Freight Rates Are Up 38% Year Over Year. The Carriers That Disappeared in 2024 Aren’t Coming Back.

If you built your 2026 transportation budget against 2024 rates, you already know how that went. The more useful question now, with 2027 bid season opening, is whether this market resets back down.

It does not look like it will. Spot rates have cooled off their July peak, but they are still running roughly 38% above where they sat a year ago, and contract rates just posted the largest June-to-July jump DAT has ever recorded. The structural capacity that disappeared during the 2024 freight recession has not come back, and the shippers still waiting for it are the ones getting surprised by invoices.

Here is where rates actually sit, what changed since spring, and what to do about it before your 2027 bids go out.

Where freight rates actually sit right now

Dry van spot linehaul averaged $2.25 per mile in the week ending August 14, down 1.3% from the week before. That sounds like relief until you look at the comparison that matters: rates are up 38.4%, or 62 cents per mile, year over year, and they are sitting 25.8% above the nine-year seasonal average of $1.78.

The capacity picture is the same story from a different angle. DAT's dry van load-to-truck ratio is running near 10 loads per available truck. A year ago that number was 5.77. There are not meaningfully more loads in the market. There are meaningfully fewer trucks.

DAT's 35-day forecast has spot van holding around $2.24 per mile through mid-September. That is the important nuance for anyone reading the recent headlines about falling rates: the market is cooling off a summer peak, not returning to 2024. A 1% weekly dip against a 38% annual gain is noise, not a trend reversal.

Contract rates followed spot, exactly as expected

When we first published this piece in May, the call was that contract rates would follow spot on the usual 60 to 90 day lag, and that carriers who ate unprofitable contract freight in 2024 would not do it again. That is now measurable.

Contract van linehaul hit $2.39 per mile in July, up 13 cents from June. Per DAT, that is the largest June-to-July gain in the history of the series, and it puts contract van 37 cents above where it was a year ago. Contract reefer moved to $2.62, up 9 cents on the month.

The detail worth sitting with: this happened while freight volumes were declining. In a normal cycle, softening volume pulls rates down with it. DAT's read is that available capacity, not demand, is now setting price. That is the signature of a supply-side reset, and it is why the usual "wait for the market to turn" advice is not going to work this cycle.

Routing guides are still breaking. That is the real story.

Spot rate levels get the headlines. The number that actually hurts is tender rejection, and it has been running in the low teens through 2026 against a baseline that sat below 5% a year ago. Carriers are turning down contracted freight at roughly triple the rate they were.

When a carrier rejects a routing guide load, the shipper gets pushed into the spot market to cover it. That is where the premium bites. It is not the base rate that is killing budgets, it is the compounded exposure: elevated spot rates plus more freight forced into the spot market. We broke down the mechanics in what to do when your carrier rejects your load, and if you are seeing your LTL costs climb faster than expected, this is a big part of why.

What that means for a shipper this month: recheck your routing guide compliance rate weekly, not monthly. Ask your 3PL what its rejection cover strategy is for your top three lanes. If you have flexibility on pickup windows, widen them by four hours to keep more freight in-contract.

Why this happened (and why the old playbook won't work)

Three forces converged to create this market, and none of them are about to reverse.

First, carrier attrition was deeper than the headlines suggested. Two-plus years of below-cost rates pushed thousands of small carriers out of the market in 2024 and 2025. These weren't fleets going dormant and waiting for better days. They were trucks being sold, drivers leaving the industry, and authority being revoked. Capacity that exits this way doesn't snap back in 90 days when rates improve. It has to be rebuilt, and rebuilding takes years. Enforcement has pulled more capacity offline since, with an FMCSA compliance crackdown pushing a reported 40,000 non-compliant drivers out of the market.

Second, demand didn't soften the way analysts forecast. The consumer recession that was supposed to arrive in late 2025 didn't. Retail freight volumes have held up, ecommerce fulfillment demand continues to grow, and tariff-driven inventory pre-positioning has added to domestic freight demand as importers move goods earlier and stage more inventory closer to consumers.

Third, the end of the de minimis exemption pulled forward a wave of US warehousing and domestic freight demand. When Shein, Temu, and other cross-border platforms pivoted to US-based fulfillment in 2025, the inventory that used to ship direct-to-consumer from overseas now lands in US ports and moves through US trucks and drayage networks. That's net new domestic freight on a network that's already tight.

Put those three forces together, and you get the market we have now: not a cyclical tightening, but a structural reset.

What this means for your 2027 budget

If you're a shipper, brand operator, or ecommerce founder, three things follow.

Do not budget 2027 off a 2026 average. Rates climbed through this year, so your trailing twelve-month average is well below where the market actually is today. Budget off the current run rate, not the average, or you will build the same variance into next year that broke this year's plan. (For practical tactics, our guide to reducing shipping costs after carrier rate increases walks through where the biggest savings actually live.)

Expect your bids to come back higher, and expect fewer of them. The 60 to 90 day lag between spot and contract has already played out once this year. Carriers that absorbed unprofitable contract work in 2024 and 2025 are being selective about which lanes they will commit to at all. Going into an RFP assuming you will get coverage on every lane at last year's number is the single most common planning error we are seeing right now.

The accessorial bill is going to grow. When capacity is tight, carriers re-price the things that used to be "just part of the service". Detention, lumper, layover, after-hours pickups, weekend deliveries. Audit your accessorial spend now and identify which behaviors are driving it. This is exactly the kind of cost that transparent 3PL billing exposes. And that opaque billing buries.

Three hedges that actually work in this market

There are no magic bullets, but there are three plays that consistently work when the freight market tightens.

1. Diversify your contract carrier base, and do it now.

Single-source carrier strategies look efficient in a soft market and become liabilities in a tight one. Build relationships with two or three additional asset-based carriers per lane while they still have appetite to take on new business. Peak is weeks away, not months, and the good carriers fill up first.

2. Mode-shift where the math allows.

For freight that can tolerate an extra day or two, the savings are real. Run the analysis on your top 20 lanes. Most shippers find at least three or four where shifting from full truckload to LTL, or consolidating small parcel into freight, beats their current mode on landed cost. If you are not sure where your crossover sits, we mapped it out in parcel vs LTL: when switching to freight gets cheaper.

3. Lengthen your planning horizon.

The shippers who get hurt worst in tight markets are the ones operating on 14-day inventory positions. When freight is volatile, inventory becomes a hedge. Carrying an extra week of safety stock at your most critical SKUs, in scalable warehouse storage rather than your own DC, costs less than the expedite fees and lost sales of stocking out during a capacity crunch.

The takeaway

The cooling headlines are real but they are small. Spot is off its July peak by a rounding error compared to the 38% it gained year over year, contract rates just set a record for a single month's move, and capacity is still roughly half as available as it was last summer.

The carriers that disappeared in 2024 aren't coming back, demand has been stickier than anyone expected, and the structural reset means higher rates and tighter service standards are the baseline now, not a temporary spike. The shippers who recognized this in February have already locked contracts, diversified their carrier base, and started the budget conversation with finance. The ones still planning against 2024 assumptions are heading into 2027 bid season with the wrong number.

If you'd like a second set of eyes on your transportation budget, your carrier mix, or your peak season plan, that's a conversation we have every day with the brands we work with. Book a call with our team or run an instant quote to see what your freight should actually cost in this market.

New to logistics terminology? Our 3PL Dictionary breaks down accessorials, drayage, LMI, and the other terms in this post. For more market commentary, visit the 3PL Center blog.