Uber Freight estimates that 48,000 noncompliant drivers left the US truck market over the past year. The broker named those driver losses and a backlog in equipment production as the reasons truckload capacity is not rebuilding the way it usually does when rates climb.
Transportation buyers now decide whether to reprice the lanes where carriers are rejecting freight or keep covering those loads in the spot market through the late-October peak. Uber Freight puts the stable window at the next 30 to 60 days.
Dry van spot rates ran 48% above a year earlier in July, according to the report. Contract rates ran 19% higher. Spot rates then fell for seven straight weeks from the early-July peak, but were still 36% above last year in the final week of August.
Uber Freight’s primary tender acceptance rate rose from 76% in July to 78% in August as shippers repriced failing lanes, FreightWaves reported. Acceptance ran between 90% and 94% over the previous three years. Class 8 truck backlogs stand at about nine months of production, per Uber Freight.
The Transportation Department said more than 26,000 commercial drivers have been placed out of service for failing English-language proficiency checks since the administration reinstated strict enforcement. FMCSA proposed last month to write that out-of-service penalty into the federal safety rules. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said drivers who cannot read or speak English “are unqualified to operate 80,000-pound big rigs on America’s highways.”
About 20,000 Mexican drivers also lost their US visas in the year through April, per Uber Freight. The number of active Mexican-domiciled carriers at the southern border fell 6.3% between late December and late June. Five trucking companies filed for bankruptcy in 10 days in June, while the Cass linehaul index ran 6.9% above a year earlier.
The national average diesel price reached nearly $6 a gallon in the first week of September, an all-time high, per the report. Uber Freight expects carriers to seek larger increases in bid season even where a fuel surcharge is in place. It warned that small carriers on thin margins could park equipment rather than haul freight at a loss.
