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The past nine months have been “crazy,” ShipMatrix Senior Director of Business Development Robert Persuit said. (vitpho/Getty Images)

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OXON HILL, Md. — Tariffs and carrier capacity continue to be the two top issues increasing the length of transportation executives’ worry lines, according to attendees of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ Edge 2025 conference Oct. 5-8.

The past nine months have been “crazy,” ShipMatrix Senior Director of Business Development Robert Persuit said during the State of Surface Transportation panel on Oct. 6, elongating each consonant for dramatic effect.

Combining the whiplash of the Trump administration’s trade policy with the earlier decline in freight rates has left Pitt Ohio Vice President of Sales Al Webb exhausted, he said during the same panel.

Webb, who joined Pitt Ohio as a dockworker in 1996, said the current downturn is the longest he has seen. Freight cycles historically lasted 14 to 15 months, but the current downswing has lasted more than double that. Pitt Ohio ranks No. 45 on Transport Topics’ Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America and No. 14 among less-than-truckload players.

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“Carriers are still in a state of freight recession. I don’t think that’s too harsh a word,” added Jeff Tucker, CEO at freight brokerage Tucker Company Worldwide.

The spate of companies declining to issue corporate guidance on peak season and general financial outlooks speaks volumes about the uncertainty in the market, said Tucker, a former board chairman of the Transportation Intermediaries Association.

“Businesses want consistency and predictability,” Echo Global Logistics Chief Commercial Officer Sean Burke told TT on the sidelines of the conference at National Harbor here.

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“There’s not enough long-term demand to keep prices moving up,” C.H. Robinson North American Surface Transportation President Michael Castagnetto said in a separate interview on the sidelines of the conference.

“For us to see a true inflection, we’re going to have to see an increase in demand,” said Castagnetto, whose employer ranks No. 2 on the TT Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies in North America and is the top-ranked freight brokerage.

For there to be an increase in demand, an upturn across three key sectors — retail, automotive and construction — is required, Castagnetto added.

But importers are trying to figure things out, Echo’s Burke said, adding: “It does feel as though things are normalizing.” Echo ranks No. 21 on the TT Top 100 logistics companies list and No. 5 among freight brokerages.

A survey released during the conference indicates that sentiment rings true.

Some 14% of shippers serviced by third-party logistics providers are extremely confident in their ability to adapt to the shifting sands of U.S. trade policy, according to the survey.

Around 38% of shippers are confident in their ability to thrive, while 48% are somewhat confident, respondents to the 30th annual Third-Party Logistics Study said.

And no shippers were not so confident or not at all confident in their ability to navigate the tariffs, according to the study unveiled Oct. 7 at the CSCMP conference.

Meanwhile, the truckload segment is set for better times in the upcoming seasons, Tucker said during the panel.

Executives pointed to spare carrier capacity as a key factor — alongside economic uncertainty, much of it due to tariffs — behind the freight rate weakness.

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For there to be an increase in demand, an upturn across three key sectors — retail, automotive and construction — is required, Castagnetto said. (Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg)

In May 2019, there were 240,000 carriers and 2.6 million drivers, according to Tucker. In May 2025, those numbers had risen to 320,000 carriers and 3.2 million drivers.

But the Department of Transportation’s rule requiring non-domiciled commercial driver license holders to renew their licenses in person annually is one of a trio of initiatives that could alter the balance, said Tucker. Issuance of new non-domiciled CDLs is currently on hold, per federal directive.

The other two are English language proficiency enforcement requirements and a presidential proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa petitions.

“Nobody’s going to spend that amount of money to get a driver in here,” said Tucker, noting the potential impact on the driver talent pipeline.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration estimates 200,000 drivers could be removed from the driver pool as a consequence of the CDL rule.

These developments, Tucker said, could lead to a capacity crisis not unlike those of 2003’s hours-of-service rule rewrite under George W. Bush and 2017’s electronic logging device mandate deadline.

However, Castagnetto said it was unclear whether the trio of factors would change the marketplace enough to turn sentiment upward.

Still, trucking activity in August reached its highest level since December 2023, according to American Trucking Associations.

And broker-posted spot rates in the Truckstop.com system rose for all three main haulage segments in the week that ended Oct. 3.

Dry van and refrigerated spot rates each posted their largest increases in five weeks, and flatbed spot rates saw the largest rise since May. Dry van and flatbed spot rates rose in consecutive weeks for the first time since late June, according to Truckstop.com.

Tucker said he could not understand the logic of anyone calling for caps on the number of carriers. “That is so anti-American. That is so anti-market,” he said.

“We’re the best delivery system in the world, by far. I would hate to see anything end that,” he said.