Freight demand hit a fresh air pocket in October, and it wasn’t a small one. The Cass Freight Index shows shipments fell 4.3% from September (down 2.1% seasonally adjusted) and were 7.8% lower year over year, marking the weakest October since the Great Recession. Total freight expenditures slipped 3.9% from September and were essentially flat versus a year ago, implying that actual freight rates were higher even as loads disappeared. Cass cautioned that, on normal seasonality, November shipments could end up about 10% below last year, reinforcing the risk of a soft finish to peak season.
Why rates aren’t collapsing alongside volumes comes down to mix. Cass points to shippers consolidating smaller LTL moves into full truckloads to blunt aggressive LTL pricing, a shift that props up average rates without signaling a true demand rebound. That dynamic helped lift the Cass Truckload Linehaul Index 1.1% month over month and 3.0% year over year in October, even as overall shipments deteriorated. Cass also flagged “demand air pockets” likely to persist into 2026 and said tariff rulings now pending at the Supreme Court could sway goods costs—and freight flows—in the months ahead.
Spot-market readings early this month echo the same story of soft demand and ample capacity. For the week of Nov. 2–7, DAT reported load posts essentially holding steady while truck posts rose, with national average broker-to-carrier spot rates at $2.06 per mile for vans (linehaul $1.69, down a penny week over week), $2.45 for reefers (linehaul $2.09, up a penny), and $2.41 for flatbeds (linehaul $2.06, down a penny). It’s a portrait of a market where carriers can still find freight, but pricing power remains limited outside of seasonal niches.
Upstream indicators point the same direction. U.S. railroads handled 268,842 intermodal units in the week ended Nov. 8, down 8.7% from a year ago, a notable drag during what is typically the tail end of the holiday import push. Total U.S. rail traffic that week fell 4.9% year over year, with carloads flat but intermodal the clear weak link.
At the ports, the frontloading that flattered summer numbers appears to be fading. The Port of Long Beach moved 839,671 TEUs in October, down 14.9% from a year earlier, with imports off 17.6% as retailers entered the season with warehouses already stocked. That helps explain why domestic for-hire carriers aren’t seeing a late-year surge, even as ocean networks remain fluid.
For trucking operators, the message is practical: don’t plan on a broad pre-Thanksgiving snapback. The Cass data and early-November spot metrics suggest demand will stay patchy, with better opportunities clustered in temperature-controlled lanes tied to holiday perishables and in select truckload corridors benefiting from LTL-to-TL consolidation. Contracted volumes are still running below prior-year levels by FreightWaves’ SONAR measures, giving shippers leverage on renewals even as some linehaul benchmarks tick higher. Keep a close eye on lanes where capacity has thinned—those pockets will be where rates are defensible in the weeks ahead.
Bottom line: October’s slide confirms a late-cycle market that is still working through excess capacity and policy-driven timing shifts. If Cass’s November warning proves out, carriers should prioritize yield management over volume chasing, protect utilization in core lanes, and be ready to pivot quickly should tariff outcomes or holiday restocking briefly alter the demand map.
Sources: FreightWaves, Cass Information Systems, DAT Freight & Analytics (via AJOT/Blue Book Services), Association of American Railroads, Progressive Railroading, Yahoo Finance
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