In our latest blog we covered everything that happened in 2025’s turbulent Q1 and Q2 in terms of logistics, if you haven’t already go and give it a read. We covered aspects like volatile rates, whiplash capacities, cautious consumer and business demand and an industry still finding its’ way after years of disruptions, i.e. COVID, recessionary markets, driver shortages and presidential elections. Now, we’re back to talk through the second half of the year and see how Q3 and Q4 logistics treated us. We tend to see shifts in the second half of any year, from seasonal, holiday demand pressures and volumes increase. So let’s take a look month by month at how Q3 and Q4 logistics compared to the first half of 2025.

July 🗓

You might remember or, will have seen in our last blog that there was a mid-year spike brewing in June. This enhanced demand continued through July also, from early peak season import demand to avoid heightened tariffs, seasonal restocking, and increased construction freight. All of this combined pushed freight demand especially in terms of trucking higher than anticipated because as uncertainty grew businesses continued to front-load. Turning July into a very busy month. Let’s look at why.

July 4th

Holidays can throw off the best and most thought out shipping schedules and since July 4th fell on a Friday last year, it created a shortened shipping week. Now, this would have been the case no matter which day of the week it fell on, however, a Friday holiday effectively creates a 3 day weekend which in turn effects shipping schedules more drastically. Many shippers tried to beat the delays and ship earlier in the week Monday through Wednesday which temporarily tightened capacity and led to increased spot rates and tender rejections. Shippers that could not secure capacity before the holiday, had their shipments pushed into the following week, which created heightened demand in the week following also.

Beating The Tariffs

Through July we saw a surge in imported goods volumes, especially in goods from China. This created huge demand for intermodal methods. In fact, container freight almost saw record numbers, driven by shippers once again front-loading goods into the US in hopes of avoiding heightened tariffs. There was a distinct theme through 2025 where trade tensions created short term influxes of demand, followed by slow downs, so carriers in July were left questioning when would the slow down begin again?

90-Day Pause Extended

The general 90 day tariff pause was scheduled to end if no agreements were met by July 9th, and to answer the question above, if the extremely high tariffs had come into action then we would have seen a huge slow down in imports, if not a complete halt. But, deals began to be made, countries including the UK and Vietnam announced trade agreements that would avoid higher fees. The largest tariff threat was against China, but a separate tariff truce was also made with them to keep the lower rates until August 12th, which meant we saw no slow down in July. Other countries that had not reached agreements were written to by President Trump, with the threat of higher rates if no decision was made by August 1st, meaning the original July 9th deadline was shifted.

Fuel Costs

Fuel prices remained high and continued to climb through July from earlier in the year, but were still slightly down from July 2024. The volatility in fuel prices contributed to higher operational costs in transportation, forcing carriers hands to raise freight rates. However, smaller fleets felt the pressure the most, as it made it impossible for them to chase volume at unsustainable prices.

Load To Truck Ratio

Load to truck ratios give a real look into what is happening in the domestic freight world. In July, this was up across all trucking methods. Meaning, there were more loads than what there were available trucks on the roads, showing us just how high the demand was for domestic road freight.

Early Peak Shipping Season

Peak shipping season normally starts around October with the most intense demand being between Thanksgiving and New Year. However, 2025 was different and with pre-loading taking place early to avoid businesses being stung by high tariff charges this meant that peak shipping season started early, in June and ran throughout July. It’s not common that we see this in Q3, Q4 is always peak shipping time.

August 🗓

August differed from the previous month and we saw a post front-loading lull. The entire freight market was characterized by a return of soft demand, falling spot rates and overcapacity. What created such a big difference?

Extended Tariff Truce Between US & China

Once again, the US and China reached another agreement to extend their tariff truce for another whole 90 days on August 11th. Meaning the new deadline to reach a trade deal was November 10th. There was a huge sigh of relief that rippled across many businesses here in the States that rely heavily on imported and exported goods to and from China. But by this time, most of the panic, front-loading was already done in anticipation of this decision.

De Minimis Suspension

Effective of August 29th, the de minimis exemption on all countries was suspended. Meaning that any goods being imported into the US that were valued under $800, which previously would have entered duty free were now subjected to duties and extra paperwork.

Reciprocal Tariffs

On August 7th reciprocal rates from 68 countries took effect, raising rates across the board and causing low demand across transportation methods.

