Why Are Trucking Companies Going Out of Business?

How many trucking businesses survive? What BLS survival data shows

The Bureau of Labor Statistics follows every establishment from the quarter it first reports a payroll, through its Business Employment Dynamics program, and counts each March how many from each year’s openings are still operating. Its FAQ defines the birth date as “the year and quarter in which a business reports positive employment for the first time,” so an owner-operator with no employees never enters the count. The survival tables stop at the sector. The nearest one to trucking is Transportation and Warehousing, NAICS 48-49, which also holds couriers, warehouses, bus lines and pipelines. Table 7 for that sector, with data through March 2025, shows:

• Ordinary years. Of the establishments that opened in the twelve months to March 2016, 66.8 percent were still operating three years later; of the 2017 openings, 66.6 percent. Across all private industries, the same figures were 61.2 and 60.7 percent.
• The boom years. Openings rose from 21,948 in the twelve months to March 2020 to 27,204 in 2021 and 32,352 in 2022. Three years later, 57.2 percent of the 2021 group and 53.4 percent of the 2022 group were operating, against 59.1 and 56.3 percent for all private industries.
• The first year. Of the 2022 openings, 75.6 percent were still operating in March 2023, the lowest first-year figure for any group since the one that opened in the twelve months to March 2008. For the groups that opened from 2014 through 2018, the first-year figure ran from 81.2 to 89.0 percent.
• Five and ten years. Of the 2015 openings, 52.6 percent were operating in March 2020 and 36.1 percent in March 2025, against 50.2 and 34.7 percent for all private industries.
• Age. The 2015 group, in its tenth year, kept 91.3 percent of the previous year’s survivors. The group that opened in the twelve months to March 1994 kept 95.4 percent in the year to March 2025, so 4.6 percent of a group more than thirty years old closed in a single year.

Read next to the FMCSA counts, the tables point the same way, though they cover the whole sector and not trucking alone: the establishments that opened in this sector during the 2021 and 2022 boom closed faster than the sector’s ordinary pace, and faster than new establishments across all private industries. They do not say why. The FAQ notes that “Age and survival data are measured at the establishment level,” so a second terminal counts as an opening of its own, and the tables record that an establishment stopped reporting employees, not whether it failed, retired or chose to stop. Age lowers the yearly odds of closing; it does not take them to zero.

Rates, costs or cash: how to tell which one is hitting the fleet

Any one of the three can put a fleet under, and since 2022 national numbers have shown pressure on the first two. Rates: the Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price index for long-distance truckload trucking reached 211.1 in March 2022, its high for 2018 through 2025, and fell to 160.3 by November 2024, a drop of about 24 percent. Costs: the Energy Information Administration’s monthly average retail diesel price was $3.748 a gallon in September 2025 and $6.291 in September 2026, the highest monthly average in a series that starts in 1994, not adjusted for inflation. The truckload index rose too, to a preliminary 219.4 in September 2026, above any month from 2018 through 2025. Cash: neither index sees it, because it lives in the days between a delivered load and the money in the bank.

Whether this fleet’s rates kept up with this fleet’s fuel bill is a question no national index answers. The fleet’s own records answer it in an afternoon. Take the last 13 weeks and the same 13 weeks a year earlier, from the load records, fuel cards, settlements or payroll, and the bank, and compute four numbers for each period:

• Revenue per total mile: linehaul, fuel surcharge and paid accessorials, divided by loaded plus empty miles. If it fell, rates are part of the answer.
• Cost per total mile: fuel, driver pay, repairs and tires, insurance, truck and trailer payments, and the office, divided by the same miles. If it rose, costs are part of the answer.
• Miles per truck per week. If it fell, idle trucks are spreading the same payments, insurance and office over fewer miles, which shows up as a higher cost per total mile.
• Days from delivery to cash, per load, averaged. If it grew, cash is part of the answer, whatever the first three say.

Illustrative example: a hypothetical 15-truck fleet runs about 30,000 total miles a week. A year ago it earned $2.30 per total mile against $2.10 of cost, $6,000 a week of operating profit. This quarter it earns $2.14 against $2.22, a loss of $2,400 a week. Of the $8,400 weekly swing, lower rates account for $4,800 and higher costs for $3,600. Meanwhile its days from delivery to cash went from 20 to 34, so two more weeks of revenue, about $128,000, sit unpaid at any moment. Three causes, three different fixes: rates point to lanes, brokers and contract renewals; costs to fuel surcharge terms, idle trucks and the insurance renewal; cash to paperwork, invoicing and which brokers pay slowly. A fleet that fixes only the loudest one can still run out of money on the other two.

Which weekly numbers warn early?

Weekly for the numbers that move with cash, monthly for the ones that need the books closed. The operating ratio belongs on the monthly page, because it arrives after the month closes; the companion guide covers the formula and how fuel surcharge shifts it. The Friday list is shorter and faster, each number brought by one named person and read by the owner:

• Weeks of cash: the bank balance divided by an ordinary week’s outgoing money, meaning payroll or settlements, fuel, truck and trailer payments and insurance installments. Written down every Friday, it has a direction.
• Days from delivery to cash, per load, and the loads delivered but not yet invoiced or sent to the factor, in dollars.
• Revenue per total mile and cost per total mile for the last four weeks, against the same weeks a year earlier.
• Revenue per truck per week, and idle truck-days.
• Open invoices past their terms, by broker, and every short-pay or chargeback on this week’s factoring statement.
• Fixed bills due in the next 60 days: insurance installments and the renewal date, truck and trailer payments, any balloon payment, registrations.

