The trucking freight market entered 2026 with something it hadn’t seen in a while: rates moving in the right direction. Spot rates that were scraping the floor at $1.65 per mile in November 2025 have climbed to an average of $2.01 per mile as of February 2026, according to U.S. Bank and DAT’s latest freight rate analysis. Contract rates have followed, moving from $2.02 to $2.12 per mile in the same period. The gap between contract and spot pricing — which had been a reliable indicator of market stress when spot rates were deeply discounted — has narrowed to approximately $0.11 per mile, down from a $0.39 spread a year ago.
That’s real improvement. But before carriers start calling this a market recovery, there are complications on the table. Diesel prices surged by more than a dollar per gallon in early March due to geopolitical conflict, freight demand gains are modest and may be overstated by elevated rejection rates, and the market hasn’t proven it has the sustained demand needed to push rates decisively higher. This is a market in transition — not a market that has turned the corner.
Here’s where the freight market actually stands heading into the second quarter of 2026, and what it means for carriers trying to make decisions about capacity, contracting, and survival in what has been an extended and painful cycle.
Where Spot and Contract Rates Stand Right Now
The February 2026 rate data from U.S. Bank and DAT tells a story of gradual improvement from the lows of late 2025. Spot rates at $2.01 per mile are still well below where carriers need them to be to rebuild margins comfortably, but the directional trend over four months has been consistently upward. The fact that spot and contract rates are converging is also meaningful. When spot rates trade significantly below contract rates, shippers have less incentive to honor contract commitments because they can find cheaper capacity on the open market. A narrowed spread suggests that dynamic is fading.
Tender rejection rates have climbed to approximately 14 percent nationally. That number matters because tender rejections are a real-time indicator of capacity tightness — when a carrier turns down a load at the contracted rate, it typically means the carrier has better options available elsewhere. At 14 percent, the rejection rate indicates that capacity is tighter than it was a year ago, which is consistent with the broader supply-side story: a significant number of small carriers have exited the market over the past 18 months, and the trucks they were running are no longer competing for the same freight.
However, the 2026 State of the Industry white paper from FreightWaves offers a note of caution: underlying freight demand may be overstated because elevated rejection rates can create a perception of tighter capacity than actually exists. When carriers reject loads, those loads get re-tendered or brokered, which inflates transaction volumes without representing genuinely new freight demand. The market is improving, but the improvement needs to be viewed against a backdrop of structural complexity rather than treated as a clean bullish signal.
The Diesel Price Surge That’s Eating Into the Rate Gains
Whatever optimism the rate improvement generates is getting undercut by what happened to diesel in early March 2026. Prices surged by more than a dollar per gallon as a result of geopolitical tensions affecting global oil markets, pushing the national average diesel price toward $3.81 per gallon and significantly higher in western states. For carriers, this is the worst possible timing. Rate improvements that look meaningful on paper shrink considerably when fuel costs climb sharply in the same period.
Fuel accounts for roughly 21 percent of total cost per mile in a typical trucking operation. A significant spike in diesel prices translates directly into margin compression, particularly for carriers running under contract rates that were negotiated before the fuel price jump. Fuel surcharge mechanisms help, but they operate with a lag — typically indexed to prior-week DOE diesel prices — meaning carriers absorb the early weeks of a price spike before the surcharge adjustment catches up. Owner-operators and small fleets without robust fuel hedging programs are the most exposed.
The combination of rising rates and rising fuel costs creates a net outcome that’s less straightforward than the headline rate numbers suggest. A carrier moving from $1.65 to $2.01 per mile in spot rates while simultaneously absorbing a dollar-per-gallon diesel increase may be in a better position than they were six months ago on a net basis — but not by as much as the rate movement alone would imply. Carriers need to be running the full cost-per-mile math, not just tracking the rate trend in isolation.
The Carrier Attrition Story Behind the Capacity Numbers
One of the primary drivers of the 2026 rate improvement isn’t demand growth — it’s carrier attrition. The extended freight rate downturn that began in mid-2022 has forced a significant number of carriers out of business. Notable Chapter 11 filings in the 2025 to 2026 period have included Elite Carriers, STG Logistics, Standard Forward Freight, Daniel Trucking International, and Dolche Truckload. In late 2025, 10 Roads Express — a 79-year-old postal contractor running nearly 2,500 power units — announced closure. Freight companies filed 21 bankruptcy petitions in Q3 2025 alone.
The capacity that left the market with those carriers is part of what’s tightening the supply side. Fewer trucks chasing the same loads mechanically tightens capacity and supports rate improvement. But this is a painful way for the market to rebalance. For every carrier that exits, there are drivers who lost jobs, creditors who took losses, and shippers who need to rebuild their carrier networks. The light at the end of the freight recession tunnel is real, but the market is arriving there through attrition rather than demand-driven growth — and that has implications for how durable the recovery turns out to be.
