The year began below what many companies had expected, though economic growth, the aftermath of winter storms and new housing starts made for a fairly strong Q2. In fact, many of the up-and-coming freight brokerages reported banner months in Q2 as their strategies took market share from competitors and they grew the overall size of the brokerage market.

CarrierDirect, a hub for innovation in the transportation and logistics industry, has released their semi-annual freight market perspective on the state of the domestic freight industry and trends for the rest of the year. Jett McCandless, founder and president of CarrierDirect, presented the compiled data.

CarrierDirect forecasts the five biggest themes that will affect the freight markets this year being:

   1. GDP growth and limited truck purchases will push pricing power back to 
      carriers. 
 
   2. Re-Shoring/Nearshoring and changes in global demand will begin to move 
      OTR freight patterns and density from certain entry points into the U.S. 
      to other key corridors. 
 
   3. Giants from overseas will look to the U.S. to carve out more market share. 
 
   4. Interline partnerships between super-regional and regional carriers, as 
      well as new entrants in the asset-light space will bring more competition 
      to national carriers. 
 
   5. Smaller players in the brokerage space will begin to get squeezed out of 
      the market. 

"We've certainly noticed a rapid uptick in the rate that the domestic freight marketplace is innovating," said Joel Clum, co-founder and VP of CarrierDirect, "and many of our clients are searching for new ways to continue the growth trends that they've become accustomed to. There is a degree of 'cautious optimism' about where the freight market is heading for the rest of the year, and the more progressive companies are investing in advanced tools to optimize their business, grow new sales verticals and acquire market share."