Trucking in the US is heading for a slowdown, and industry players fear that “the worst hasn’t come yet” as tariffs begin to crimble imports.
Trucking volumes have plummeted to almost total overload levels, according to Craig Fuller, founder of the logistics industry publication FreightWaves.
“If imports deteriorate, we expect volumes to fall by another 3-4% next month,” Fuller said in a post on X on Tuesday, establishing a real-time freight data platform Sonar. Fuller said it was a worrying sign for truck drivers this year.
Container volumes have been falling by 20% at busy Los Angeles ports for a year ago, Freefeet Waves reported Tuesday, saying “this recession is a problem” for trucking companies that ship international cargo across the country. Cargo trucks carrying goods from the metro area “converge downwards towards 2020 lockdown levels,” the outlet said.
The flags are stacked so that warning signs stack up for the US economy due to President Donald’s Trump’s evolving trade war.
On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund knocked down its forecast for the year, cutting its January forecast for gross domestic product growth in January to 2.8% from the previous 3.6%. The IMF also reduced the US growth outlook from 2.7% to just 1.8%, citing “epistemological uncertainty and unpredictability of policy” at the White House. Fresh GDP data is scheduled for next Wednesday.
“We’ve seen a lot of effort and we’ve seen you in the future,” said John Crum, Director of Specialist Equipment Finance at Wells Fargo.
Trucks are all cargo freight modes, measured by weight, from grain to gravel, and can also carry the lion’s share at the dollar value of groceries, electronics and vehicles, federal data shows. As of 2023, imports account for 40% of the tonnage of cargo travelled domestically by truck.
Despite the wider shrinking of freight companies, many are still “voicing caution regarding freight volumes in 2025,” Crum said.
In another memo, Jeremy Jansen, managing director of Wells Fargo Supply Chain Finance, said one silver lining would result in companies “a little higher profit margin than in 2018/19 to absorb tariff behavior.”
Growing pessimism comes just a few months after industry experts told them they were likely to rebound to trucking volumes after a two-year decline. A few days before Trump was sworn into his second term in January, the American Truck Transport Association released a forecast that forecasts a 1.6% increase in cargo that year.
“Understanding supply chain trends should be important where decisions are being made that affect Washington policymakers, state houses across the country, and trucking and our economy,” ATA president and CEO Chris Spear said in a statement at the time.
But more than three months later, consumer outlook has been in a hurry, with industry executives increasing warnings about slow sales and Wall Street shook violently in response to constantly changing signals on the administration’s trade agenda. Small business owners say that even if many are already hit by higher bills from suppliers, they are doing their best to stock up on stock before more steeper tariffs settle.
In a March report, logistics researchers at CASS Information Systems could bounce back in the second quarter, as Trump temporarily rewinds most of the April 2 tariffs. “However, the trade war could then extend the employment transport recession, as high prices reduce the affordable prices of goods and real consumer revenue.”
US-wide exports rose 4.6% until February, federal researchers reported this month, but imports surged 21.4% as the trade war intensified.
The Cass Freight Index fell by 5.5% and 4.1% last year in 2023.
Mack Trucks recently announced layoffs of hundreds of workers at its Pennsylvania plant due to economic uncertainty, betting on the slow demand for iconic freight vehicles.
The decision sparked sharp criticism from Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat last week. “We’re going to make sure more price increases, more layoffs, more companies aren’t investing in the future.”
“There’s a community in the economy,” Fuller wrote in Wednesday’s Follow-Up X post, in response to manufacturing data from Downbeat released this week. “The only treatment is exclusion from customs.”