Logistics & Supply — Insights

95.8%

Of U.S. carriers operate 10 or fewer trucks

14.3 hrs

Per week lost to uncompensated dock detention

1,475%

Increase in double brokering fraud Q1 2022 to Q4 2024

67¢

More per mile earned by operators who know their cost-per-mile

The operators

Three carriers. 95.8% of the industry looks like them. Nothing was built for them.

Marcus Williams

OTR owner-operator, 47 — 1 truck, Southeast region. Nine years in.

Marcus runs a single dry van across the Southeast. Made good money in 2021 and 2022, bought a newer truck. In 2024, spot rates dropped to $1.92/mile while his cost per mile stayed at $2.10. He's factoring every invoice at 3% — paying $4,500 a year for the right to get paid within 24 hours instead of 60 days. He spent 14 hours last week sitting at a dock waiting. Compensated for zero of it.

"I overheard the broker ask his coworker what they had in the load. He said $1,600 — that's over half of what the load paid me. I'll never haul for that broker again."

Diane Kowalski

Small carrier, 52 — 4 trucks, Midwest regional. 14 years in business.

Diane runs four trucks with two employee drivers and two owner-operators under her authority. She's fighting rate compression, a $68,000 annual insurance bill, and software that doesn't talk to itself. Her ELD is Motive. Her TMS is a spreadsheet. Her accounting is QuickBooks. None of them exchange data — every load gets entered three times. Two weeks ago, she was double-brokered on a reefer load and was out $2,800.

"The current market is destroying many O/Os including large carriers that have been around for 50 years. A lot went bankrupt last year and probably even more will this year."

James Tran

Solo freight broker, 39 — remote, Texas. 15–25 loads per week.

James left a mid-size brokerage two years ago and built his own book. He's profitable — but barely. He's navigating fraud attempts that have multiplied tenfold since 2022, qualifying carriers he's never worked with, and running his operation across load boards, TMS, and QuickBooks that constantly fail to sync. He lost a shipper account last quarter after a double-brokering incident.

"Buying an ELD is virtually only practical for companies that have multiple vehicles. As a one-man operation with limited funds, that money could go toward actual safety improvements."

What the data shows

95.8% of U.S. carriers operate 10 trucks or fewer. The industry built everything — load boards, TMS platforms, insurance, compliance infrastructure — for the other 4.2%. The worst sustained downturn in 15 years. 5,000–8,000 carriers exited in 2025. 88,000 carrier authorities revoked in 2023. The remaining operators absorb margin compression, fraud, detention, and insurance increases simultaneously.

Hauling below operating cost — because empty is worse

Dry van spot rates sit near $1.92 per mile in mid-2025 against average operating costs of $2.08–$2.11 (OOIDA 2024). Owner-operators haul at a structural loss to keep the truck moving — because a stopped truck still has payments, insurance, and a phone bill. Rates are 27% below inflation-adjusted pre-downturn levels. Operators who know their exact cost-per-mile earn 67 cents more per mile — but the majority don't have the tools to calculate it.

Brokers take 25–35% with no visibility

Brokers routinely take 25–35% of the shipper rate. One documented FMCSA case showed a broker margin of 44%. Owner-operators have a legal right (49 CFR 371.3) to see the transaction record — but enforcement has been historically absent. Broker transparency topped the ATRI 2025 Critical Issues survey for the first time ever. 79% of operators predicted a transparency rule would positively impact rates. Brokers are funding legal challenges to block it.

Freight fraud industrialized

Double brokering increased 1,475% from Q1 2022 to Q4 2024. DAT detected 8.5 million fraudulent or spoofed calls in a single year. Fraudulent emails are up 117% year over year in 2025. Fraud costs the supply chain more than $1 billion annually — and the small operator bears the loss because they have no legal or financial infrastructure to recover.

14 hours per week of uncompensated dock detention

OOIDA survey data shows operators lose an average of 14.3 hours per week to dock detention — at $106.20 per hour in lost earning capacity, that's $78,970 per year in theoretical lost earnings. 17% of owner-operators never receive detention pay. Of those who attempt to collect, only 25% succeed. 50% lose 1–2 loads per week when detention cascades into Hours of Service violations. There is no federal compensation requirement. The industry norm: the first two hours are unpaid.

Insurance up 36% in eight years — driven by verdicts against strangers

Commercial trucking insurance hit $0.102 per mile in 2024 — a record. Independents pay $12,000–$25,000+ per year. A 12.5% spike in 2023 on an already elevated base means 36% total increase over eight years. The primary driver: "nuclear verdicts" — jury awards exceeding $10 million against trucking companies, some exceeding $100 million. Small carriers can't self-insure, pool risk, or negotiate volume discounts. They pay retail for risk created industry-wide by actors they've never worked with.

Five systems for one truck — none talk to each other

A solo owner-operator manages an ELD, load board subscriptions ($1,200–$3,600 per year combined for DAT and Truckstop.com), a TMS or spreadsheet, factoring, accounting, fuel cards, IFTA reporting, and an insurance portal. None of these systems exchange data cleanly. Operators re-enter load data 4–5 times across platforms. Enterprise carriers have integrated TMS. Small carriers have browser tabs and WhatsApp.

Why the gap exists

The infrastructure was designed for large fleets and enterprise shippers. Load boards, TMS platforms, insurance, and compliance systems all assume organizational scale. Small carriers and solo owner-operators inherited fragmented tools that don't integrate, fraud they can't fight, detention they can't bill, and insurance priced by risks they didn't create.

The owner-operator hauling at $1.92 a mile against $2.11 in costs isn't failing at trucking. They're keeping the economy moving while every system around them was built for someone with a fleet, a legal department, and a dispatcher they didn't have to be.

Hauling at $1.92 a mile. Operating costs at $2.11.