It's been a rough go for small-business trucking over a few years now, with high costs and weak freight demand putting plenty pressure on owner-operators. Moving through 2025, a central question's been on most minds: are conditions starting to improve, or will the headwinds continue?
Twice annually, Overdrive's Partners in Business coproducer ATBS provides analysis of operational and financial performance trends for owner-operators, the tax and business service provider's principal clients now for decades in business services. The next such session is one week away, Tuesday, September 30, at 5 p.m. Central time, where ATBS Vice President Mike Hosted hopes to answer that question among others with a recap of owner-operator revenues, costs and bedrock income for the first half of the year.
Owner-operators can register to catch the presentation live at 5 p.m. Central time Tuesday, September 30, via this link.
Other questions highlighted will include:
- How can owner-operators benefit tax-wise from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act budget legislation passed earlier in the year?
- What are the latest miles, rates, fuel costs and maintenance trends? (With respect to the last, why have maintenance costs for owner-operators shot up compared to this time last year?)
- What are large carriers saying about freight rates and volumes for the rest of the year and into next?
- How are the best owner-operators thriving in a prolonged, difficult freight environment?
ATBS's last big update, delivered in March and charting benchmarks for average owner-operator financials for the full 2024 calendar year, signaled some hope on the horizon. Yet much of that was based on then-ongoing rates growth for flatbeds on the spot market. Platform freight gave back much of those gains over the few months that followed that time, and since then spot rates have generally followed old pre-pandemic seasonal patterns.
As was noted attendant to reporting from the prior session in early April, though, upward moves in flatbed corresponded to an extent with the end of a six-month waiting period following the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts last fall. Given the Fed's further cut in interest rates last week after nearly a year of no move whatsoever, though the cut was just a quarter point, perhaps we can look forward to better business investment confidence come the start of 2026 and its implications for freight thereafter.
Tune in to the ATBS session next week Tuesday for intel on where ATBS thinks we're headed and plenty in the way of tactics, broader business strategy and ways to think about data showing trends. Here's the session from late March to get up to speed on recent-history performance:
