• TPM25
  • March 2-5, 2025 | Long Beach Convention Center

Jeffrey Tucker

Tucker Company Worldwide

CEO

Jeff Tucker is third generation CEO of Tucker Company Worldwide; America’s oldest privately held freight brokerage. Jeff is past chairman of the board of directors for the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) and chairs the committee for TIA’s “Carrier Selection Framework,” which provides guidance on selection of safe motor carriers. He also participates as Vice Chair of TIA’s Emerging Technologies Committee. Jeff has testified before Congress on truck safety matters and was named by a USDOT Administrator to a special committee to advise USDOT on highway safety. He is a member of the board of directors for the National Industrial Transportation League and chairs its Highway Transportation Committee. He serves as Co-Chair of the Health & Personal Care Logistics Conference Service Provider Council. His insights appear in Journal of Commerce, Logistics Management, Transport Topics, Defense Transportation Journal, DC Velocity, American Journal of Transportation, Logistics Journal and Wall Street Journal.

Sessions With Jeffrey Tucker

Monday, 3 March

  • 04:50pm - 05:30pm (PST) / 04/mar/2025 12:50 am - 04/mar/2025 01:30 am

    US Trucking: Crunch Ahead or Calm?

    A key question facing shippers of international containers as 2025 begins: Is US trucking in some type of bubble insulating shippers from price volatility or has the trucking market changed structurally to one of permanently higher capacity that absorbs potential pricing shocks. This is the second — or is it the third? — year in which many expect the cyclical truckload market to turn, with higher demand putting pressure on pricing that can add significantly to end-to-end shipping costs. Previous years that have seen the market inflect have put shippers through painful price increases when it comes to getting goods to market by truck in the US: 2014, 2018 and 2021 are examples where end-to-end shipping costs rose substantially due to trucking. But 2025 looks different. Double-digit increases in international containerized imports last year hardly made a dent in truck capacity or pricing. There wasn't a shortage of drayage capacity. As of December, there were more than 90,000 more trucking companies on US highways than there were in 2019. But how long will that abundance last? Repeated predictions of tighter capacity have proved wrong in recent years, as demand remained lower than supply despite the loss of substantial numbers of carriers. Are we headed for another capacity crunch in 2025, if freight demand rises? Or has the market changed enough since 2019 that we’re unlikely to see the kind of crunch seen in the last decade. The US manufacturing downturn is a major reason we've had excess capacity and low trucking rates since 2022. All the discussion about tariffs, inflation and the Federal Reserve’s changing plans for rate cuts could lead to a much different demand picture than we expected just a few months ago. This session will answer these and other questions about truck capacity in a pivotal, transitional year. 

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