Carriers are entering their strongest negotiating position in years as capacity exits the market following a prolonged freight recession that saw thousands of small carriers leave the industry, but the freight industry continues to grapple with compounding cost pressures from insurance inflation, a tightening regulatory landscape, and an underpaid driver workforce. That assessment comes from Tyson Wimberly, Senior Vice President of Sales and Revenue Management at Covenant Transport, who spoke with FreightWaves at the Univar Carrier Kickoff event in Chattanooga, where Covenant joined peer carriers and shipper leadership to align on long-term capacity planning.

"We are in a much more favorable marketplace than we were the last four years — that's a fact," Wimberly said, describing a shift that has given carriers meaningful leverage for the first time since the freight recession. The leverage shift marks a reversal of the post-pandemic period, when shippers enjoyed abundant capacity and depressed rates. As that leverage grows, carriers are increasingly directing their capacity toward accounts that offer network visibility, freight predictability, and what Wimberly called "linear consistency" in weekly volumes.

"How are we collaborating with our shippers to take out this variability of saying, I really need steady business — linear consistency," Wimberly said. "And that's really why we're here today with Univar, is to understand how do we plug in and solve more solutions for them."

The Univar Carrier Kickoff, he said, provided a valuable opportunity to collaborate not only with Univar's key decision makers and procurement leadership but also with peer carriers. Univar Solutions is a major chemical and ingredient distributor, making its freight network a significant source of dedicated and contract business for carriers. "We're in a marketplace right now where our competition's good, but our competition's also getting a lot better," Wimberly observed. "There's some fierce competition out there. And when we can do that, we learn because iron sharpens iron and we're able to have great conversations not only with our peer group but our customers."

When asked what shippers can do to become a "shipper of choice" that carriers prioritize, Wimberly emphasized the importance of deep visibility into shipper networks. The concept of becoming a shipper of choice — where shippers invest in making their freight attractive to carriers through predictable detention times, efficient facilities, and consistent volumes — gained traction during the capacity-constrained pandemic years and has re-emerged as the market tightens again. Covenant has focused on understanding how customers operate, where they operate, seasonality, and the ebbs and flows of freight — all to enable better long-term planning rather than transactional, spot-based relationships.

"Every carrier, every service provider is slightly different. It's their job to make sure why we're uniquely different in a market where we can best serve them, not only from a service standpoint but a rating competitiveness standpoint, but just a whole value creation," Wimberly said. "So when we can get visibility to their networks, how they operate, where they operate, seasonality, ebbs and flows of freight, so we can properly plan not only for now but really long-term agreements that we're trying to focus our strategy on at Covenant Transport."

Covenant prides itself on what Wimberly described as a "yes culture" — finding solutions for every customer opportunity — while maintaining strategic discipline about where it places assets and logistics brokerage support. "We're stretched. I mean, and that — I think that's okay to be stretched. Customers should stretch us. I think we should stretch our customers, really in a manner where we're working together to solve the most amount of problems with hopefully the fewest amount of carriers. And that's where our value really is on full display," he said.

Regulatory Tightening and Insurance Pressures

On the regulatory front, Wimberly cited six or seven rules currently in full national enforcement, with another three to five on the docket — a pipeline he said is meaningfully tightening truck supply relative to shipment demand. The trucking industry has faced an expanding set of federal regulations in recent years, including speed limiter proposals, drug and alcohol clearinghouse enforcement, and automatic emergency braking mandates, all of which can push non-compliant carriers and drivers out of the available pool. While demand is not increasing at a dramatic pace, the regulatory environment is constraining the supply side of the equation in ways that carriers and shippers must navigate.

"That's part of really kind of just making sure that you're following the regulatory environment because it's real and it impacts everyone," Wimberly said.

Insurance costs are compounding the pressure. Wimberly referenced a $604 million judgment — discussed during the FreightWaves broadcast and related to the Montgomery case — as evidence that brokers and asset carriers alike face escalating litigation exposure when subcontracting freight. That verdict fits within a broader trend of so-called nuclear verdicts in trucking litigation, where jury awards exceeding $10 million have become increasingly common and have driven up insurance premiums across the industry regardless of individual carrier safety performance. The host noted that if a company brokers a shipment, it is almost certain to be pulled into litigation, and having assets and deeper pockets makes a carrier a bigger target.

