Small trucking fleets shrink back to 2022 levels with about 362,000 tractors

The tractor count for carriers running one to six trucks reached nearly 398,000 in early 2023 and has fallen almost every month since, FreightWaves editorial director Adam Wingfield wrote in a Nov. 10 analysis of SONAR data. The drop of about 36,000 trucks equals roughly 9% of the segment. The current figure sits under both the five-year average (about 378,800) and the 12-month average (about 364,960).

Mid-sized carriers went the other way. Carriers running 20 to 100 trucks have 470,402 tractors, a record, up from about 420,000 five years ago. The largest fleets, with 1,000 or more trucks, lost more than 10,000 tractors in the latest monthly reading, a 2.23% decline to 440,430. Wingfield wrote that part of the mid-sized gain likely comes from owner-operators who gave up their own authority and leased onto bigger carriers, so the truck stays on the road under a different count.

The counts are built from MCS-150 filings with FMCSA, and some moves between size groups may be carriers updating paperwork instead of trucks changing fleets, the analysis said. Authority data is noisy too. Net new trucking authorities jumped to 1,279 in the latest reading, against a 12-month average near 335, a figure FreightWaves said is distorted by the rollout of FMCSA's Motus system.

Freight demand is flat. SONAR's Truckload Rejection Index, a gauge of how often carriers turn down loads offered to them, stood at 12.95%. That is higher than the 12-month average of 8.18% and below the mid-teens readings of the summer. The Truckload Volume Index was 11,636.92, near the 12-month average of 11,489.59.