Thursday, November 5, 2026
The news that moves freight
Trucking & Rail Nov 5, 2026 · 7 min read

US truck brokerage: prices up, profits not

October’s 18% says US truck brokers are charging more and earning less

ArcBest published its October trading data on 4 November, and they point one way. ArcBest is a US less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier that also runs a brokerage business. LTL means shared trailers, with several shippers’ freight on one truck. ArcBest said yield, or revenue per shipment, in its asset-light unit was 18% higher in October than a year earlier. Asset-light means the unit buys truck capacity from other carriers instead of running its own trucks. The unit’s revenue per day was up 27%, while shipments were up only 8%, according to FreightWaves’ report on the results.

On the same day, Uber reported that its freight business had record quarterly gross bookings of $1.768bn and still made an operating loss of $33m.

Our view: the US domestic truck market is now in a price-led phase. Brokers’ revenue lines are growing fast because the trucks they buy cost much more, not because they are moving much more freight or making much more money on each load. For anyone buying US inland transport through a broker, prices will keep going up, and there is little margin left for brokers to give back in a negotiation.

What ArcBest reported

ArcBest’s Q3 adjusted earnings per share were $2.62, up 79% and 11 cents above analysts’ consensus. Revenue was $1.21bn, up 15%, as FreightWaves reported.

The asset-light unit had Q3 revenue of $446m, up 25%. Shipments rose 1% and revenue per shipment rose 24%. Nearly all of the growth came from price, not volume. Purchased transportation, which is what ArcBest pays outside carriers, was 85% of the unit’s revenue, 10 basis points higher than a year earlier. In other words, the cost of buying trucks rose at least as fast as what ArcBest charged customers.

The unit still made $14.4m of adjusted operating income. That beat guidance, which ArcBest had raised in August to $10m–$12m. But Q4 guidance is $7m–$10m, lower than Q3. October started strongly: yield up 18%, shipments up 8%, revenue per day up 27%. Even so, management expects profit to fall in the quarter.

The LTL side tells a related story. Q3 revenue in the asset-based LTL unit was $799m, up 10%. Tonnage rose 10% while shipments fell 3%, so weight per shipment rose 13%. Yield excluding fuel, meaning revenue per hundredweight before fuel surcharges, fell by a low-single-digit percentage. That is normal when shipments get heavier, because heavier shipments usually earn less per pound. Contractual rate increases averaged 5.1%. The adjusted operating ratio was 90.4%, 210 basis points better than a year earlier. The operating ratio is operating costs as a share of revenue, so lower is better.

October was stronger again. LTL revenue per day rose 20% year on year, tonnage rose 15%, shipments rose 1%, and weight per shipment rose 14%. Yield rose 4%. FreightWaves reported that October tonnage was down 1% from September, compared with a normal seasonal fall of 3.4%. For Q4, management expects the operating ratio to worsen by 50 to 150 basis points from Q3.

Uber Freight: growing fast, still losing money

Uber’s Q3 release shows Freight revenue of $1,758m, up from $1,308m a year earlier, a 34% rise. Gross bookings were $1,768m, up 35%. The segment’s operating loss narrowed to $33m from $40m. The release carries no commentary on Freight.

FreightWaves fills in some of the gap. The loss was wider than Q2’s $24m. As a share of gross bookings, the operating margin was minus 1.9% in Q3, compared with minus 1.5% in Q2 and minus 3.1% a year earlier. That is better than last year but worse than last quarter.

Uber Freight’s mix is different from ArcBest’s. Uber Freight CEO Rebecca Tinucci wrote that revenue growth was “supported by an exceptional 36% volume increase in our U.S. & Canada brokerage.” FreightWaves reported that revenue per load rose about 8%. In our reading, Uber Freight mostly bought growth by taking more loads, not by pricing up. Tinucci also said this came despite “relatively flat freight volumes across the industry”. If the market is flat, extra volume at one broker comes from someone else’s share.

Tinucci’s own summary was frank: “Uber Freight delivered our strongest quarter since I joined, posting great revenue, volume, and profitability gains,” and “At the same time, it is only more clear to me how much farther we have to go.” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi posted that logistics is “going to be our 3rd leg of the stool”. According to FreightWaves, Uber Freight did not come up on the parent company’s earnings call.

The market behind the numbers

Both companies are working in a market where truck capacity is scarce. DAT runs the DAT One load board for US truck freight. For the week of 10–16 October, it reported a van spot rate of $3.09 a mile including fuel. Van linehaul, the rate excluding fuel, was about 35% higher than a year earlier, reefer linehaul about 33% higher and flatbed linehaul about 29% higher. Truck posts on DAT’s board were 21% to 27% below a year earlier, while load posts were 12% to 23% above. DAT analyst Dean Croke put it simply: “Capacity remains the key factor in pricing.”

C.H. Robinson, one of the biggest US brokers, reported on 28 October and showed the same squeeze. In its North American Surface Transportation unit, the average truckload linehaul rate charged to customers rose about 31.5% year on year, excluding fuel. The linehaul cost per mile paid to carriers rose 33.5%. CEO Dave Bozeman described “a period of significant supply-driven tightening.” C.H. Robinson still grew adjusted gross profit per mile by 21.5% and repriced much of its contract book. That shows scale helps. But even at C.H. Robinson, buy rates rose faster than sell rates.

Taken together, the pattern is clear. Brokers are passing on price increases of roughly 18% to 32%. Their gross margins as a percentage are flat or slipping. The smaller and newer platforms are still not making a profit.

What it means for forwarders

Most forwarders handling US imports buy the inland leg, from port or rail ramp to the consignee, either from brokers or from asset carriers on contract. Three things follow from the data.

First, budget higher. If brokers are paying carriers about a third more per mile than a year ago, a quote held flat from last year is unlikely to be honoured. Expect US drayage-to-warehouse and warehouse-to-store truckload legs to be repriced on spot, and contract rates to be reopened early where the contract allows it.

Second, don’t count on brokers giving up margin. ArcBest’s purchased transportation is 85% of revenue, Uber Freight runs at a loss, and C.H. Robinson’s cost per mile rose faster than its price. There is little cushion between what a broker pays the truck and what it charges you. Pushing hard on price is more likely to cost you capacity than to win a discount.

Third, check LTL weight-based charges. ArcBest’s weight per shipment rose 13% in Q3 and 14% in October. Heavier freight means higher bills under weight-based tariffs even when the rate per hundredweight does not change. On consolidated distribution moves after import, check whether the freight class and density assumptions in your LTL quotes still match what you are actually shipping.

There is also a point about choosing suppliers. A broker growing volume 36% in a flat market, as Uber Freight says it is, is buying share. That can mean sharp quotes now. But a business that is still losing money may tighten pricing quickly once its parent demands profits. If you route volume to digital brokers, keep a second source on your key lanes.

Our prediction

We expect DAT’s van linehaul rate to stay at least 20% above year-ago levels in every weekly reading through the end of December 2026. Capacity data like truck posts more than 20% down on a year ago do not turn around within a few weeks.

We also expect Uber Freight to report another segment operating loss for Q4 2026 when Uber publishes results in February 2027. ArcBest has also guided its own brokerage profit lower for Q4, even with October revenue per day up 27%. In this market, brokers get bigger revenue, not bigger margins.

Sources

Read us on Google? Add Forwarder News as a preferred source to see more of our stories in Top Stories.