Shippers Are Moving Back Toward Asset-Based Carriers. Reliability Is Beating Pure Rate Shopping.

The cheapest truck is starting to look expensive again.

After a long freight downturn that rewarded aggressive rate shopping, shippers are moving back toward asset-based carriers because they want freight that actually moves when the network tightens. Knight-Swift executives said customers are changing how they procure capacity, favoring reliability over pure cost and starting peak-season discussions unusually early, according to Supply Chain Dive.

That shift is not just a carrier earnings-call anecdote. It is a warning for transportation procurement teams: the soft-market playbook is wearing out.

Reliability is becoming a procurement requirement

Supply Chain Dive reported that Knight-Swift CEO Adam Miller is already seeing customers limit some bids to asset-based carriers or cap the broker share allowed in a bid. He also said mini-bid activity has increased because trucking firms are unable or unwilling to move freight at previously agreed rates.

That matters because mini-bids are usually a symptom. Shippers run them when routing guides stop behaving as expected, when tender acceptance weakens, or when the market has moved faster than annual contracts can absorb. In a loose market, mini-bids can be a savings tool. In a tightening market, they become a capacity rescue mechanism.

The operating reason is simple. Asset-based carriers own trucks, employ drivers, and control more of the dispatch decision. Brokers remain important, especially for surge capacity, fragmented lanes, and spot coverage. But when the market turns, shippers often want more freight committed to carriers with physical capacity and network density rather than relying too heavily on transactional coverage.

That does not mean brokers are bad. It means procurement has to stop treating every carrier option as interchangeable.

The numbers are moving against pure rate shopping

The broader market data supports the same conclusion. Logistics Management reported that the April Logistics Managers’ Index reached 69.9, up from 65.7 in March and the fastest expansion rate since March 2022. Transportation prices jumped 5.6% to 95.0, the second-fastest expansion for any metric in the LMI’s nearly 10-year history.

Capacity moved the other direction. Transportation capacity fell 10.9% to 28.4, creating a 66.6-point spread between transportation prices and capacity — the largest on record for the index. The LMI authors said freight markets had never previously become simultaneously tighter and more expensive in that way.

Those are not abstract index readings. They describe the exact environment where cheap awards fail.

When transportation prices are expanding near record levels and capacity is contracting, the risk is no longer just paying a few percentage points too much. The bigger risk is awarding freight to providers that cannot cover the lane when volume returns, fuel volatility spikes, or regulatory enforcement removes marginal capacity from the market.

Supply Chain Dive noted that tender rejection rates remained above 14% for parts of this year, citing an April report from Sonar and Ryder System. A routing guide that looked efficient at bid time can become expensive very quickly when primary carriers reject tenders and loads cascade into the spot market.

Procurement needs a service-weighted model

Transportation procurement still has to manage cost. Nobody gets credit for overpaying because a carrier has nice equipment. But the bid model needs to weigh reliability with more discipline.

For most shippers, that means scoring carriers across several dimensions:

• Tender acceptance by lane, week, season, and facility
• On-time pickup and delivery performance, not just invoice rate
• Drop-trailer availability, appointment discipline, and dwell exposure
• Accessorial frequency and dispute history
• Claims, safety, and communication quality
• Coverage depth during produce season, retail peak, weather events, and holiday surges

This is where many routing guides break. They are built around static annual award tables, then managed manually when exceptions pile up. Procurement celebrates the rate reduction, operations absorbs the service failure, finance sees accessorial creep months later, and the customer only sees missed delivery windows.

A better model treats carrier selection as a portfolio decision. Core asset-based carriers should carry lanes where reliability, density, customer service, or facility familiarity matter most. Brokers and spot partners should support overflow, irregular lanes, emergency recovery, and market-testing. Intermodal should be considered where transit tolerance, container availability, and drayage coordination make sense.

The mix will vary by network, but the principle should not: the cheapest award is not the best award if it cannot survive the next demand spike.

Rebalance before peak season, not during it

The most important detail in the Knight-Swift commentary may be timing. Customers are already discussing peak season capacity earlier than usual. That is what disciplined shippers do when they sense the market is changing.

Waiting until tender rejections rise is too late. By then, carriers are already repricing, preferred capacity has been allocated, and transportation teams are negotiating from a weaker position. The better move is to rebalance now.

Start with the lanes that hurt most when they fail: high-volume retail replenishment, production-critical inbound freight, customer-specific delivery windows, temperature-sensitive moves, and lanes with limited backhaul appeal. Compare current awards against actual execution. If the low-cost carrier is also producing rejections, late pickups, accessorial disputes, or manual escalations, the savings are probably fake.

Then pressure-test the routing guide. What happens if demand rises 10%? What if fuel volatility pushes marginal carriers out of a lane? What if a facility adds weekend volume or shortens appointment windows? What if a primary carrier rejects one out of every seven tenders, roughly consistent with the above-14% rejection environment reported earlier this year?

These questions should be answered before peak season planning becomes peak season firefighting.

Visibility turns carrier strategy into execution

Choosing more asset-based capacity is not enough by itself. Shippers also need the data infrastructure to know whether the strategy is working.

Carrier scorecards should connect procurement, execution, and finance in one view. Tender acceptance should be visible by carrier and lane. Accessorials should be tied back to facilities and appointment behavior. Late deliveries should be separated by carrier failure, shipper delay, consignee constraint, weather, and documentation problems. Spot exposure should be monitored as a risk metric, not just a procurement afterthought.

This is exactly where a transportation management system earns its keep. CXTMS helps logistics teams manage carrier portfolios with shipment visibility, routing guide discipline, exception workflows, cost tracking, and performance analytics. That gives procurement teams the evidence to decide when an asset-based carrier deserves a premium — and when any provider, asset-based or not, is simply underperforming.

The freight market is giving shippers a blunt message: reliability is not a soft metric anymore. It is the difference between a routing guide that works and one that collapses under pressure.

If your carrier strategy still lives in spreadsheets and emergency phone calls, it is time to tighten the operating layer. Schedule a CXTMS demo to see how carrier performance, tender acceptance, accessorials, and exception management can work from the same transportation control tower.