Some stability has returned post-pandemic to the truckload market, says Chris Caplice, chief scientist at DAT Freight & Analytics. Shippers are applying the lessons they learned after the dynamic changes they experienced in capacity and rates.

Truckload is the most cyclical business that Caplice can think of, he says, with each cycle having a different duration. In his view, the industry is just finishing what he calls the “pandemic cycle.” That came on hard and spiked up in Q3 of 2020; it only ended in Q4 of last year. 

 “The first two years of the pandemic, the rates went sky high and capacity got tight,” Caplice says. “It was definitely a seller's market. Carriers were making money; brokers were doing very well. Over the next 12 months, it bottomed out, and it took another 12 months to recover.”

Those who say the up-and-down nature of the business is attributed solely to the pandemic are wrong, he says. “This happens repeatedly. One of the dangerous phrases people use is, ‘Well, this time's different,’ but this time's not different.” 

So if the pandemic cycle saw rates soar 50%, then drop by more than 50%, where are we now as rates are beginning to climb? “Are we recovering?” asks Caplice. “Are we spiking up like we did in the beginning of 2020 during the pandemic? No, we're kind of finding that equilibrium spot, and we're waiting to see if there's going to be a spike in demand or a contraction in capacity that's going to cause anything dramatic. But what I see in 2025 is a steady recovery.”

At the moment, year-over-year rates are positive compared with previously for both spot and contract, Caplice says. In this “slight” inflationary market, his message to shippers is that rates will continue to rise, but he doesn’t see a repeat of what happened during the pandemic.