logistics Management (LM) Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently spoke with Matt Muenster, Chief Economist for Green Bay, Wisc.-based Breakthrough, an innovator in transportation management, dedicated to creating transparent and fair strategies for the world’s leading shippers. Muenster provided Berman with an overview of trade and tariffs, the industrial economy, and Peak Season, among other topics. 

UPS has announced its 2025 peak demand surcharges, adding new costs for businesses shipping during the holiday rush. The surcharges will take effect September 28 and run through January 17, covering the busiest stretch of the year for e-commerce and retail deliveries.

Effective today, August 29, the de minimis exemption, which allows shipments under $800 sent to the United States to not be subject to tariffs, officially will be removed. That was the edict delivered in a White House executive order in late July.

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently caught up with Doug Waggoner, CEO of Chicago-based 3PL Echo Global Logistics. Waggoner offered up insights on various logistics and supply chain trends and themes, including: freight economic conditions, capacity and rates, M&A, technology, and cross-border logistics, among others.

With a slight 0.005-cent decline, the national average came in at $3.708, following a 4.1-cent decline, to $3.713, for the week of August 18.

For June, the most recent month for which data is available, the TCI reading came in at -1.83, down from May’s 3.56, with the former marking the lowest reading in 2025 and the former the strongest reading since October 2022.

Entitled “Eye on the Last Mile,” the report is based on feedback from more than 200 United States-based supply chain and logistics leaders.

DAT observed that July truckload freight volumes were steady, due to summer seasonality being paced by produce and retail goods moving on the road prior to the July 4 holiday, adding that volumes saw a gradual decline over the balance of July.

Fewer trucks chasing even less freight. That’s the mid-year summary of the $994 billion domestic trucking market.

The July shipments reading, at 1.033, fell 6.9% annually and was down 1.8% compared to June. July expenditures, at 3.225, rose 0.4% annually, following a 2.6% June gain, and were off 1.5% compared to June.

USPS said that the objective of temporary price adjustment, “is to help cover extra handling costs to ensure a successful peak season.”

Despite the largest less-than-truckload carrier FedEx Freight delaying implementation until December 1, the biggest change in the National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA) has begun what it calls the “successful implementation” of one of the most significant updates to the National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) system in its nearly 90-year history.

Carriers and brokers remain optimistic despite revenue declines and tariff pressures, truckstop.com and Bloomberg Intelligence reports.

While some previous implementation dates for the White House’s reciprocal tariffs placed on goods imported into the United States had seen those dates pushed back, or paused, that was not the case this time around.

Following an executive order issued in May, which ended the de minimis exemption—allowing shipments under $800 sent from China and Hong Kong to the U.S. to not be subject to tariffs, the White House this week issued a new executive order suspended the de minimis exemption for various imported goods.

The Federal Reserve said yesterday that it has decided to maintain the target rate for its federal funds rate, which comes from the Federal Reserve Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) at 4.25%-to-4.5%.

Quarterly consolidated revenue, at $21.2 billion, fell 2.7% annually, and basic earnings per share, at $1.55 (short of Wall Street estimates of $1.57), fell $0.24, or 13.4%, annually. Total operating profit, at $1.8 billion, decreased 6.3% annually. 

The June shipments reading, at 1.052, fell 2.4% annually and was off 0.2% sequentially, and June expenditures, at 3.273, increased 2.6% annually and were down 1.2% compared to May.