Shippers running 2022-era bid playbooks face a tighter peak

Some shippers are heading into peak season with the bid strategy that carried them from 2022 through 2025: long rate locks, steep penalties and little flexibility. That strategy is breaking down in a tighter market, said Craig Lough, director of strategic planning at A. Duie Pyle, who leads the company’s non-asset brokerage division.

Lough has worked in freight since 2003. Pyle is a family-owned carrier based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, that has been expanding its LTL network beyond the Northeast. He said the mismatch is leaving loads uncovered and asking brokers to price more than a year of rate risk into some bids.

The peak season capacity tightness that is invalidating last year’s playbook comes in the form of persistently elevated outbound tender rejection rates. The FreightWaves SONAR Tender Rejection Index held near 13.9% in mid-October, compared with under 6% during peak season 2025, as truckload capacity showed no signs of recovering.

As many of the shippers are still running those playbooks, the routing guide is already bleeding freight, Lough said.

This story was originally published by FreightWaves. Read the full story at FreightWaves →