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One bright spot was the introduction of National Motor Freight Classification updates going more smoothly than many observers expected. (Sean Costin/Estes)

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The less-than-truckload segment of the freight market found itself under pressure like the rest of the North American trucking industry in 2025.

However, one bright spot was the introduction of National Motor Freight Classification updates going more smoothly than many observers expected.

LTL was something of a latecomer to the downturn, executives at some of the biggest carriers in the arena told Transport Topics in recent days, with the August 2023 demise of the then-No. 3-ranked LTL player Yellow Corp. shielding its peers from excessive headwinds.

“I think it’s the year that LTL felt some of the same pain as truckload has felt. ... We’ve been in a freight recession for a long time, but LTL carriers benefited, tragically, at the expense of Yellow going out of business,” Estes Express Lines President and Chief Operating Officer Webb Estes told TT in an early December interview. “But that kind of has insulated the LTL carriers, generally speaking, more so than the truckload space where they really haven’t had a [major player] go out of business to kind of lighten the load, right?”

Estes Express ranks No. 8 on the TT Top 100 list of the largest for-hire carriers in North America and No. 3 among LTL carriers.

Richmond, Va.-based Estes Express is eyeing a door count of more than 14,000 in 2026, having ended 2023 at 11,458 doors, Webb Estes told TT earlier in 2025.

Shallower Pool

Other executives TT spoke to also said 2025 underwhelmed.

“While 2025 was expected to be a rebound year, uncertainty around tariffs and persistently high interest rates has muted growth. That said, carriers have continued to operate well and largely maintained pricing discipline, avoiding the rate-driven behaviors seen in previous down cycles,” said Kent Williams, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Averitt Express.

Averitt ranks No. 29 on the for-hire TT100 and No. 12 on the LTL sector list. It also ranks No. 100 on the TT Top 100 logistics companies list.

Ali Faghri, XPO chief strategy officer, added: “Freight markets remained soft in 2025, driven by ongoing weakness in the industrial economy, which is the backbone of LTL demand. The ISM Manufacturing PMI has been in contraction for all but two months in the last three years, which tells you a lot about the broader environment. Retail demand has held up better for us, but it is a smaller part of our mix, so overall volumes remain muted.”

XPO ranks No. 5 on the for-hire TT100.

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"Retail demand has held up better for us, but it is a smaller part of our mix, so overall volumes remain muted," Faghri said. (XPO)

“I think that everyone is treading water in a shallower pool than everyone would like,” said Scooter Sayers, Cubiscan director of business development for LTL solutions. “Things aren’t getting worse. We’re all just waiting for that water level to raise everyone’s boats.”

Williams told TT the signals are mixed for the next few months in the LTL space.

“There are no specific indicators signaling a near-term rebound for LTL, and while a recovery is expected, the timing remains uncertain. However, data from the truckload sector suggests a rebound is underway, with rising tender rejection rates and higher spot market rates indicating tightening capacity, driven in part by efforts to remove illegal CDL holders from the market,” Williams said.

There are a few macroeconomic signs of optimism, other executives said, but the proof will be in the pudding.

“Interest rates have come down from their recent highs, and most forecasts point to that easing cycle continuing next year,” Faghri said. “Lower borrowing costs tend to support capital investment, industrial activity and consumer spending — all of which drive freight demand. A steady move toward lower rates would be a positive tailwind for the LTL market.

“Consumer sentiment also improved in early December and retail sales have remained relatively resilient in recent months. If those trends continue, we could see increased shipment activity from customers in consumer and lifestyle goods.”

Estes added, “I think it’s not been the easiest trucking year. So I’m ready for a new year. Not that anything magically changes Jan. 1, but maybe new optimism.”

NMFC Updates Go Smoothly

But optimism about the NMFC updates by the National Motor Freight Traffic Association in July was abundant in December.

FedEx Freight, the largest LTL carrier, delayed enforcement of the changes by 150 days, but many of its peers at the top of the TT LTL sector list didn’t.

“For all the attention that the NMFC updates generated, the transition went very smoothly,” Faghri said. “We focused on communicating early and often with our customers to make sure they understood the changes and the potential impact on their shipments. We also enhanced our own tools, including integrating the NMFTA’s revamped ClassIT+ platform into our website, to make freight classification even easier. That combination of education and collaboration ahead of the July go-live date helped ease the transition for our customers.”

Averitt’s Williams echoed those sentiments, telling TT: “Because we invested time upfront educating customers through direct outreach from our sales team, local lunch-and-learn sessions, social posts, blogs and the , the rollout went more smoothly than anticipated. Education from the NMFTA and other industry sources also helped ensure shippers were prepared for the changes.

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"Carriers have continued to operate well and largely maintained pricing discipline, avoiding the rate-driven behaviors seen in previous down cycles," Williams said. (Averitt)

“The vast majority of customers responded well and understood the need for simplification. The previous class-based system had been in place for decades, and many shippers recognized that moving toward a model focused more on dimensions and density is a logical modernization.”

NMFTA’s changes are intended to reflect more closely the actual cost of shipping freight by shifting the LTL segment of the freight market from commodity-based to density-based classifications.

Before the rollout, some observers said the changes would be the most drastic in the LTL segment since trucking deregulation.

In the end, it turned out to be more of a Y2K moment.

“The carriers did a nice job of softening the impact for customers,” said Cubiscan’s Sayers, a former ABF Freight executive. “It’s all about calibrating how pricing is carried out in LTL.”

ABF Freight, a unit of ArcBest, ranks No. 8 on the TT LTL sector list. ArcBest ranks No. 13 on the for-hire TT100.

“This should be really positive for shippers because it gives them more control of their destiny when it comes to freight rates,” Webb Estes said. If you have a product that just everyone gets the same class, and you’re not thinking about how to package the product most efficiently, how to minimize space and maximize density, and everyone’s being charged the same amount, there’s one less area to differentiate.

“And so now customers have the opportunity to find ways to create more density in their boxes. And in doing that, they get rewarded with better rates. And that’s the goal. ... The more things in our world that have rightly set cause and effect incentives, the better we will be as a society. ... That’s a broad statement. But when incentives are rightly designed, typically efficiency comes with it because now you’ve opened up an area where people can be working.”