Postal Disruptions

Although this did not affect domestic trucking as such, it’s still relevant to the freight world in the US so we thought it was important to include. The new de minimis suspension, meant major postal carriers temporarily had to halt operations in accepting business to consumer parcels from Europe to the US from August 22nd. Many freight forwarders stepped up to help people find and get their parcels through customs, while the major carriers were struggling with the changes.

Trucking Spot Rates

But what about trucking in August? Most of what we’ve spoken about in August effected imports and exports. Which yes, does in turn effect demand for domestic freight but domestic freight kept moving with national movements. In August, dry van and flatbed spot rates fell dramatically with a 3% decline in van rates month over month. But Conestoga trailers dominated with rising rates, climbing 4.6% month on month in August. This spike was particularly unique and it’s thought the demand had increased to move high-value, sensitive materials like steel to protect from strict import requirements and tariffs.

September 🗓

Wrapping up Q3, after a more subdued August, September was a turning point. Freight demand started to stabilize and gradually started to pick up pace again.

No Sharp Spikes In Demand – A Steady Month

September unlike other previous months did not consist of sharp spikes in demand, instead there was more of a controlled, steady demand for trucking services. Contract freight was more reliable, tender acceptance improved and shippers that had planned ahead for the busier peak shipping months avoided last minute capacity scrambles.

Driver Shortage Worsens

Truck driver shortages were already a large concern in 2025, but effective of August 21st the US stopped issuing work visas to commercial truck drivers. This did not affect B1 visas for US – Mexico cross border runs. But this combined with the extra attention that foreign speaking driver’s were receiving already from the English language proficiency standards made trucking companies avoid shipments that require them to cross border in the late afternoon. Purely because they could potentially be classed as Cabotage (where a load is transported to a country although the they’re registered in another), this added even more strain on an industry that was already struggling for some time with driver shortage.

Delays

The above visa issues and driver shortages created some delays or longer transit times due to localized uncertainty, especially in cross-border loads.

Warehouse Capacity Restricted

Warehouses were full to the brim, with little to no room for more inventory mainly from all of the front-loading activity that had been going on in previous months. This caused higher storage costs for shippers and businesses utilizing warehouse space, and also reduced the immediate demand for trucking.

Q3 Recap 💭

Q3 was again a rollercoaster quarter. July was a whirlwind month across the board, with high volumes of imports having a knock-on effect to intermodal and domestic trucking demand. August was understandably quieter, almost as if the industry was pausing after the surge and then September started to rebuild momentum, but at a much steadier pace and with its’ challenges. One thing that stood out in Q3 was that the industry began to operate with better foresight instead of reacting to every fluctuation. There was much better alignment between shippers and carriers, less emotional spot behaviour and improved capacity management. So, although it was a semi-chaotic quarter, things were starting to shape up for a less turbulent last quarter of the year, or so you’d think. Let’s now see how Q3 and Q4 differed…

October 🗓

October is typically a busy month with peak season shipping starting. However, October 2025 told a different story. Here’s why it was flatter than usual.

Flat Rates

President Trumps tariffs continued to affect the transportation industry as a whole, ports saw steep drops in imports and for the first time in the year rates for van, flatbed and and refrigerated load were all lower on both month over month and year over year. This was partially due to businesses filling consumer demand with the surplus of inventory they had built in prior months. DAT’s Chief of Analytics said “As a result, the traditional peak holiday shipping season looks virtually non-existent this year,”. However, one thing to note is that air cargo volumes did grow in October, but rates softened, meaning there was still plenty of capacity.

Tariff Changes On Imports

We briefly saw in Q3 that momentum started to ramp up and so did truckload volume through September and the outlook was seeming semi-promising for the last quarter of the year. Well, this seemed to just be another spike from pre-loading, ahead of the October 5th tariff deadline. This deadline would allow any cargo on the water before the new tariff start date clears US customs before October 5th to keep the old rate, otherwise the new tariffs would apply.

Government Shutdown

In October, the United States Federal Government started their shutdown on October 1st. The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed that they would remain operational during the shutdown, with all ports of entry open, staffed and cargo processing was to go ahead as normal. However, for participating government agencies such as FDA, FWS, etc. imported products were likely going to face delays due to reduced staffing. Imports stuck at ports caused backlogs and delays across multimodal freight lanes.

Halloween

Halloween normally creates a big surge in freight demand each year. And in 2025 consumer spending around Halloween was predicted to be at an all time high! Sure, there was a strong retail demand during Halloween, inflated spending and pushing specific freight volumes, but underlying economic factors like tariffs and high inflation created a complex, and somewhat subdued freight environment overall.