Two of these moving together are the warning to act on first: weeks of cash falling while days from delivery to cash rise. That pair means the fleet is paying this week’s fuel and payroll from a balance that last month’s loads have not refilled yet. The other warning is cost per total mile above revenue per total mile for four weeks running. That is a loss on every mile, and no amount of faster billing turns it into a profit.

Does factoring help or hurt in a downturn?

It helps with timing and does nothing for price. Factoring sells a delivered load’s invoice for an advance before the broker pays, so when brokers stretch their payment terms it keeps fuel and payroll paid. The fee comes out of the invoice whatever the load earned. Illustrative example: a load that keeps 3 percent of its invoice after fuel, pay and every other cost, factored at a hypothetical fee of 3 percent of the invoice, keeps nothing. Factoring a fleet that loses money per load speeds up the loss and adds the fee to it.

Three features of the agreement matter more in a slow market than in a busy one. Under recourse terms, an invoice a broker does not pay within the agreement’s period comes back as a chargeback against the reserve or the next advances, so a broker’s failure lands on the carrier when cash is tightest. The reserve is the carrier’s money held by the factor until brokers pay, and it does not show in the bank balance. And the notice of assignment changes whom the broker may pay: under the uniform text of UCC § 9-406(a), after the broker receives notice that the invoice was assigned, it “may discharge its obligation by paying the assignee and may not discharge the obligation by paying the assignor.” Each state enacts its own version of the code. Leaving a factor therefore takes new notices to every broker, on whatever termination terms the agreement sets.

When a broker fails outright, federal rules give unpaid carriers a backstop, though a limited one. Under 49 CFR 387.307, a broker “must have a surety bond or trust fund of $75,000 in effect,” which provides for payments to motor carriers if the broker fails to carry out its contracts. The $75,000 is one amount per broker, and each payment from it draws it down, so it may not cover every unpaid carrier in full. This is a plain reading of the texts, not legal advice; the factoring agreement and any claim are questions for the company’s attorney.

What fleets that last do with the money between delivery and cash

Neither the FMCSA records nor the BLS tables say what the surviving companies did differently, so this is not a study of survivors. It is a set of habits that keep the stretch from delivery to cash short and the cost per mile in view, each one visible in the fleet’s own records.

• Bill the day of delivery. The driver sends the signed BOL from the phone at the dock, and one named person turns it into an invoice or a factoring packet the same day. The Friday count of loads delivered but not billed is that person’s number.
• Log detention at the dock, with in and out times on the BOL, so the charge reaches the invoice with the load instead of a week later.
• Price from the fleet’s own cost. A written rate floor per total mile, set from last quarter’s cost per total mile, tells dispatch which loads to turn down, and the arithmetic of profit per load does the same for each offer.
• Check the broker before the load: its days to pay on past loads, its short-pays, and whether the factor will buy its invoices, looked up before the rate confirmation is signed rather than after the invoice ages.
• Reconcile the factoring statement against the loads every week, so a chargeback or an unreleased reserve shows up as a line on a page, not as a short week at the bank.
• Pay the insurance first. Under 49 CFR 387.301T, the version of FMCSA’s insurance rule now in force, a common or contract carrier’s certificate or permit may not “remain in force unless and until” proof of insurance or a bond has been filed with and accepted by FMCSA, and under 387.313T a filed policy cannot be cancelled “until 30 days after written notice has been submitted.” A missed premium installment can therefore end in a revoked authority if the cancellation notice runs its 30 days with no replacement on file. Put the renewal date on the calendar months ahead.
• Keep a cash floor, and check it before adding a truck. Decide how many weeks of fixed bills stay in the bank, and read the Friday weeks-of-cash figure before signing for equipment or a new lane. A credit line arranged in a good month covers timing; it does not fix a load that loses money. This is not financing advice.

None of these needs new software. Each needs one owner for its number and a fixed day to read it, and together they cover all three causes: the rate floor and the broker check for rates, cost per total mile for costs, and same-day billing, detention and the factoring reconciliation for cash.

When this is not the problem, and where the Review fits

Not every closing is a money problem the records can fix. An owner ready to retire faces a succession question. A fleet already behind on insurance, payroll or a truck lender, or facing a lawsuit, needs its attorney and accountant before anyone reads invoices. And if revenue per total mile, cost per total mile and days to cash have held steady against last year, the market is not what is hurting this fleet, and the time is better spent elsewhere.

For an owner-led fleet where those numbers are hard to pull, the Revenue Review counts them under the Payment → Margin hand-off. From the fleet’s own loads, settlements, fuel cards, factoring statements and bank deposits, read-only, it rebuilds revenue and cost per total mile by truck and lane, days from delivery to cash by broker, loads delivered but not billed, and factoring fees, reserves and chargebacks, each in dollars. It does not give legal, tax or financing advice. It takes two weeks, and the written report is the fleet’s to keep. For single-truck owner-operators and fleets under about 20 power units, the fee does not fit the arithmetic, and the call says so plainly.

The team behind it has run its own trucking company for seven years. We have no published trucking client yet; we never recruit a client’s drivers or owner-operators, a client’s data never touches our own fleet, and everything runs under an NDA. The next step is a free 20-minute call, where we say whether the Friday list above, kept in-house, covers it.