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State of global freight 2026
Survey of 400+ shippers covering cost, transit times, technology adoption, and vendor consolidation trends.
Between September 2025 and January 2026 we surveyed 412 shippers across building materials, FMCG, pharma, auto, and retail e-commerce. We asked them about cost, delays, technology adoption, vendor consolidation, and the workflows that consume the most operator time. The full report runs 56 pages. This page is the executive summary and the five findings that surprised us most.
Finding 1 — Freight cost is up, but rate cards aren't
Median freight cost as a percentage of revenue rose from 4.8% to 5.6% over the last 18 months — but contracted carrier rates rose only 2.1% in the same window. The delta is from spot exposure (rising volume of unplanned shipments), detention charges, and settlement leakage. The cost increase is operational, not commercial.
Finding 2 — Tech adoption is bimodal
Shippers split cleanly into two camps. The "consolidated" camp (38% of respondents) runs a single TMS-of-record across modules. The "stitched" camp (62%) runs 3+ tools that exchange data via files or manual reconciliation. The gap in operational outcomes between the two camps is wider than the gap between large and small shippers — which wasn't what we expected.
Stitched-camp average outcomes
- POD-to-invoice cycle: 18.4 days
- Time-to-allocate per indent: 32 minutes
- Disputed shipments: 4.2% of total
Consolidated-camp average outcomes
- POD-to-invoice cycle: 4.1 days
- Time-to-allocate per indent: 9 minutes
- Disputed shipments: 1.6% of total
"It isn't size that decides whether your freight ops are clean. It's whether you've consolidated your tooling. We have customers at ₹40 Cr and ₹2,000 Cr running with the same playbook."
Finding 3 — AI adoption is overstated
68% of respondents said they "use AI" in their freight operations. When pressed, only 21% could name a specific workflow where an AI feature changed an outcome. The most-cited concrete uses: ETA prediction (14%), POD OCR (11%), and exception classification (7%). Everything else is dashboards.
Finding 4 — Vendor consolidation is happening
Median number of freight-tech vendors per shipper dropped from 5.2 to 3.8 over 18 months. The vendors getting cut are point-tools — single-feature products like standalone fuel-card readers and one-off freight-audit services. The vendors growing share are platforms with 4+ modules and a meaningful data layer.
Finding 5 — Compliance is the silent budget item
Compliance penalties — E-Way bill expiries, FASTag failures, GST mismatches — added a median of 0.4% of freight spend in the survey window. The 90th percentile was 1.7%. Almost every shipper underestimated this category in their planning, because the penalties don't come on a freight invoice; they come from finance and from the statutory portals.
What's in the full PDF
The full 56-page PDF includes: vertical-by-vertical breakdowns, the complete carrier scorecard data, the segmentation analysis between consolidated and stitched camps, and the methodology appendix with the full survey instrument.
- 1Freight cost is rising, but most of the rise is operational, not commercial.
- 2Tooling consolidation matters more than shipper size for clean ops.
- 3Compliance penalties are the most-underestimated line item in freight budgets.