Every Recovery Looks Like the Right Time to Add a Truck. Here Is How to Tell If It Actually Is.

If you have been running the load board for the past three years, you know what the bottom felt like. Loads sitting for hours. Brokers lowballing you on every call. Rates that barely covered fuel, let alone the truck payment. That was the freight recession — and it held from 2022 through most of 2025. Something has shifted. You are feeling it.

The board is busier. Brokers are calling instead of waiting for you to call them. Rates are up — meaningfully up. And there is a voice in the back of your head saying: now is the time to add another truck. Chart: SONAR. The National Truckload Index, which measures average spot pricing, has truckload as a whole at $3. 09 per mile currently.

Highs we haven’t seen in 4 years. Why Rates Are Up Right Now The spot rate per mile on a national basis is sitting at $3. 09 as of this week. The six-month average has been $2. 59. That $0. 50 difference tells you how fast rates have moved. To put it in context: during the worst of the freight recession, rates were running around $2. 10.

You have come up nearly a dollar per mile from the floor. Here is the thing: rates are not up because shippers are suddenly moving a lot more freight. They are up because there are significantly fewer trucks available to move the freight that exists. Carriers have been leaving the market for three years. Some filed bankruptcy.

Some parked their trucks and gave back their authority when the math stopped working. Others lost operating authority through regulatory enforcement. The result is a market where the trucks that are left have more leverage than they have had since 2021 — not because the economy is booming, but because there are fewer competitors for every load.

That is a real and meaningful improvement. But it is a different kind of improvement than 2021. In 2021, freight was everywhere and rates went up because shippers needed trucks desperately. Today, freight is not everywhere — and that difference matters for what you do next. Chart: SONAR.

Outbound Tender Volume Index gives you a glimpse as to how many loads are moving and ultimately end up on load boards. The higher the volume, the more freight there is to be moved.

The Number That Should Give You Pause Right now, the data that measures how much freight is actually being tendered — load requests sent from shippers to carriers before freight moves — is declining. Week-over-week, it is down 1. 1%. Over the past month, it is down 1. 78%.

In plain English: there are fewer loads entering the market than there were a month ago. At the same time, there are fewer trucks. Rates are up because trucks are scarce, not because freight is abundant. Why is freight volume declining right now? The short answer is tariff uncertainty.

Shippers who are not sure what imports are going to cost, or what their customers are going to buy, are slowing down how much they ship. They are sitting on inventory and waiting. That behavior pulls freight out of the market even when the underlying economy is not collapsing.

JB Hunt’s CEO said on their earnings call this week that the freight environment “felt meaningfully different” than recent years — and their numbers backed it up. But their CFO was careful to describe the recovery as “predominantly supply-driven” with only “early signs” of demand improvement.

That is the same story the data is telling: supply tight, demand uncertain. Chart: SONAR. The Outbound Tender Rejection Index is a number reflecting what percentage of total contract loads that are rejected which end up on the spot market. The higher this number, the better leverage you have in negotiations with brokers.

What This Means If You Run the Load Board If you are a load board operator — one truck or a handful of trucks, finding your freight on DAT or Truckstop — here is what the current market means for you in practical terms. Right now is the best time in three years to hold your rate.

When brokers are scrambling to cover loads because contract carriers are turning them down, they need you. You have leverage you did not have in 2023 or 2024. Use it. If a broker offers you a rate that does not work, say no and mean it. The next broker will call.

Right now may not necessarily be the best time to add a truck (every case is different), because adding a truck means finding two trucks worth of loads instead of one — and the supply of available loads is declining month over month even as rates are elevated. A tight market with fewer loads is great for the truck you already have running selectively.

It is riskier for a truck that needs to run consistently to make its payment. Here is the scenario you want to avoid: you buy a truck in April because rates are at $3. 09. In June, tariff uncertainty creates a demand slowdown — fewer loads in the market. Rates dip back toward $2. 75 or $2. 80 because the volume of available loads has shrunk.

Now you have two trucks competing for the same load board in a softer environment, with a truck payment that does not care what happened