Well according to the DOT, there are just north of 2.1 Million registered motor carriers. Of those. 1,083,501 are for hire.
A couple of these were Amazon contractors, 7 were 6 or fewer trucks and drivers. Pretty much all of the midsize or larger companies went into chapter 11, so they’ll continue operating just with a restructured debt plan.
It was the 8 small companies with 6 or fewer trucks and drivers that entered chapter 7 liquidation. And I imagine that’s pretty typical for those tiny companies any time diesel spikes.
I work in this industry. Read freightwaves to see that the market typically flips like this every few years and we’ve been very overdue for it. Diesel prices and CDL language crackdowns have accelerated the flip, but it was always expected.
The article doesn’t state what the normal number of bankruptcies is. So we can’t really tell from a single number if this is normal, better or worse.
While not exactly the bankruptcy number this seems to show we already had a downturn and 2026 was supposed to be a “recovery year”
https://truckdispatchexperts.com/resources/trucking-industry-forecast-2026/
Well according to the DOT, there are just north of 2.1 Million registered motor carriers. Of those. 1,083,501 are for hire.
A couple of these were Amazon contractors, 7 were 6 or fewer trucks and drivers. Pretty much all of the midsize or larger companies went into chapter 11, so they’ll continue operating just with a restructured debt plan.
It was the 8 small companies with 6 or fewer trucks and drivers that entered chapter 7 liquidation. And I imagine that’s pretty typical for those tiny companies any time diesel spikes.
I work in this industry. Read freightwaves to see that the market typically flips like this every few years and we’ve been very overdue for it. Diesel prices and CDL language crackdowns have accelerated the flip, but it was always expected.
Maybe someone with the equipment and skills can pull together a clearer picture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Transport_companies_by_year_of_disestablishment
That is not a useful data set. It includes SeatGuru as a transport company. It also shows only one company disestablished in 2026.
A script, a scrip, t my kingdom for a script!