Trucking Faces More Frugal Consumers This Holiday Season
Project44 Finds 40% of Consumers Capped Holiday Budgets at $500
Key Takeaways:
- Analysts expect a muted 2025 holiday shipping season as consumers cap budgets and delay purchases, leading to softer freight volumes across the trucking sector.
- Project44 reported 40% of surveyed consumers set $500 spending limits and 82% plan to buy cheaper or substitute gifts amid economic uncertainty.
- Logistics indicators show slowing growth in transportation pricing and activity, with experts warning of potential volatility and capacity pressures through the fourth quarter.
[Stay on top of transportation news: .]
The trucking industry is heading into a subdued holiday shipping season, with much of the freight already moved and consumers tightening their budgets, according to experts.
The found that 40% of consumers have capped their holiday budgets at $500 amid economic uncertainty that has driven these respondents to become more cost-conscious.
The survey also found that 82% plan to downgrade or substitute gifts to stay within their budgets. It included more than 2,000 consumers from across North America and the United Kingdom.
“We’re in a much more flexible environment that really prioritizes price over anything else,” said Jenna Slagle, senior data analyst at Project44. “One of the things that we observed is more and more people are waiting until later in the season to shop. This … points to people really wanting to optimize those major sale days, like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So I think we’ll start to see people really prioritize shopping sales versus full price.”
Slagle wouldn’t be surprised if there was a shift toward services like restaurants as people work to save money on gifts. But overall, she anticipates that consumers are going to be more creative and flexible during the holidays.
“Since we’re still going into peak season, regardless of if it’s a little bit softer from past years, we’re still going to see some good volume in the trucking market,” Slagle said. “Everyone still needs their decoration, they need their food, they need their presents. So it might be a little bit softer, but we’ll still see a spike in truckload and last-mile shipments for this period.”
The , marking its lowest reading since March. The index, which tracks logistics activity in the United States, found that the slowdown in logistics expansion is due to a declining rate of growth across most of its submetrics, such as transportation utilization, pricing and capacity.
(Logistics Managers' Index)
While transportation prices are still expanding, the September report noted this is the lowest rate of growth for that metric since April 2024, which it said was the last month of the most recent freight recession.
“Normally, we see pretty strong growth in transportation pricing in September because of shipments of holiday merchandise,” the report stated. “This September we are not seeing that same thing.”
Arrive Logistics found in its third-quarter truckload freight rates forecast Sept. 23 that carrier profitability pressure, aging fleets and tighter driver regulations could create more severe holiday and seasonal crunches than in past cycles. The freight brokerage firm has been tracking some small market disruptions in the weeks since but thus far maintains its findings.
Գ
“We’re headed for an interesting fourth quarter,” said David Spencer, vice president of market intelligence at Arrive Logistics. “Our expectation for a little muted fourth-quarter demand environment is, probably, still holding steady. We subscribe to the idea that there was a pull forward in retail imports earlier this year.”
Spencer still expects volatility around the holidays given normal seasonal factors. But even with that outlook he warns there are still many unknowns that make the fourth quarter uncertain. He has been paying particular attention to how the tariff dispute with China turns out.
“You would hope by this point of the year you’d have more clarity around the business environment and tariffs, and it seems like we’re still getting a couple wild cards coming into the mix,” Spencer said. “But that’s something that, when you put a forecast together, you have to be aware of these potential risks.”
Spencer noted that these unknowns also make it difficult to gauge what trucking should expect. He said that freight demand has remained down, but he has had difficulty getting a firm grasp on capacity. He expects that the holiday shipping season will provide a better demonstration of where the freight market really stands. But overall, he still suspects it’s likely to be in a more balanced state than people might realize.
“Even with … down demand, the exits of capacity are doing a fairly good job keeping up with that,” Spencer said. “That’s still the base case for a lot of next year, those seasonal movements. There’ll be slow times throughout Q1 and Q2 for sure, and you get right into May and its Roadcheck Week, followed by the week leading up to Memorial Day, and people will be screaming about another inflationary market at that time again.”
Want more news? Listen to today's daily briefing belowor go here for more info:
