US truckload stays tight as diesel tops $6 and Werner warns

Diesel above $6 has turned a tight US truck market into a profit problem for the big carriers
US truckload carrier Werner Enterprises issued a profit warning on Monday 19 October. It now expects third-quarter adjusted earnings of 15 to 16 cents a share. Analysts had expected 36 cents, according to FreightWaves.
The company pointed to “18 cents in cumulative cost headwinds.” Those came from diesel prices, the cost of recruiting and keeping drivers, and a reserve adjustment for past insurance claims. It now forecasts quarterly revenue of $946 million to $951 million. That is “slightly lower than analysts’ expectation for $953.6 million,” FreightWaves reports.
Our view is simple. The fuel shock has moved up the food chain. For months, the story was small fleets parking trucks. Now a large, well-run asset carrier is missing earnings by more than half. That tells you costs are rising faster than contract rates. Carriers will try to close that gap in the only way they can: by charging shippers more and turning down freight that does not pay.
At the same time, there is almost no spare truck capacity, even though freight demand is softening. Put those two facts together and the US inland leg is going to stay expensive into 2027.

What Werner told the market

Werner’s numbers are worth reading closely. Revenue is almost on target. The miss is in costs.
Add the 18 cents of headwinds back to the 15 to 16 cents of guidance and you get 33 to 34 cents. That is close to the 36-cent consensus. In our reading, the core business is roughly where analysts thought. Fuel, labour and insurance took the rest.
The release gave no update to Werner’s prior guidance on tractor counts or pricing. For its one-way truckload fleet, that guidance called for a “10% to 13% year-over-year increase in revenue per total mile” this quarter, according to FreightWaves. So rates per mile are rising. They are just not rising as fast as costs.
The diesel timing explains why. Werner said retail diesel “increased 10% sequentially in August and another 15% in September.” A carrier with fuel surcharges still feels a spike like that. Surcharge tables lag the pump price, and empty miles burn fuel nobody pays for directly.
Investors had already priced in some pain. WERN shares were down 1.1% at 10:21 a.m. EDT on Monday while the S&P 500 rose 0.7%, FreightWaves reports. The stock is down 31% from its mid-July peak. Werner will report full third-quarter results on 27 October after the market closes.

Diesel: still above $6

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) publishes a weekly average price for on-highway diesel. Its latest print covers the week of 12 October. The average was $6.179 a gallon. That was down 2.0 cents on the week, but up $2.514 on a year earlier. In other words, a gallon cost about $3.67 a year ago.
The trend over the last three weeks is slightly down: $6.382 on 28 September, $6.199 on 5 October and $6.179 on 12 October, per the EIA. That is a small easing from very high levels. It is not relief. The next EIA print is due on 20 October.
FreightWaves’ Zach Strickland puts the rise another way: “Retail diesel prices are up 73% year over year.”
Fuel has been the big driver all year. Back in July, the TD Cowen/AFS Freight Index found that second-quarter diesel prices were about 51% above January and February levels. Andy Dyer, CEO of AFS Logistics, said then that “the fuel numbers tell the story.” He also warned that smaller truckload carriers on tight margins may park trucks until fuel prices come back down. The Werner warning suggests the squeeze has now reached carriers that are anything but small.

Volumes are falling, but trucks are not freeing up

Normally, when freight volumes drop, capacity loosens and rates soften. That is not happening.
Strickland wrote on 17 October: “The truckload market is heading into the holidays with almost no slack.” He reports that the Accepted SONAR Truckload Volume Index, a FreightWaves measure of loads carriers actually took on, “has fallen more than 4% over the past four weeks to 9,518.”
Yet the tender rejection rate has hardly moved. That rate is the share of contracted loads that carriers turn down. A high number means carriers have better options on the spot market (the one-off, pay-on-the-day market). “Instead, the national rejection rate (STRI) has barely moved and is holding near 13.9%,” Strickland wrote.
Compare that with last year. “A year ago, the market entered peak season with rejections under 6%, and the ASTVI was roughly 2% higher,” he wrote. So volumes are only slightly lower than a year ago, but carriers are rejecting more than twice as many loads.
Spot rates show the same picture. Strickland wrote: “Dry van spot rates are up a still-impressive 43%, but they haven’t kept pace with fuel over the past few months.” Dry van is the standard enclosed trailer used for most general freight.
DAT, the load board operator, gives a slightly different cut. For the week ending 10 October, it said dry van spot linehaul rates “averaged $2.26 per mile last week, minus fuel.” That was up 5 cents on the week and up 35.1% on the year. “Linehaul” means the rate excluding fuel surcharge. DAT’s dry van load-to-truck ratio, the number of loads posted for each truck posted, eased to 10.50 from 13.72 the week before. A year ago it was 6.29.