November 🗓

In November, the US freight market experienced a “soft” peak season. Let’s take a deeper look at what the means and why.

Changing Freight Market

A “soft” peak season can be shown through high but slightly weakening import volumes, which is what came with November. Although despite these soft volumes, tender rejection levels continued to trend upward, this clearly shows that carrier capacity was growing tighter. However, the cost pressures of operations, drove out a ton of carriers and tightened capacity further. Spot market pricing strengthened, dry van rates were up 3% year over year and reefer rates increased by 5% reflecting early signs of upward rate pressure even in a subdued demand environment.

Tariff Truce

November 10th was a victory day for many in the US, a trade agreement between the US and China, meant that the US would maintain its suspension of heightened reciprocal tariffs on China and reduce “fentanyl” tariffs on China from 20% to 10%. The truce has been confirmed to be in place for one year and this was retaliated in China on US vessels. This was a huge win for many businesses.

Government Shutdown Comes To An End

On November 12th, the federal government shutdown ended, but until this point and in the ripple effects after there were some delays on imported goods requiring FDA and USDA clearance.

Security Risks In The Red Sea

Ocean cargo was affected by the security risks in the Red Sea that continued to force carriers to avoid the Suez Canal, which meant longer transit times on the water and knock on effects to intermodal schedules.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of the busiest travel holidays in the states, meaning more traffic and congested highways. It’s also a time of year when people commonly take vacation days to spend with their loved ones, what does this mean for freight? Well, like everyone else workers in the freight industry including drivers cash in their holidays too, meaning capacity tightens leading up to and immediately following the holiday resulting in higher spot rates, longer transit times and reduced tender acceptance.

December 🗓

Trucking demand in the US picked up slightly in December from November, but still only ended the year up just by 0.1% in tonnage for the full year of 2025, which characterized December into a “prolonged freight recession”.

Winter Storms

Although December saw a “soft” market, spot rates saw a dramatic increase for a period of time, mainly due to three major winter storms in the Midwest which suddenly removed some capacity, delayed or stranded drivers, and carriers refused risky route loads.

Driver Shortages

The DOT (Department of Transportation) began to take actions against 3000 CDL (Commercial drivers licence) training schools to remove their accreditation. This action risks jeopardizing the training pipeline that the industry has been long waiting for.

Inventory Destocking

Many retailers decided to do early inventory destocking, which meant we saw a much “softer” than usual early peak season.

Ending The Year With Some Stability & Christmas & New Year

December closed the year out with a surprising level of stability. Despite peak holiday demand, tender rejection rates sky rocketed, spot rates were high and capacity was low, especially as we got later into the month when weather disruptions increased. Perhaps things were changing or maybe the data was skewed from the holidays.

Q4 Recap 💭

Q4 is usually one of the busiest times of the year, especially in domestic trucking. However, in 2025 there was peak season activity present, but it was incredibly muted compared to previous years. And like previous quarters Q4 was a rollercoaster, we’ve seen tightening truckload capacity, rising spot rates but weak demand.

Q3 and Q4 Logistics Overview

Logistics in Q3 and Q4 followed a similar pattern to the first half of the year, a rollercoaster of demand driven by holidays, tariffs, and ongoing market uncertainty. Periods of stability were often followed by sudden dips, keeping shippers and carriers on their toes. Policy concerns, trade tensions, and broader economic questioning never fully went away, and the logistics industry remained firmly in the spotlight throughout the year. Headlines around Trump’s tariff policies reinforced uncertainty and raised questions about how the new administration might impact an already fragile market.

In many ways, 2025 felt like Groundhog Day for logistics, not only in Q3 and Q4, but the whole year! Familiar challenges resurfacing in different forms, just as the industry began to regain some stability. Looking back, confidence across the logistics sector shifted repeatedly throughout the year. At times, improving rates and tighter capacity signalled recovery. At others, soft demand and policy uncertainty pulled sentiment back. Shippers and carriers alike felt both optimism and caution at times, with no clear view dominating for too long.

As we move into 2026, uncertainty remains a strong buzzword, but the direction of the transportation market is at least becoming clearer. The extremes of recent years are giving way to a more disciplined environment, where planning, adaptability, and strong partnerships matter more than ever.

We’ve weathered some storms here at PEI, and while 2025 was undoubtedly volatile, it’s another chapter that has strengthened our relationships, sharpened our approach, and reinforced our confidence in ourselves in navigating whatever comes next.😊

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