Capacity CRUNCH: Why Trucks are Disappearing from the Market

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6}#fwtv_esjUU3NzC0. fwtv-panel p{margin:0 0 12px}#fwtv_esjUU3NzC0. fwtv-transcript p{margin:0 0 12px}SummaryView TranscriptThe freight market has seen unprecedented challenges, from a “freight recession” to tightening capacity and soaring liability costs.

Ben Caplenor, EVP of Operations at LRT Solutions, shares his insights on navigating these head-on, explaining how logistics companies can stand out with top-tier service and strategic partnerships. Plus, FreightWaves’ Mary O’Connell weighs in on why capacity has *left* the market for good.

Trucking capacity that drained out of the market over the past four years is showing little sign of returning, according to Ben Kavlinar, EVP of Operations at LRT Solutions, speaking at the Univar annual carrier kickoff event.

Kavlinar cited a compounding set of barriers — equipment costs, nuclear jury verdicts against carriers, and rising insurance premiums — that are effectively locking out new market entrants and tightening supply even before a meaningful volume rebound takes hold.

“You’ve got a couple of things that are being tough for new entries into this business,” Kavlinar said. “One of the costs of equipment — we always talk about cost of equipment, it’s continued to skyrocket. But on the other hand, we’ve got all these negative things coming at us with these verdicts. So insurance is going to be a big thing in the near future.

It already is and it’s going to continue to be worse.” “With a lot of capacity coming out of the space over the last 4 years, it’s given us an opportunity now that volumes are starting to increase a little bit. But I don’t know if it’s necessarily a volume increase as much as it is a capacity decrease.”

— Ben Kavlinar, EVP of Operations, LRT Solutions The backdrop is a freight market that endured what one FreightWaves host at the event called a roughly four-year “freight recession.”

Conditions have since shifted, with the host noting tender rejections running in the 15% range — elevated compared to the same period in prior years, even after a softer stretch in recent weeks. The host attributed the near-term softness partly to seasonal factors, expecting July and August to remain quieter before activity picks back up.

Kavlinar said LRT Solutions, a Fort Payne, Alabama-based logistics provider offering LTL and full truckload services, is using the tightening environment to pursue new shipper relationships and fill network gaps. He described the current moment as well-suited for carriers to get in front of prospective customers before the next round of bid cycles.

Safety performance, he added, has become table stakes for carriers competing for shipper business, making service quality the primary differentiator.

On technology, Kavlinar acknowledged that LRT’s scale limits its ability to make large AI or tech investments, but said the company is extracting value from tools embedded in its existing transportation management system. The priority, he said, remains freeing up staff bandwidth at a manageable cost rather than chasing high-dollar platforms.

“For us, it’s just really being in front of our customers and being available to them and being very responsive,” he said. Kavlinar said he caught a freight market update delivered earlier in the day by FreightWaves SONAR’s head of Freight Market Intelligence and found himself largely in agreement — though he described his own outlook as more bullish.

He expects the marketplace to become increasingly active over the next few years as structural supply constraints persist and the cost of entering the trucking business continues to climb. Nuclear verdicts and skyrocketing equipment costs are raising barriers to entry, keeping new trucking capacity off the market after a four-year freight recession.

Tender rejections are running near 15%, still elevated versus prior years despite a recent soft patch attributed to seasonal summer slowness. LRT Solutions is leaning on service quality and in-person relationship-building to win shipper business, using TMS-embedded tools to manage tech costs as a smaller carrier.

Speaker 1 [0:00] Welcome back to FreightWaves Today. We are live from the Univar annual carrier kickoff event. I