Key trucking trends to watch in 2025: tariffs, M&A and rate changes

After another challenging year for the trucking industry, carriers are cautiously optimistic that 2025 could deliver an upcycle driven by improvements in consumer demand, lower interest rates and capacity rightsizing.

But company leaders are also bracing for potential fallout due to new tariffs, strenuous legal and operational costs, and a potentially sluggish timeline for improvements in the market, industry stakeholders said.

“The macroeconomy looks good,” Clifford Winston, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, said in December. “We don’t anticipate, at this point, shocks to inflation, unemployment, cost, slowdowns, all that kind of stuff, right? But at the same time, we do see policy shocks limiting transportation of goods.”

Uncertainties with tariffs

Once President-elect Donald Trump begins his second term on Jan. 20, transportation stakeholders expect to learn more about what this year has in store.

Trump has threatened toughe…