Knight-Swift Transportation will open its 2027 truckload contract bids asking shippers for increases in the low to mid double digits, CEO Adam Miller said, as trucks keep leaving the market. “I think we’ll start the bid season with the idea of probably low to mid double digits and see how it develops from there,” Miller told analysts on the company’s third-quarter call when asked about contract rates for next year. Where the number lands depends on whether capacity “continues to exit the market, given some of the regulatory push,” he said.

The ask has grown through the year. Knight-Swift went into 2026 expecting low to mid single-digit increases and later raised its target to high single to low double digits, and its own pricing followed. Truckload revenue per loaded mile, excluding fuel surcharges, rose 9.7% from a year earlier in the third quarter, according to its earnings release, up from gains of 5.5% in the second quarter and 1.4% in the first.

That gain came even as the business got smaller. Loaded miles fell 3%, and the average fleet shrank 4% to about 20,470 tractors.

Knight-Swift is pricing 2027 on shrinking capacity rather than rising demand, and it expects that squeeze to last into next year.

Some shippers have already changed how they buy. Knight-Swift’s intermodal loads rose 13% to 40,090 in the third quarter, its revenue per intermodal load rose 15%, and Knight-Swift says it continues to hear customers express a preference for carriers that own their trucks after the Supreme Court’s Montgomery ruling let brokers be sued over the carriers they hire.

Asked whether customers are making that shift, Miller said, “We are seeing a lot of that inbound,” though he added the company can’t tell whether they are deliberately moving away from brokers. Law firm DLA Piper says brokers may pass higher insurance and vetting costs on to shippers, and CH Robinson has already been hit with a $604 million broker verdict.