Knight-Swift Cut Its Carrier Pool by 70%. The Cheapest Capacity Goes First

For most of the freight downturn, shippers could count on one thing: if a contract carrier rejected a load, somebody cheaper would take it. That cushion is getting thinner, and not only because demand is turning. The people who decide which trucks are allowed to touch freight are deliberately shrinking the list. At an industry summit this week, the CEO of Knight-Swift described how far that has already gone, and the federal safety agency described how much further it intends to go.

A 70% Smaller List, by Design

Speaking at the second annual WEX OTR Summit in Jacksonville, Florida, Knight-Swift CEO Adam Miller said the company's brokerage has reduced its approved carrier pool by about 70% over the past two years. "We're down 70% from maybe two years ago," he said, according to FreightWaves, "because we really vetted the type of carrier that we want." Knight-Swift now requires a motor carrier to have been active for at least a year before it can haul brokered loads, and Miller said qualification rules have tightened over three years partly because "cargo theft went from a couple bad actors to organized crime."

Legal exposure is the other driver. Miller pointed to the Supreme Court's unanimous May decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, which held that negligent hiring claims against brokers fall within the federal safety exception and are not preempted. "If you're going to be willing to put in, to engage with a carrier that has an unsafe CSA score that's over threshold, you're at risk," he said. He expects brokers to "pay multiples" of today's premiums to keep the same insurance limits, and said shippers are raising the same worry in customer conversations. His conclusion for the market was direct: stricter screening is "going to eliminate probably the cheapest capacity, the less compliant carriers out there in the market."

Washington Is Narrowing the Funnel Too

The squeeze is not only coming from private vetting. At the same summit, FMCSA Chief Safety Officer Steve Dowling said the agency has removed more than 10,000 commercial driver training providers from its federal registry since December 2025, FreightWaves reported. That is separate from an August emergency action against about 110 CDL schools linked to more than 5,000 drivers cited for English-language proficiency violations. FMCSA has also removed more than 100 noncompliant electronic logging devices from its registered list and kept nearly 600 others from being approved. "If we want to protect the industry, we need to make sure that we start at the driver level and how they're trained," Dowling said.

Dowling said the agency is also looking at hours-of-service changes, including sleeper-berth provisions and the 14-hour duty window, and at its Safety Measurement System for 2027. None of that adds trucks. Each step raises the bar for who can enter the market and stay in it, which is the same direction Knight-Swift's brokerage has been moving.

The capacity leaving first is the capacity many routing guides quietly depended on to cover rejected loads at a discount. Logistics Focus analysis

What It Means for the Next Bid Cycle

Carriers are already pricing for a tighter market. Werner Enterprises told investors its one-way truckload revenue per total mile, excluding fuel, rose 10% year over year in the third quarter, and guided to a 10% to 13% increase in the fourth, according to FreightWaves. About 60% of that one-way book renews in the first half of 2027, and management is eyeing double-digit increases. CEO Derek Leathers said Werner chose to accelerate spending on driver recruiting and onboarding to support growth "as industry capacity tightens." That spending was about a third of an 18-cent hit to quarterly earnings.

The security side explains why vetting will not loosen once rates rise. In a sponsored FreightWaves piece citing Verisk data, reported cargo theft incidents fell about 25% year over year in the second quarter of 2026 while losses more than doubled to $304.6 million, with the average theft near $564,000. Aqil Naeem, CEO of driver authentication firm E3 Group, argued that "most vetting still checks the carrier on paper and never checks the person who actually shows up for the freight." Whatever the vendor framing, the direction is clear: brokers and shippers are adding checks, not removing them.

Put together, the signals point one way. A shipper whose routing guide relies on a long tail of small carriers booked through brokers at spot-market prices is relying on exactly the capacity that brokers are screening out and regulators are scrutinizing. For carriers, the flip side is an opportunity: a fleet that can document its safety and compliance record is the one that stays on the shrinking approved list.

The Playbook for Logistics Leaders

• Map who actually moves your freight. Ask brokers how many of the carriers on your lanes would pass a one-year operating minimum and a CSA screen. That number is your real backup capacity.
• Budget 2027 bids for a smaller pool. With carriers like Werner targeting double-digit renewals, assume the cheapest spot fallback will be thinner and price lane risk accordingly.
• Write vetting standards into broker contracts. After Montgomery, a shipper's exposure follows the carrier choice. Specify operating history, safety thresholds, insurance limits and driver identity checks in writing.
• Reward documented safety. Give more contract volume to carriers that can show coaching, inspection and crash records quickly. They are the ones least likely to be screened out midyear.
• Treat identity as a pickup requirement. On high-value loads, confirm the driver and truck before releasing a pickup number, not at the dock.
• Carriers: make the file easy to hand over. Keep safety, compliance and maintenance data in one place so a broker's qualification request is answered in hours, not weeks.

Miller's 70% figure describes one brokerage, and other brokers will set their own bars. But the reasons behind it, from the Montgomery ruling to organized theft to FMCSA's registry purge, apply to everyone who books a truck. The freight recovery will arrive into a market with fewer approved carriers than the one that preceded it. Shippers who plan for that now will negotiate their 2027 contracts from knowledge rather than from surprise.