Sunday, November 8, 2026
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Trucking & Rail Nov 8, 2026 · 7 min read

US trucking jobs stop moving, and capacity with them

The US trucking workforce has stopped shrinking. It has not started growing.

US truck transportation employment did not change between September and October. The BLS jobs report, released on Friday 6 November, put October at 1,471,300 jobs. That is exactly September’s level after revision. September was cut from 1,473,100. FreightWaves’ John Kingston reports that this is the first time in the 10 years of data the BLS provides that the figure has not moved from one month to the next after revisions. October 2026 was 1,600 jobs below October 2025.

A flat month sounds dull. We think it is the most useful trucking number of the autumn. It shows the decline in US trucking capacity has stopped, but no recovery has started. For forwarders moving boxes off US ports, through warehouses and on to customers, that means planning on tight trucks through peak season and into the 2027 contract round.

What the numbers say

Start with the revision. When the BLS first reported September, on 2 October, it showed 1,473,100 truck transportation jobs. That was up 2,600 from August and 800 above a year earlier. FreightWaves noted it was the first positive year-on-year comparison since April 2023. One month later the gain is gone. September is now 1,471,300. October matches it and sits 1,600 below last year.

The detail inside the total is similar. Truckload jobs, which cover full-trailer carriers, fell by 500 in September to 502,800. That was still 1,500 above a year earlier. These figures run a month behind the headline. Less-than-truckload (LTL) jobs, which cover carriers that combine smaller shipments from many customers on one trailer, were 249,500 in September. That was 2,200 more than a year earlier and up from a February low of 243,600.

Warehousing is also flat. Warehouse jobs fell by 300 from September to October. September was revised up to 1,839,700 from 1,831,800. October was roughly level with a year earlier.

That revision changes the warehouse story. The first September print showed warehouse jobs down 21,600 from a year earlier, FreightWaves reported on 2 October. Independent economist Aaron Terrazas called that “a troubling signal at a time of year when the sector should be busy building inventories ahead of the holiday season.” After the upgrade, October warehouse jobs were just 700 below a year earlier. So the one part of the logistics workforce that looked weak in early October now looks steady. The weak part is trucking.

Look at how far the industry has fallen. Truck transportation peaked at 1,587,800 jobs in January 2023, FreightWaves reported in February. October’s 1,471,300 is about 116,500 below that peak. The industry has not recovered any of that loss. It has simply stopped losing more.

What the analysts say

Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management, gave FreightWaves the plainest reading. He said “any rebound in capacity is very slow at best.” He was also clear that the slide has paused: “we aren’t seeing further declines in capacity” among the employers answering the BLS survey. In his words, capacity at those employers “has likewise halted the downward slide.”

On 2 October Miller had been more hopeful. He said then that the data “points to existing establishments adding some capacity.” The revision takes most of that hope away.

Uber Freight’s principal economist, Danaf, is more cautious. He told FreightWaves “we continue to advise caution due to upcoming annual benchmarking.” Benchmarking is the BLS’s yearly check of its monthly survey estimates against fuller records. “We expect the updated figures to reflect a sharp drop in Q1 2026 employment driven by regulations,” he said. He expects the figures to recover across the second and third quarters. Back in October he warned that the first September numbers were “likely overstated and face significant revisions early next year.”

There is good reason to take that warning seriously. The last benchmark, published in February 2026, cut December 2025 truck transportation jobs by 46,400, to 1,466,900. FreightWaves wrote then that the monthly estimates for 2025 “had been running high”. The gap between first and revised figures widened through the year. If this year goes the same way, today’s flat line could turn out to be a lower line.

Miller also expects truckload employment to be revised down when the full-year revisions arrive in February. He points to “more comprehensive administrative records.”

Why trucks stay tight while freight stays soft

Here is our reading. The US has not had a freight boom. Yet carriers are turning down contracted loads at more than twice last year’s rate. That only makes sense if capacity left and has not returned. The jobs data now backs that up.

SONAR’s national tender rejection rate measures how often carriers refuse loads they agreed to haul under contract. On 17 October FreightWaves analyst Zach Strickland wrote that it “has barely moved and is holding near 13.9%”. A year earlier, the market entered peak season with rejections under 6%. Strickland’s summary: “The truckload market is heading into the holidays with almost no slack.”

Demand is not the cause. SONAR’s index of accepted loads fell more than 4% over four weeks to 9,518, about 2% below a year earlier. A separate FreightWaves analysis on 6 October found truckload volumes up only 9% over three years. Over the same period carriers were “rejecting nearly four times as many loads on roughly the same amount of freight.” It also reported that total for-hire tractors “fell approximately 51,000 in August alone.”

Prices show the strain. Dry van spot rates were up 43% in mid-October, Strickland wrote, but had not kept pace with fuel. Retail diesel was up 73% year over year, which squeezes small carriers’ margins. On 14 October, when the rejection rate briefly reached 14.17%, Strickland said: “Supply is still not sufficient to cover demand in terms of truckload capacity.”

Put a flat payroll next to those numbers and the picture is clear. Fleets are not hiring drivers to chase higher rates. Either they cannot find drivers, or they do not trust the rates to last. Either way, the trucks are not coming back quickly.

What it means for forwarders

Drayage and the first inland move. Drayage, the short truck haul between a port or rail ramp and a nearby warehouse, relies on the same small fleets and owner-operators that have been leaving. When contract carriers reject loads, freight goes to the spot market at spot prices. A FreightWaves market alert on 14 October found Los Angeles spot rates “well above contract”. Forwarders handling transpacific imports should expect longer waits for trucks out of the Southern California ports. They should also expect more quotes that do not hold beyond a day or two.

Quotes and buffers. If roughly one contracted load in seven is being turned down, a door-to-door quote built on a contract truck rate carries real risk. We would put a clear validity window on US inland legs, and show truck costs separately from ocean or air costs, so a spot-rate surprise does not come out of the forwarder’s margin.

Warehousing is not the bottleneck. Warehouse employment is roughly flat year on year after the September upgrade. Space and labour inside the building are not the problem this peak. Getting freight into and out of the building is.

The 2027 bid season. Strickland wrote that transportation procurement teams “should prepare for a market that stays tighter for longer, into 2027.” Our view: shippers who try to use last year’s soft-market rates as the benchmark will see high rejection rates on the awarded lanes within weeks. Forwarders advising shippers should push for rate structures that can absorb a tight first half, such as shorter contract terms or index-linked rates.

Watch the February revision. If Danaf is right, the benchmark will show a deeper drop in early-2026 employment than the monthly figures do now. That would mean the gap between freight demand and trucking supply is wider than it looks, and contract rates have further to climb.

What we expect

Our view is that October’s flat line is a floor, not a turning point. The industry is about 116,500 jobs below its January 2023 peak. Nothing in the data shows fleets hiring to close that gap.

Our prediction: SONAR’s national tender rejection rate stays above 10% every week through 31 December 2026. We also expect truck transportation employment to still be below 1,480,000 in the January jobs report, due in early February 2027, after the annual benchmark revision. We think the benchmark will lower the 2026 path rather than raise it.

If rejections fall back into single digits before Christmas, we are wrong, and capacity is returning faster than the payroll data suggests. We do not expect that.

Sources

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