Updated on October 1, 2025
This State of the Industry report aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the transportation logistics industry, shedding light on its key drivers, trends, and emerging technologies. By examining the current landscape and forecasting future developments, we seek to equip decision-makers, industry professionals, and stakeholders with valuable insights to navigate the ever-evolving logistics landscape.
With the world becoming increasingly interconnected, the transportation logistics industry faces both immense opportunities and unprecedented challenges. Globalization, e-commerce, and advancements in technology have sparked a seismic shift in consumer expectations, supply chain strategies, and sustainability concerns.
Highlights for the general freight report include:
- Carriers are struggling to keep container rates stable as seasonality is upended by tariff disruptions, increasingly turning to blank sailings to do so.
- Truckload demand is on an unseasonal decline, yet tender rejections and carrier rates suggest a nationwide tightening of capacity — albeit a slow one.
- Although international intermodal volumes have been contracting since early July, rising domestic volumes have more than compensated for this decline.
- Sentiment among manufacturers is growing darker, but consumer spending has been surprisingly robust throughout the summer so far.
- Weakness in the U.S. labor market overshadowed strength in other pockets of the economy at the Federal Reserve’s September meeting, after which the Fed resumed its cutting cycle for interest rates.
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