Accepted tender volumes in the truckload freight market have fallen nearly three percent over the past week and remain below the past three years of seasonal averages, while the Outbound Tender Rejection Rate has cooled sharply from mid-September levels, according to reporting and analysis posted by FreightWaves.
The same data set shows spot rates continuing to rise even as those demand-side indicators soften — a combination that has drawn commentary from freight analysts and logistics accounts across the industry.
In a video transcript accompanying its report, FreightWaves walked through the numbers in sequence. "Accepted tender volumes are falling. They have fallen nearly 3% over the past week," the outlet said. "When we looked at that, they have fallen since mid-September. But when you look at it sort of year-to-date, it's pretty flat. But an interesting thing to look at when you look at it year-over-year in our seasonality view is that accepted tender volumes are lower than the past three years."
Tender volumes represent the freight that shippers offer to carriers under contract. When those volumes decline, it generally signals softer demand for trucking capacity. FreightWaves reported the decline is not a sudden collapse but a gradual easing from an already flat year-to-date baseline.
Rejection rates tell a related story. According to the FreightWaves transcript, the Outbound Tender Rejection Rate stood at 14.67 percent in mid-September and has since fallen to about 3.79 percent, where it has largely leveled out. The rejection rate measures how often carriers turn down loads offered to them — a high rate typically indicates tight capacity and pricing power for carriers, while a low rate suggests the opposite.
"Rejection rates are holding relatively steady but have fallen since September," FreightWaves said in the transcript. "They were at 14.67% mid-September but have since fallen to about 3.79% and sort of leveled out."
Despite that cooling, spot rates have moved in the opposite direction. "Yet, with those rejection rates holding sort of steady and, again, those accepted tender volumes falling a little bit, the spot rates have continued to rise," FreightWaves said. "So those drive-in spot rates, including fuel, have climbed up to 355. And they've really steadily been rising since the third week of August. So we're more than 10% above where we were at the late end of August and about 50% higher than we were a year ago."
The divergence between falling demand indicators and rising spot prices has become a focal point for freight market observers. FreightWaves itself framed the puzzle in separate coverage, headlined "Truckload Spot Rates Keep Rising, But Demand Isn't... Why?" In that piece, the outlet noted that "accepted tender volumes are falling, rejection rates have cooled, and yet spot" rates continue to climb — a pattern that does not match the usual relationship between capacity, demand and pricing.
The data points have circulated across freight and logistics accounts on social media, where industry participants have debated what the split between volumes and rates signals about the broader economy and the direction of the trucking cycle. The Globe and Mail also carried related analyst actions in its Monday markets roundup, reflecting that the freight rate story is being tracked beyond the specialized trade press.
Freight market watchers typically treat tender volumes and rejection rates as leading indicators: when volumes fall and rejections cool, spot rates usually follow downward. The current pattern breaks that convention, with spot rates climbing more than ten percent since late August and roughly fifty percent above year-ago levels, per the FreightWaves data.
What is driving the gap is not established in the available reporting. Possible factors such as capacity exits, fuel costs, seasonal positioning or contract renegotiation cycles are not addressed in the FreightWaves transcript, and no other source in the available coverage attributes the divergence to a specific cause.
The FreightWaves post was published on October 6, 2026. The accompanying video transcript includes a sponsored segment for Samsara, a fleet safety technology company, which appeared within the same clip.
Next News Network could not independently verify the tender volume, rejection rate or spot rate figures reported by FreightWaves.
Our Take
The freight market is the circulatory system of the American economy, and what it is telling us right now does not fit the textbook. FreightWaves is reporting that the loads shippers are offering are drying up, that carriers are rejecting fewer of them, and that spot prices are nonetheless climbing toward levels fifty percent above where they sat a year ago. That is not how a soft market is supposed to behave.
Conservatives have long argued that the economy beneath the headline numbers is not as healthy as the administration's talking points suggest. A freight market where demand indicators are falling while prices rise is not a sign of strength — it is a sign of a system under strain, where the cost of moving goods is being pushed up by something other than genuine demand. Whether that something is fuel, capacity exiting the market, or regulatory pressure on independent operators, the result lands on consumers already stretched by years of inflation.
The administration and its allies in the media have spent months telling Americans the economy is strong. The people who actually move the goods are telling a different story. Washington should be listening — and should be prepared to explain why the cost of getting products to shelves keeps rising even as the demand for those shipments falls.