Why capacity is not coming back

Strickland points to policy, not just economics. He cites “English language proficiency enforcement, stricter rules on non-domiciled CDLs and tougher immigration policies.” A CDL is a commercial driver’s licence. “Non-domiciled” CDLs are issued to drivers who are not permanent residents of the issuing state. He says these measures are “keeping a large pool of potential drivers out of the industry.”
Safety enforcement is also removing trucks. Per data firm GenLogs, “close to 2% of carriers with substandard safety scores had been removed from service” by this past summer, Strickland reports. The AFS index in July said regulatory enforcement and carrier exits had cut the driver pool by more than 48,000 over the previous year.
And the survivors are cautious. “Carriers that made it through the difficult stretch from mid-2022 to late last year are hesitant to invest in growth,” Strickland wrote. In our view, after that long downturn, few fleets will buy new trucks with diesel above $6.
History helps here. In fall 2020, during the pandemic boom, the accepted volume index was about 11,500 and rejections were near 25%, per Strickland. That was a demand shock. Today volumes are far lower, yet rejections are still high. In our view, that makes this a supply shock. Supply shocks driven by regulation do not reverse when demand dips. They reverse when new drivers and trucks enter. Neither looks likely soon.
Strickland’s conclusion is that transportation procurement teams should prepare for “a market that stays tighter for longer, into 2027.”

What this means for forwarders and shippers

First, drayage. Port truck moves draw from the same driver pool. Expect drayage providers to hold rates and fuel surcharges high through peak season. Budget for it in quotes for US imports landing in November and December.
Second, inland legs on through-bills. If you sell door delivery to US consignees, your trucking cost could jump between quote and delivery. Build fuel adjustment clauses into quotes. Keep quote validity short.
Third, 2027 bids. Carriers like Werner are telling investors that costs are outrunning rates. They will use the bid season to fix that. Shippers hoping to lock in lower contract rates will likely be disappointed. Expect more carriers to reject contract loads that are priced below the spot market.
Fourth, fuel surcharge disputes. With diesel moving 10% to 15% a month, as Werner described, surcharge tables based on older prices will be argued over. Check which index your contracts use and how often it resets.
Fifth, service risk. High rejection rates mean contracted loads fall back to the spot market or get delayed. Shippers with time-sensitive retail freight for the holidays should book early and line up backup carriers.

Our call

These are our predictions, not forecasts from the sources above.
We expect the national tender rejection rate to stay above 10% through 31 December, even if volumes keep easing. We expect the EIA weekly diesel average to stay above $5.50 a gallon through the end of November. We expect at least one more listed US truckload carrier to flag diesel as a profit drag on its third-quarter numbers before mid-November. And we expect 2027 truckload contract rates to settle at least high single digits above 2026 levels by the end of the first quarter of 2027.

Sources

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• FreightWaves — Werner Enterprises issues Q3 profit warning, 19 Oct 2026 \
• FreightWaves — No signs of truckload capacity recovering, 17 Oct 2026 \
• EIA — Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update, week of 12 Oct 2026 \
• DAT — Dry Van Report: Rates climb as load posts fall and capacity tightens, 13 Oct 2026 \
• Food Logistics — AFS Logistics: Oil Price Volatility Drives Freight Rates to 15-Year Highs, 14 Jul 2026