Wimberly emphasized that Covenant has maintained more than four consecutive years of improving safety records, yet has seen no corresponding relief on insurance premiums. "We have 4+ years of history of being safer than we were 4 years prior, over and over and over and over and over. Does that mean we get benefit from insurance? Not necessarily. It doesn't," he said. "No one's immune to the cost of inflation in insurance alone."

The risks associated with subcontracting freight underscore the importance of thorough carrier vetting, Wimberly added. He stressed the need for carriers and brokers to ensure they truly know who is driving subcontracted shipments, maintain carrier history, and properly vet carriers on the front end.

Driver Pay and Retention

Driver compensation emerged as what Wimberly called the number one driver of attrition. He argued that professional drivers did not benefit from the inflation cycle during the freight recession and that pay packages are now coming in with more demanding terms. Driver pay and retention have been persistent structural challenges for the trucking industry, with the American Trucking Associations consistently documenting a driver shortage that intensifies during market recoveries.

"Driver pay absolutely has to correct. We've been in an environment where professional drivers have not seen the benefit of inflation in that 4-year period where I kind of go back to freight recession," Wimberly said. "In a lot of cases we've had a lot of challenges, but the driver's kind of been the one that's not been taken care of. We're seeing driver pay packages come in in a more demanding manner."

The core problem, he said, is utilization variability. A solo driver whose weekly mileage swings from 1,600 to 1,800 miles, then up to 2,200, back down to 2,000, sees a paycheck "moving like in a regular heartbeat" — a pattern Wimberly described as unsustainable for retention.

"It has to be predictable. There's predictability in how they operate week in and week out," he said. "That's not healthy. So how are we collaborating with our shippers to take out this variability of saying, I really need steady business — linear consistency."

Beyond pay, Wimberly said carriers must understand what drivers are looking for in terms of home time, time off, and overall work conditions, stressing the need to be "good stewards of the professional drivers that we bring out."

Sustainability as a Differentiator

Wimberly also highlighted Covenant's sustainability push as a differentiator in shipper conversations. The carrier is running B100 renewable fuel fleets — using 100% biodiesel, which can significantly reduce lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions compared to petroleum diesel — on a handful of dedicated accounts and frames its approach as customer-led, willing to absorb the transition costs of alternative-fuel equipment when a shipper prioritizes emissions reduction.

"At the end of the day, we're asking our customers, if it's something that's important to you, it's important to us. We would be customer-led. We will go through this journey with you," Wimberly said. He acknowledged that transitioning to alternative-fuel equipment involves additional costs but suggested that broader industry adoption would come as the technology matures and customer demand drives investment. As large shippers face growing pressure from their own stakeholders to report and reduce Scope 3 supply chain emissions, carrier sustainability capabilities are increasingly factored into procurement decisions.

Wimberly credited Matt McClellan, whom he described as a close personal friend and an ambassador for the industry, with bringing credibility to Covenant's sustainability initiatives and generating customer curiosity about the carrier's alternative-fuel programs.

Covenant's 40-Year Evolution

Covenant is celebrating its 40th year in 2026, having been founded by David Parker in 1986. Wimberly noted the company spent its first 30 years as a one-dimensional over-the-road asset carrier before pivoting over the past decade toward a broader logistics model. That shift mirrors a broader industry trend in which large truckload carriers have diversified into dedicated, brokerage, and warehousing services to offer end-to-end supply chain solutions and reduce dependence on the volatile spot and contract freight cycles.

"For the first 30 years of being a 40-year-old company, we were pretty one-dimensional, very one-dimensional. We were an over-the-road asset-based company," Wimberly said. "And now we've really shifted to — we're a logistics company that has a lot of assets and serving our customers differently with assets and our brokerage solutions through dedicated and our warehousing."

That transformation, he explained, has involved getting deeper with customers and aligning Covenant's resources to how shippers purchase transportation services. "That's really our core competency of how we've been very disciplined the last 10 years by getting deeper with customers and really kind of align ourselves, resources, to how they purchase transportation from providers," he said.

David Parker was scheduled to appear on FreightWaves the following day to discuss Covenant's recently released earnings results. Wimberly described the company as resilient and expressed pride in its ability to adapt to shifting market conditions while maintaining its customer-first DNA.

"Whatever headwind we have, we are in a much more favorable marketplace than we were the last 4 years. That's a fact," Wimberly reiterated, closing the conversation on a note of measured optimism about the road ahead.

Source: FreightWaves