The News
Shippers are putting more of their freight on their own trucks. Private fleets hauled 72% of their companies’ outbound freight in 2025, according to the National Private Truck Council’s annual survey of 89 fleets. That is the second-highest share on record. They also hauled 42% of inbound freight.
Most plan to keep growing: 71% expect to add trucks or haul more freight over the next five years, about the same share as in the last two surveys.
A year ago, JOC reported that fleets were growing even though for-hire trucks were cheap. This year, fleets describe it as a hedge against tight for-hire capacity and record diesel.
Why It Matters
Fleets that want more trucks now run into a 2027 engine rule, which raises the price of every new Class 8 tractor. Orders rose 39% in the year to August as fleets bought ahead of the rule. FTR says that pre-buy is now over.
That leaves three options for 2027:
Keep trucks longer: run the current fleet for more years or more miles.
Buy 2027 trucks: pay the higher price.
Go dedicated: hand the lanes to a contract carrier.
For-hire trucking stays expensive in the meantime:
Truckload prices: up 13.9% from a year earlier in August and close to their 2022 peak, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Diesel: a record $6.529 a gallon this week, up $2.78 from a year ago.
Spot rates: down 8.4% at DAT in August, but still more than 30% above last year.
No public figure shows what a private fleet costs per mile, so there is no open benchmark against these rates.
Who Else
Seven shippers added trucks over the past year, according to Transport Topics’ ranking of the largest private fleets. Performance Food Group grew the most, adding more than 1,000 trucks, or 27%. Tyson Foods, Southern Glazer’s, Clean Harbors, Swire Coca-Cola, Walmart and CRH also grew.
The biggest cuts came at oilfield firms such as Patterson-UTI, whose fleets follow drilling activity. We found no shipper this year that handed its own fleet’s freight to a dedicated carrier.
Peer Insights
Fleets on NPTC’s panel described what they are doing with the extra trucks:
Harder freight: Members are taking the customers that need the most handholding, NPTC executive vice president Tom Moore said. TruckingInfo calls it reverse cherry-picking, since for-hire carriers are left with the easier loads.
Dot Foods: It runs its own trucks to control its tight delivery deadlines.
AutoZone: It does most of its own maintenance so its trucks last longer. They run “slightly longer in years but a lot longer in mileage,” supply chain logistics director Marley Bebout told FleetOwner. Drivers share trucks across shifts. Many deliveries run at night. Most fleets in the survey, 77%, outsource maintenance instead.
Pushback
Jim Stetz of NationaLease says the 2027 rule will make dedicated carriers cheaper than owning trucks. In a CCJ article, he puts the added cost at $15,000 to $25,000 per tractor. NationaLease sells dedicated service, so it gains if fleets switch.
Six days before that article ran, EPA proposed keeping the emissions limit but dropping the costliest parts of the rule, including a much longer required warranty. EPA says that saves up to $6,000 a truck. FTR now puts the added cost at $8,000 to $12,000. The change is still a proposal.
ATA chief economist Bob Costello says truck rates rose because carriers left the market, not because demand grew. Rates fell the last time capacity came back. By late 2019, after the 2018 crunch, spot rates were 15% lower than a year earlier. Private fleets kept their freight anyway, according to NPTC.
What’s Next
EPA’s final rule comes first. It will set what a 2027 truck costs before the new engines reach buyers in January. After that, NPTC’s next survey will show whether fleets keep 72% of outbound freight as for-hire rates ease.
