Surface Transportation

Trucking | Rail | Intermodal | Air & Expedited | Distribution

Large US truckload carriers trim tractor counts to record low

By William B. Cassidy

Increased ELP enforcement and limits on nondomiciled CDLs could further cut truck capacity. Tverdokhlib / Shutterstock. com

Large US truckload carriers are cutting into their fleets again, attempting to reduce capacity to match low levels of demand and to fatten thinning profit margins. Additional freight those carriers anticipated in the fourth quarter has yet to arrive on docks.

After rising in the second quarter, the Journal of Commerce Truckload Capacity Index dropped 3.6 percentage points to 72.4 % in the third quarter, an all-time low for the index, which runs back to the 2008 – 09 Great Recession. The index dropped 4.2 points year over year.

The previous all-time low for the index— which measures capacity in terms of actual truck counts at a group of large publicly owned carriers— of 73.8 % was set in the fourth quarter of 2013.

“ The impact on truck capacity has got to be more than zero.”

Large truckload carriers believe even more capacity will leave the overall trucking market, with stricter regulatory enforcement taking out a large, although undefined number of small truckload carriers. Those large carriers continue to shift assets to dedicated business.

“ We anticipate the fourth quarter to remain challenging, with the continuation of the soft freight market,” James Grant, CFO of Tennessee-based truckload carrier Covenant Logistics, said during an Oct. 23 earnings call.

In addition to the overall market softness, Grant cited the US government shutdown, which affected Covenant’ s business with the US Department of Defense, and some customer bankruptcies. But Covenant is more bullish about 2026, 2027 and even 2028.

“ I’ m more excited right now than I’ ve ever been in my entire career for the next two to three years,” Covenant CEO David Parker told analysts. The exit of non-Englishspeaking and non-domiciled drivers is“ an avalanche in the process of happening,” he said.

Others are still looking for signs that increased enforcement of English-language proficiency( ELP) requirements and limits on non-domiciled commercial driver’ s licenses( CDLs) will amount to an avalanche of exiting low-priced truck capacity.

“ The impact on truck capacity has got to be more than zero,” Frank Lonegro, president and CEO of Landstar System, said during his company’ s earnings call. But he said capacity is“ going to come out over a little bit longer time than just a matter of weeks and months.”

Matt Muenster, Breakthrough Fuel’ s chief economist, believes the impact of tighter truck driver licensing enforcement will be drawn out in a“ slow-burn supply-side squeeze” that might take six months to a year to show a significant effect on available capacity.

Breakthrough has tracked out-of-service( OOS) orders for ELP violations, and Muenster said the company is seeing 300 to 400 drivers put out of service a week. More than half of the OOS violations are being logged in Texas, near the US-Mexico border, he said.

“ Locking into data to get guidance on how this plays out is difficult,” Muenster told the Journal of Commerce.“ We see a heavy impact on some fleets that have crossborder truckload movements,” especially shipments between Mexico and the US.

“ We’ re not seeing a tremendous impact on the largest truckload fleets in the country,” Muenster said. And in terms of spot market rates, Breakthrough sees“ nothing that really moves the needle nationally or regionally” in the immediate future, he said.

For now, that makes control over their tractor counts one of the few levers left to those large truckload carriers.

email: bill. cassidy @ spglobal. com

Large US truckload carriers pull more capacity in Q3

The Journal of Commerce Truckload Capacity Index( TCI), a measure of actual truck counts at a group of large publicly owned truckload carriers

97 % 95 %

90 %

100 85 %

80 %

75 %

70 % Q3 2021 Q4 2021 Q2 2022 Q1 2023 L Q4 2023 Q3 2024 Q2 2025

Source: Company reports, JOC analysis

Index

© 2025 S & P Global

38 Journal of Commerce | December 1, 2025 www. joc. com