Trucking Downturn: Why 85% of New Carriers Didn’t Survive

The freight market has seen a brutal downturn, with an astounding 85% failure rate for new carriers in the past three years. Kirk Mann, EVP & GM of Transportation and Vendor Solutions at Mitsubishi HC Capital America, dives into why this cycle was the longest, the impact of over-financed assets, and what it means for the future of freight demand and equipment financing. Learn how lenders navigate this volatile landscape and what’s next for carrier growth. The average three-year failure rate for motor carriers with fewer than two years of operating experience and their own ICC authority hit 85% during the prolonged freight downturn, according to Kirk Mann, EVP & GM of Transportation and Vendor Solutions at Mitsubishi HC Capital. Mann shared the figure in a FreightWaves interview, offering one of the starkest measures yet of how the roughly three-and-a-half-year downturn devastated the smallest participants in the for-hire trucking market.