Freight Pricing: Who REALLY Holds the Power?

New data from rate management firm Tabi indicates that brokers and carriers currently maintain pricing leverage in the spot market, though this advantage is weakening. Reporting from FreightWaves highlights the TABI Pricing Pressure Index, which utilizes a 0-to-100 scale to measure market control. The index recently climbed seven points to a reading of 36, signaling that shippers are slowly gaining ground as conditions for service providers become less favorable compared to earlier in the year.

The index analyzes several factors including total load volumes and various margin types to determine where power sits. Tabi founder Rush Feldhacker noted that while brokers are still securing spot volumes with healthy margins, the current environment is significantly different than three months ago. Unlike demand-driven cycles, the current market is being shaped by capacity constraints, meaning brokers may see higher margins on individual loads without a corresponding increase in the total volume of freight available to move.

Shippers often experience these market transitions on a delay, typically feeling the impact three to four months after brokers notice a shift. This gap occurs because contract rates provide a temporary shield until service failures or tender rejections force shippers to confront higher costs. Feldhacker observed that many shippers fail to anticipate these changes, noting that some market participants previously mistook temporary soft conditions for "the new normal" even as data suggested a reversal was already underway.

Success in the latter half of the year will likely depend on how effectively brokers utilize data rather than relying on traditional intuition. The report suggests that firms analyzing win rates by specific lanes and customers are better positioned to handle upcoming volatility. Those who continue to chase volume without disciplined pricing strategies may struggle as the market moves away from the patterns seen in previous years, emphasizing the necessity of formal analytics in modern logistics.