Why Capacity Keeps Shrinking and Why the Montgomery Ruling Just Made Your CSA Score a Rate Lever

• Truckload capacity is exiting the market faster than most 2026 forecasts predicted, and spot rates have moved above contract rates for the first time in years.
• Tender rejection rates are at their highest point since 2022; carriers finally have real pricing leverage again.
• A unanimous May 2026 Supreme Court ruling (Montgomery v. Caribe Transport) opened brokers up to liability for negligent carrier selection, meaning your safety record is now a business asset, not just a compliance number.
• Carriers with clean CSA scores and documented safety programs are increasingly the ones brokers can defensibly hire, and the ones capturing dedicated freight opportunities.

Capacity Is Leaving the Market Faster Than Forecast

Every major freight research firm updated its outlook in the past few weeks, and for once, they largely agree. Industry analysts describe 2026 as a structural transition rather than a simple demand rebound; the tightening is coming from the supply side, driven by continued carrier exits, slower fleet expansion, and a shrinking driver pool, not a sudden freight surge.

The numbers back it up: spot truckload rates have climbed above contract rates for the first time in years, and tender rejection rates have hit their highest levels since 2022, a clear signal that carriers finally have more freight options and real pricing power. Long-haul dry van linehaul rates, which had bottomed out around $1.60 per mile earlier in the year, are trending upward as the weaker carriers who kept those rates artificially low continue exiting the industry.

Even the less-than-truckload market is feeling the spillover; smaller shipments that had been absorbed into truckload capacity during the soft market are getting pushed back into LTL, pushing those rates up too.

The Ruling Almost No One Is Connecting to Your Rates

Here’s the part that doesn’t usually make it into freight market recaps, and it’s directly relevant to how your fleet gets chosen for loads: on May 14, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that freight brokers can be held liable under state law for negligently selecting a carrier with a known poor safety record.

Before this ruling, brokers routinely argued that federal law shielded them from these claims entirely. That defense is gone. The standard now is ordinary care; brokers who document a careful carrier-selection process are still protected, but brokers who don’t check safety data before dispatching a load are exposed.

The practical result: brokers now have a direct legal incentive to pull FMCSA SAFER data and review CSA BASIC scores before booking a carrier, not as an occasional check but as routine due diligence. A carrier’s safety documentation is now being evaluated by two separate parties for two separate financial reasons: the insurance underwriter pricing the policy, and the broker managing their own liability exposure.

In other words, your CSA score isn’t just an insurance-rating input anymore. It’s quietly become a factor in whether brokers can defensibly hire you at all.

What This Means for Your Fleet Right Now

A few practical takeaways worth acting on before the market fully reprices around this shift:

• Revisit contract rates. If your current agreements were negotiated during the softer conditions of late 2025 or early 2026, they may already be below where the market has moved.
• Treat your CSA score as an active asset. Monitor your BASIC scores and safety documentation the same way you’d monitor cash flow — brokers and insurers are both watching it more closely now.
• Consider your broker mix. Shippers are increasingly exploring dedicated transportation arrangements to sidestep both rate volatility and the new broker-liability question entirely — carriers who can present a documented safety record are well positioned to capture that shift.
• Watch equipment timing. Class 8 order strength is climbing as fleets respond to tightening conditions and the upcoming 2027 emissions rule — build slot availability is likely to tighten further as more carriers act on the same signal.

None of this is guesswork; it’s the consistent read across every major freight market analysis published in the past month. The open question for the rest of 2026 isn’t whether the market is tightening; it’s how quickly individual carriers adjust to a market where safety compliance now has a direct line to freight access, not just insurance cost.

Want the full breakdown, live Q&A, and what it means for your specific lanes? Join us August 13 for our webinar

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