Guide to Inland Distribution & Warehousing

Special Report

Mini-bids are becoming more visible because the market is shifting, revealing“ gaps” in capacity within shippers’ distribution networks, he said.“ The annual RFP [ request for proposal ] is about effectiveness. When I talk about a minibid, it’ s all about efficiency— how fast can I fill this gap in my routing guide?”

Caplice describes mini-bids as a tactical procurement tool designed to solve specific problems.“ A mini-bid is not just a little RFP,” he said.“ It’ s a different process.”

Annual requests for proposals are designed to optimize an entire transportation network over 12 months. Mini-bids, by contrast, fill immediate needs— whether replacing carriers in a failing routing guide, securing capacity for a seasonal surge, or responding to changing market conditions.

Instead of rebidding an entire transportation network, a shipper may seek pricing only in one region, reducing the amount of data that must be analyzed while targeting regions where pricing or capacity has shifted.

Regan said the practice is most common in less-thantruckload given that sector’ s concentration of national and regional carriers, but Caplice said the strategy is also common in truckload.“ I don’ t know anyone who does a national mini-bid,” Caplice said.“ That kind of defeats the purpose.”

“ Shippers are generally not issuing off-cycle bids opportunistically to improve service or drive prices lower. These actions are driven by a need to secure capacity.”

“ Whenever one side— the shippers or the carriers— feels the market is not favorable to them, it’ ll shorten the cycles and they’ ll do mini-bids in the middle,” Caplice said.

Unlike annual bids, mini-bids have no standard duration. Some last only weeks while others bridge the gap until the next annual procurement cycle.

Many shippers are using mini-bids to break large procurement events into smaller regional bids that allow transportation managers to react more quickly to changing conditions, said Mike Regan, chief relationship officer and co-founder at TranzAct Technologies.

“ They’ re creating variability into their sourcing process,” he said.“ They don’ t have to make decisions about their entire freight spend. They can focus on one geographic area.”

Large truckload carriers trim capacity despite rising rates

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

90 %

85 % 100 % 80 %

77 % 75 %

70 % Q1 2023 Q4 2023 Q3 2024 L

Q2 2025 Q1 Q2 2026 26

Source: Company reports, JOC analysis

Index

© 2026 S & P Global

Data centers draining already shallow pool of US truck capacity

By William B. Cassidy

Data centers designed to support AI are taking a large bite out of transportation capacity, putting more pressure on already rising transportation costs.

In addition to consuming many gigawatts( GW) of electricity, data centers take up transportation capacity on the ocean, in the air and on rail tracks and highways. And demand for that capacity isn’ t slowing down.

This raises the question about the size of freight demand generated by data center construction. The answer, according to Dean Croke, principal analyst at DAT Freight & Analytics, is that each GW of US data center expansion requires roughly 100,000 truckloads.

“ The US has built roughly 20 GW of new capacity since the AI boom took off in 2023, which works out to about 2 million truckloads already moved,” Croke said.

12 Journal of Commerce | September 7, 2026 www. joc. com