An attrition-driven rate improvement is inherently fragile. If freight demand softens again before carriers rebuild their financial cushion, or if macroeconomic conditions suppress consumer spending and freight volumes, the capacity that was shed doesn’t come back quickly enough to prevent rate slides. The carriers that survived the downturn are in a better position than those that didn’t, but they need the market to sustain its improvement trajectory to actually recover financially from what has been an extended and damaging period.
What Rate Forecasts Say About the Rest of 2026
FTR Transportation Intelligence forecasts truckload spot rates to increase approximately 3.6 percent in 2026 following 2 percent growth in 2025, with contract rates projected to rise 2.6 percent. On an absolute basis, some forecasters project dry van spot rates could reach $2.75 to $2.90 per mile later in the year if the demand and capacity dynamics continue moving in their current direction. That would represent a meaningful improvement from where the market was in late 2025, and would be the kind of rate environment where surviving carriers can begin to genuinely rebuild margins.
The caveat with these projections is that they assume freight demand holds up and no major macroeconomic shock derails consumer activity. The U.S. economy has been showing mixed signals, and the geopolitical factors that drove the diesel price spike in March add uncertainty to the operating cost side of the equation. Rate forecasts at $2.75 to $2.90 with diesel at $3.80 per gallon is a different proposition than the same rates with diesel at $2.80. The gross rate improvement is real; the net margin improvement depends entirely on what fuel does over the next six months.
For shippers, the rate environment signals that the window for securing very favorable contract pricing may be narrowing. Shippers who have been benefiting from suppressed contract rates and abundant spot capacity should be building relationships with carriers now, before the market tightens further. A carrier that is financially stressed today may not be available as a capacity partner in six months if conditions continue improving and its commitments fill up. Getting ahead of contract renewals and building carrier relationship depth is smarter than waiting.
What Carriers Should Be Doing in This Market
Carriers that survived the freight recession have done so by managing costs aggressively and staying disciplined on which freight they take. That discipline shouldn’t relax just because rates are ticking up. The carriers that get into trouble in an improving market are often the ones who start taking on cost or capacity before the improvement is confirmed and durable. Keep the cost structure lean, keep the freight selection discipline sharp, and use the rate improvement to rebuild cash reserves rather than immediately expanding.
On the contract side, the narrowing spot-contract spread is an opportunity for carriers to push for rate improvements in upcoming contract renewals. Shippers who have been holding contract rates flat or pushing them down while spot rates were suppressed now face a different market reality. Use the current data — spot rates up from $1.65 to $2.01 since November, tender rejections at 14 percent, capacity tighter due to carrier exits — to make the case for contract rate adjustment. The numbers support it.
On fuel, every carrier should be reviewing their fuel surcharge agreements and making sure those mechanisms are calibrated to current diesel price levels. If you negotiated a fuel surcharge table when diesel was at $2.80 and it’s now pushing $3.80, you may be significantly under-recovering fuel costs. That gap comes directly out of your operating margin and it compounds over every loaded mile you run. Review the tables, know where your break-even fuel cost is, and make sure your surcharge recovery is actually covering your fuel exposure.
Bottom Line
Freight rates are improving. Spot rates climbed from $1.65 per mile in November 2025 to $2.01 per mile in February 2026, and contract rates moved from $2.02 to $2.12. The contract-spot spread has tightened significantly, tender rejections are at 14 percent, and supply-side attrition from carrier bankruptcies has removed capacity from the market. Forecasts point to dry van rates potentially reaching $2.75 to $2.90 per mile later in 2026. But a diesel price surge of over a dollar per gallon in March complicates the picture, and freight demand growth is modest rather than robust. The market is healing, but carriers that confuse improving rates with a confirmed recovery will get caught leaning the wrong way if the trajectory stalls. Stay disciplined, push on contract renewals while the data supports it, and audit your fuel surcharge recovery immediately.
Questions Carriers Ask
How much have spot rates improved since late 2025?
Spot rates went from $1.65 per mile in November 2025 to an average of $2.01 per mile as of February 2026, according to the U.S. Bank and DAT analysis cited in the post. Contract rates moved from $2.02 to $2.12 per mile over the same period.
What does the narrowing gap between spot and contract mean?
The gap has narrowed to approximately $0.11 per mile, down from a $0.39 spread a year ago. A wide spread signaled deep market stress with heavily discounted spot freight, so the compression is real improvement, though the post cautions the market is not out of the woods yet.
What could stall this rate recovery?
The post points to the diesel price surge eating into rate gains and examines the carrier attrition story behind the capacity numbers. Its practical advice is to bank the improvement, watch the forecasts, and avoid spending a recovery that has not fully arrived.
Keep learning: Shippers Are Locking Up Dedicated Capacity at the Fastest Pace Since 2020: The Dedicated Conversion Play to Run on Your Best Shipper This Month and The 10% Tariff Wall Comes Down July 24: Four Moves Small Carriers Should Make Before the Import Whipsaw Hits Their Lanes.
Innovative Logistics Group
