Trucking Is Booming Again, And Drivers Aren't Happy About It

August 13, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Trucking Is Booming Again, And Drivers Aren't Happy About It

The trucking rebound that began in early 2025 looks different from previous cycles. Spot rates on the Internet Truckstop Van Rate Index climbed from roughly $1.94 per mile in December 2024 to over $3.00 by mid-2025. Knight-Swift and J.B. Hunt shares nearly doubled. But the forces driving this recovery are not the familiar boom-bust pattern of demand flooding in, owner-operators rushing to buy trucks, rates collapsing, and the cycle resetting. Instead, a series of structural changes—regulatory crackdowns, a Supreme Court ruling, and a parking crisis—are permanently reshaping the supply side of the market.

Capacity Is Being Cut, Not Just Cyclically Squeezed

The standard explanation for trucking cycles is low barriers to entry: when rates rise, anyone with a down payment becomes a trucker, capacity floods in, and rates fall again. That mechanism is breaking down. According to Reed Luzbelo, Chief Marketing Officer at Truck Parking Club and a decade-long freight industry veteran, the current rate surge is driven less by demand returning than by supply being structurally removed.

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What you'll learn

1 (01:56) **Why We're Revisiting Trucking** - The hosts explain that trucking stocks like Knight-Swift and JB Hunt have surged since January, and the spot rate (cost per mile) has climbed from ~$1.94 to over $3.00, signaling a clear rebound.
2 (05:09) **Introducing Reed Luzbelo and the Truck Parking Problem** - Reed, CMO of Truck Parking Club, explains his decade in freight and why parking is a critical, underappreciated indicator of market health.
3 (09:05) **The Real Driver of the Rebound: Supply, Not Demand** - Reed argues that the recent rate surge is primarily a supply-side story, driven by government crackdowns and legal changes, not a sudden spike in demand.
4 (11:42) **Anecdotal Evidence of Capacity Crunch** - Reed shares a concrete example of how the non-domiciled CDL crackdown is affecting real trucking companies.
5 (17:55) **What is a Non-Domiciled CDL?** - Reed explains the controversy behind these licenses and why they've become a target for regulators.
6 (22:29) **Temporary Blip or Permanent Capacity Cut?** - The hosts ask whether the loss of non-domiciled CDL drivers is a one-time correction or a lasting structural change.
7 (23:40) **The Network Effect: Brokers, Safety, and the "Ecosystem"** - A combination of the CDL crackdown and the Supreme Court ruling could obliterate entire freight networks, not just individual drivers.

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Show Notes

In the last year, freight companies have seen a significant upturn in the business. Volumes are up. Billing is up. And in addition to growing demand, we've also seen new constraints on the supply side, with the administration cracking down on who is even allowed on the road. As we know, trucking is an especially cyclical industry, but is this current boom structurally different from past booms? Why is it that despite the boom, many of today's drivers are unhappy with the state of the industry? On this episode, we speak with Reed Loustalot, the chief marketing officer at the the Truck Parking Club, a company which aims to help drivers find parking, so that they're not using up valuable road hours just looking for a place to stop for the night. We talk about the crackdown on the supply side of the market, the rise of surveillance, and how a recent Supreme Court ruling could impair capacity even further.

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