This past winter storm season proved to be one of the most disruptive to the transportation market in years, and now the spring storm season is underway and already busy. Some places are even setting records, such as Wisconsin, which experienced more severe thunderstorm, tornado and flash flood warnings in the first three weeks of April than in any other month in the last four decades, according to The Wisconsin Independent. 

The damage from tornadoes and hurricanes is easy to see, but what’s not always visible is how these storms send shockwaves across freight networks. Equipment ends up stranded in the wrong markets, and capacity vanishes from regions that need it most. The ripple effects reach customers who never saw a cloud in the sky, and can persist for weeks or even months after the weather clears. Even weather events that aren’t as destructive on the ground, like extreme cold or heat, can trigger the same kind of disruption.

When severe weather shuts down a freight corridor, the impact on trailer availability begins almost immediately. Within the first 24 hours, equipment in and around the affected area freezes in place. Trailers sitting at distribution centers, staging yards and customer facilities become inaccessible. That also means drivers hauling the loads are stranded along with them.

The effects radiate outward quickly. Within a 200-mile radius of a major weather event, available assets are typically deployed almost instantly. Beyond that perimeter, equipment goes on alert, but getting it into the affected area creates its own set of problems. Inbound routes may be closed. Driver availability tightens as every fleet in the region scrambles to reposition at the same time. And third-party vendors who might normally assist with equipment moves are often already committed to other customers or handling their own changes.

Disruptions affect all equipment types, but refrigerated trailers consistently experience the highest demand during and after severe weather events. Reefers are the first assets sent into disaster zones, carrying food, water and temperature-sensitive medication to affected communities. Dry vans typically follow in the second wave, supporting relief distribution with water, dry goods and other supplies. But because the refrigerated fleet is smaller and more specialized, the capacity squeeze there is more visible.

Weather events like extreme temperatures can also disrupt that supply. Extended heat waves put enormous pressure on cold chain integrity. Prolonged cold snaps create demand for temperature-controlled trailers in applications many operators may not always anticipate. A trailer moving paint in Canada might not need any climate control normally, but a deep freeze changes that. Suddenly, the operator needs a heated or insulated trailer to make sure the paint doesn’t freeze in transit, and so does everyone else moving temperature-sensitive products on the same routes at the same time.

While most leaders rightly focus on the equipment that needs to be repositioned in these situations, one aspect that can often be overlooked is the drivers. When an entire region is focused on moving equipment toward a disaster zone, driver availability tightens dramatically. Fleets that are slow to act may find that their third-party hauling partners are already committed elsewhere. The equipment may exist, but without drivers to move it, it’s unusable.

There are also different factors to consider based on the specific market that a storm hits. Some markets are structurally difficult to rebalance. Florida, for example, receives a high volume of inbound freight but generates relatively little outbound traffic outside of agricultural seasons. Equipment that moves into the state tends to stay there, creating chronic imbalances that become even more pronounced during hurricane season when additional assets are staged for disaster response.

While storms have always had this kind of impact across the freight network, the industry’s economics make it so that the system has little room to absorb any disruption. A prolonged freight recession over the past several years has pushed fleets to right-size their equipment as tightly as possible. As ACT Research observed in its March, 2026 Freight Forecast, recent storm disruptions exposed just how much carrier capacity the network has lost over the past two years. When every trailer is assigned to a load, even a small disruption creates a ripple effect that quickly moves through the network. 

The fleets and supply chain operators that handle disruptions most effectively share a few common characteristics. They maintain real-time visibility into where their equipment is at all times. Telematics installed on trailers allows operators to see a live snapshot of their fleet positioning, identify clusters of idle equipment, and make repositioning decisions before a crisis is fully underway.

Forward-thinking organizations also establish staging strategies well in advance of peak weather seasons, rather than waiting for a storm to make landfall. In the Southeast, that means reviewing equipment positioning as early as June and identifying which assets can be pre-staged in buffer markets such as Atlanta, Charlotte or Birmingham ahead of hurricane season. For the Midwest tornado season, the preparation window is shorter, but the principle is the same: Know what you have, where it is, and have a plan to move it.

Some organizations are also formalizing those contingency plans through advanced planning programs, which allow fleets to reserve and pre-position trailers before severe weather turns equipment availability into an emergency. That kind of preparation is becoming increasingly important as weather disruptions become more frequent and less predictable.

Disruptions become easier to weather when organizations build relationships that extend their reach. Larger fleets often lean on leasing partners, vendor networks and even customer relationships to create repositioning capacity they couldn’t generate on their own.

Perhaps most importantly, they resist the urge to assume it won’t happen to them. Shifting weather patterns are bringing severe events to regions that historically haven’t dealt with them, and making storms less predictable than in the past. The operators who acknowledge this reality and plan accordingly can keep freight moving even as others scramble.

Hooman Yazhari is chief executive officer, and Keith Allman is regional vice president, at TEN.