Pricing power is moving toward freight brokers, with awarded margin reaching 22% even as spot demand contracts and fewer loads compete for available carrier capacity, according to Tabi Connect’s Tabi Pricing Pressure Index (TPPI).
“The market has clearly moved toward freight brokers, with awarded margin at 22% while spot volume keeps falling,” says Ricky Gonzalez, CEO and co-founder of Tabi Connect. “That combination is the part to pay attention to. Margin is expanding on a thinner book, which reflects pricing discipline rather than a demand boom, and a window like that does not stay open forever. The brokers who price off real-time market data instead of guessing are the ones who hold these margins while conditions last and read the turn early when it comes.”
Key takeaways:
- The May TPPI came in at 26, continuing a decline from 36 four weeks earlier and moving deeper into broker-favorable territory.
- Broker-awarded margin reached 22% on won loads, up from 17.8% the prior month and 4 percentage points above the 18% historical average.
- Spot quote volume fell 14.2% against the prior four-week average, so margins are widening on fewer loads rather than on rising demand.
- Brokers quoted 19.7% above market benchmarks on average, a spread that widened 7.2 percentage points month over month as brokers priced with more confidence.
- Awarded margin peaked in the 2-4% win-rate cohort at 24.3%, the range where brokers win enough freight to matter while still holding pricing power.
- Spot request volume fell 6.4% during the window. Because that drop came from supply leaving the road rather than demand softening, the brokers who covered freight earned wider margins, with awarded gross margin reaching 22.8%, up from a 19.1% trailing four-week average.
- Awarded margin held nearly flat across shipper tiers, between 21.5-22.1%, so a shipper’s size does little to change what a broker keeps per load. What changes is win rate. Enterprise shippers, which account for most spot quote volume, show much lower per-broker win rates because they spread each shipment across several brokers at once. Among equipment, flatbed carried the highest awarded margin of the major categories at 24.0%, while reefer ran the tightest at 16%.
