U.S. trucking is heading for a slowdown, with industry players fearing the “worst is yet to come” as tariffs start to crimp imports.
Trucking volumes have plunged to near pre-pandemic levels, according to Craig Fuller, founder of the logistics industry publication FreightWaves.
“With imports deteriorating, volumes are expected to fall by another 3-4% over the next month,” Fuller said Tuesday in a post on X, citing the real-time freight data platform Sonar, which he also founded. Fuller said that’s a worrying sign for truckers this year.
Container volumes are down 20% at the busy Port of Los Angeles since a year ago, FreightWaves reported Tuesday, saying “this downturn spells trouble” for trucking firms that ship the overseas cargo inland across the country. Freight trucks carrying goods out of the metro area are “converging downward toward 2020 lockdown levels,” the outlet said.
The flags come as warning signs pile up for the broader U.S. economy due to President Donald’s Trump’s evolving trade war.
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday knocked down its forecast for the year, lowering its January projection for global gross domestic product growth to 2.8%, from 3.6% previously. The IMF also cut its outlook for U.S. growth to just 1.8%, down from 2.7%, citing “epistemic uncertainty and policy unpredictability” out of the White House. Fresh GDP data is due out next Wednesday.
Freight carriers are “heavily dependent on the health of the U.S. economy, and many industry insiders are waiting on the final outcome of tariffs prior to expressing opinions regarding their outlook,” said John Crum, head of specialty equipment finance at Wells Fargo.
Trucks are the nation’s freight mode of choice for everything from grain to gravel, as measured by weight, and also carry the lion’s share, by dollar value, of foodstuffs, electronics and vehicles, federal data shows. Imports accounted for 40% of freight tonnage moved domestically by truck as of 2023.
Despite freight firms’ broader reticence, many are still “expressing caution regarding freight volumes for 2025,” Crum said.
In a separate note, Wells Fargo supply chain finance managing director Jeremy Jansen said one silver lining is that companies “have a bit more profit margins than in 2018/19 to absorb some tariff actions.”
The growing pessimism comes just months after industry experts were heralding a likely rebound in trucking volumes after two years of declines. Just days before Trump was sworn in to a second term in January, the American Trucking Association released a forecast projecting a 1.6% boost in freight for the year.
“Understanding the trends in our supply chain should be key for policymakers in Washington, in statehouses around the country and wherever decisions are being made that affect trucking and our economy,” ATA President and CEO Chris Spear said in a statement at the time.
But in the more than three months since then, consumers’ outlooks have nosedived, executives across industries have ramped up their warnings about slower sales, and Wall Street has swung wildly in response to ever-shifting signals about the administration’s trade agenda. Small-business owners say they’re doing their best to stockpile inventory before steeper tariffs take hold, even as many already get hit with higher bills from suppliers.
With much of Trump’s sweeping April 2 slate of tariffs temporarily rolled back, shipping volumes could jump in the second quarter “as consumers scoop up pre-tariff goods before prices go up,” logistics researchers at Cass Information Systems said in their March report. “But thereafter, the trade war is likely to extend the for-hire freight recession as higher prices reduce goods affordability and consumers’ real incomes.”
Overall U.S. exports rose 4.6% through February, federal researchers reported this month, while imports surged 21.4% as the trade war heated up.
The Cass Freight Index fell 5.5% in 2023 and 4.1% last year, “and so far, is trending toward another decline in 2025,” the analytics company said.
Mack Trucks recently announced layoffs of hundreds of workers at a Pennsylvania plant due to economic uncertainty, betting on slower demand for its iconic freight vehicles.
The decision drew sharp criticism last week from Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, who said, “I fear that we’re going to see more like this” due to tariffs. “We’re going to see more rising prices, more layoffs, more companies not investing in the future.”
“The economy has COVID,” Fuller wrote in a follow-up X post on Wednesday, in response to downbeat manufacturing data released this week. “The only cure is a deescalation of the tariffs.”