Uber Freight is warning shippers that the freight market is heading into the holiday quarter with too few trucks, too little capacity, and rates already running 35% above where they were a year ago. If demand picks up as it typically does in the fall, the company says spot prices could surge again, and the cost of that surge has a way of ending up on the receipt you get at checkout.

The warning comes from Uber Freight's Q3 market update, published Thursday. The numbers in it are striking.

The rates are already high

National average contract rates for standard dry van trucking hit $2.39 per mile in July, up 18% from July 2025. Spot rates, which are what shippers pay when they can't find a contracted truck and have to go to the open market, averaged the same $2.39 per mile in July, a 47% year-over-year jump. That was the largest single-month gain on record for a June-to-July period.

Spot rates have pulled back somewhat since then. By late August they were averaging $2.21 per mile. But that figure still sits 35.6% above the same week last year and nearly 24% above the nine-year seasonal average for that time of year.

The reason rates are this high is partly structural. Uber Freight estimates that more than 48,000 truck drivers who didn't meet federal compliance requirements have left the industry over the past year. That's not a temporary gap that one good quarter fills. The company also notes that the backlog for new Class 8 trucks, the big rigs that move the bulk of American freight, currently represents roughly nine months of production. You can't order your way out of a capacity problem quickly when the factory line is already that backed up.

Why the fourth quarter is the real test

September and October are typically when shippers lock in contracted trucking capacity ahead of the holiday crunch. Uber Freight says companies that skip this step and keep sourcing truck by truck, week to week, are "particularly vulnerable" if demand accelerates during the peak.

The company rated truckload and cross-border Mexico shipping at "high" exposure heading into late October. Intermodal (shipping containers moved partly by rail) and Canada cross-border were rated at medium severity. Diesel price swings and shifting U.S. trade policy were named as additional pressures shaping the market.

Carriers, meaning the trucking companies, are also pushing for double-digit rate increases in both this year and next year's contracts. That's another layer of cost pressure working its way through the system.

Where this lands for ordinary people

Freight costs are a tax on almost everything that moves. When trucking gets expensive, the cost typically migrates into the price of groceries, hardware, clothing, electronics, and pretty much anything else that arrives on a shelf via truck. The transmission isn't instant, and not every retailer passes the full hit to consumers. But sustained elevation in trucking rates for multiple consecutive quarters tends to show up in prices eventually.

That's the deeper concern in Uber Freight's report. This isn't a one-month spike that fades cleanly. Contract rates have been rising for two consecutive quarters. The primary measure of whether contracted trucks actually show up when called, which sat between 90% and 94% for three straight years, is now running at 78%. That gap, between what shippers expected and what they're getting, is the friction point that could amplify quickly if holiday demand comes in strong.

CEO Rebecca Tinucci put it plainly: "The cost of reacting too late is often higher than expected."

For consumers, the reaction time belongs to the retailers and logistics managers now deciding whether to lock in capacity or wait. If enough of them wait and demand surges, the cost of being wrong gets distributed widely and quietly, one slightly higher price at a time.