Keeping Up With Capacity: No New News is Good News

Research evidence excerpt

Keeping Up With Capacity: No New News is Good News

Transportation | Surface Transportation

June 11, 2026

Jonathan Chappell, CFA Keeping Up With Capacity: No New News is

212-497-0827

jonathan.chappell@evercoreisi.com Good News

Alex Johnson With trucking pricing moving from strength to strength, on a nearly

212-497-0810 weekly basis, all eyes remain on the capacity side of the utilization

alex.johnson@evercoreisi.com equation, which has been the primary driver of the material lift off the

Krystal Song pricing bottom and requires far fewer scenario analyses relative to a

212-497-0822 demand input that is presently balancing an apparent infrastructure

krystal.song@evercoreisi.com

boom versus consumer-related worries tied to inflation and

unemployment. Demand is typically much more elastic and volatile,

while trends in capacity are usually more identifiable, though the

industry is benefitting from an unprecedented combination of intensified

regulatory scrutiny (and action) and, until recently, challenging

economics. In our monthly capacity deep dive, many of the most

important factors we track are relatively unchanged in May, with only

modest moves up or down and none likely to upset the apple cart.

Headcount is once again trending lower and although net authorities

edged up again in May, the market is closer to pre-COVID equilibrium

than at any time since the pandemic began (see next bullet). Class 8

tractor orders remain elevated, but at a lower level than earlier in the

year, and private fleet growth has appeared to have stalled of late. For

LTL, headcount is moving slightly higher, likely as operators prepare for

more favorable volume trends, while broker capacity has largely

stabilized, with new regulations likely offsetting some early-cycle

additions.