LTL rates head for a record high in the second quarter

Less-than-truckload rates are headed for a new record. The AFS Logistics and TD Cowen freight index, which tracks actual invoice rates against a January 2018 baseline, projects LTL rates in the second quarter of 2026 at 68.4% above that baseline, the highest reading in the index's history, FreightWaves reported in April. The first quarter came in at 66.9% above baseline, and the second-quarter projection represents a 5.2 percentage-point year-over-year jump, a sharp acceleration from the 3-point year-over-year increase recorded in the first quarter. In plain terms: the same freight that cost $100 to move in early 2018 is projected to cost over $168 this quarter, and the rate of increase is speeding up, not slowing down.

What is driving the climb

Two forces are doing most of the work: a spike in diesel prices and carriers' refusal to chase volume with discounts. As Mich Fabriga, vice president of LTL pricing at AFS Logistics, put it to FreightWaves, LTL pricing stability has hinged for quarter after quarter on carriers resisting the temptation to buy volumes with pricing concessions, and that discipline is holding. The projection marks the tenth consecutive year-over-year rate increase, a streak that has survived soft demand stretches that would historically have triggered a price war. The structural reason is consolidation: since the industry's third-largest carrier exited in 2023, the remaining national networks have priced for yield rather than share, and none has blinked.

Demand-side signals are firming underneath the pricing discipline. Manufacturing activity, the engine of LTL freight, expanded in every month of the first quarter, the steadiest stretch of industrial demand the mode has seen since the post-pandemic correction began. Weight per shipment rose 3.8% sequentially, the first increase in two years and a sign shippers are tendering heavier freight into LTL networks, and cost per shipment climbed 3%. FreightWaves notes the next read on carrier pricing power comes with earnings season, with J.B. Hunt reporting in mid-April and ArcBest at the end of the month.

The trend extended into May. C.H. Robinson's May freight market update reported LTL demand edging up from early-year lows, with carriers reporting stronger shipment trends, firm pricing discipline, and ongoing network investment, and optimism building for further gains in the months ahead. C.H. Robinson also points to spillover from the truckload side: average shipment weight has risen around 11% since the year began, a sign shippers are pushing freight into LTL networks as truckload capacity tightens, which adds demand to a mode whose carriers were already holding the line on price. Carriers spending on terminals and equipment during a soft stretch is the opposite of distress behavior; it signals they expect the pricing environment to hold.

A second cost engine for big and bulky

For furniture shippers, this rate cycle stacks on top of the structural change already working through the system: the NMFTA's shift to density-based classification, which repriced light, high-cube freight upward when it took full effect in early 2026 (our coverage of the density transition walks through the mechanics). Density pricing changed what a furniture shipment is charged for; the current rate cycle raises the level everything is charged at. A category that depends on LTL for middle-mile and final-mile delivery is absorbing both at once, and unlike a fuel spike, neither force is cyclical in any obvious way.

Why it matters: Freight is one of the largest controllable costs in big-and-bulky e-commerce, and a record-setting rate environment with no carrier price war in sight means relief is not coming from the market. The levers that remain are the ones shippers control: packaging density, carrier mix, mode selection on the dense end of the catalog, and negotiating leverage, which favors shippers consolidating volume with fewer carriers rather than spreading it thin across many.

What it means for our partners: Volume leverage and disciplined carrier strategy matter most exactly when carriers hold the pricing power, and that is the market shippers are in for the rest of 2026.