Who else was excited to finally turn the calendar and put a close on 2025? Last year certainly had its ups and downs, and I think we’re all ready for a new year and new opportunities.
Thinking about we can do as leaders to effect change in the industry, I was looking over the yearly Critical Issues list from ATRI. This list contains invaluable information—not just the most challenging problems facing the industry, but also solutions for how to solve them.
Significantly, the report states (emphasis mine), “freight rates and tonnage have remained stagnant ... at the same time that per-mile costs increased considerably faster than inflation,” and that meeting these challenges requires “the collective efforts of motor carriers, state and federal associations, governmental agencies, and industry suppliers.” In other words, everyone is paying more to do business, and no single group, entity, or organization can fix the industry on its own.
Now that it’s officially 2026 and we have the whole year ahead of us, this is the time to start thinking about how our present problems will impact the future, and what we can do to address them.
What hasn’t changed: economy, lawsuit reform and truck parking.
Anyone who’s been in the trucking industry for the past few years shouldn’t be shocked to see the economy as the top issue in 2025. For the third straight year, economic conditions have held back fleets and continue to prevent them from realizing their full potential.
But while the economy in general has been a consistent drag on transportation fleets, the specific economic factors at play in 2025, 2024, and 2023 have all been a little different. In ‘23, we were contending with high inflation that was a fallout of the pandemic, and ‘24 saw persistently high interest rates to combat said inflation. And as we all know, tariffs have been the defining economic tool in 2025.
A rising issue for the past five years has been lawsuit abuse reform—this year it peaked as the No. 2 issue. People are finally starting to realize just how damaging nuclear verdicts are to fleets, with several well-publicized cases making headlines this year. I’m hopeful that now tort/lawsuit reform is getting the attention it needs, and given some of the wins we’ve already seen this year, we might finally see a pushback against this trend in 2026.
And certainly not to be overlooked, Truck Parking placed in the top-5 for its 10th(!) consecutive year.
What’s new: driver standards, emission regulations and AI.
Though there was plenty that remained from previous years, ATRI still had four issues make its Top 10 list for the first time. These comprised spots 7-10 and given the attention these items have received in the past year or so, they also aren’t major surprises for those of us who follow the industry.
However, one issue was noteworthy for its absence from the list: Driver Shortage. For the first time in more than a decade, this issue didn’t make the Top 10 at all, sliding to No. 12. From 2017-2021, this was the biggest concern in our industry, but starting in 2022, it began to drop down the rankings, and now it’s out of the Top 10 completely.
But while these all reflect changes within our industry itself, the No. 10 issue, AI, is societal. Just in the past year or so, the capabilities of artificial intelligence have increased 100-fold (or more), giving fleets new ways to find value, build competitive advantages, and identify weaknesses to improve upon. Of course, AI also brings concerns about job elimination, theft enablement, and theft of sensitive data.
What it all means: our (big) problems aren’t going anywhere.
It’s clear that our industry has had to contend with, and is still contending with, some serious headwinds, and it doesn’t seem these issues are going anywhere anytime soon. If anything, we only have more problems, with a host of new issues debuting this year, and fleets are getting caught in the middle.
In the last few years, the top five or so issues on ATRI's list have all been previously ranked—meaning we’re seeing a lot of the same problems sticking around. Not only that, but some of the recurring ones I mentioned above are practically endemic at this point. And to complicate things further, several, like Lawsuit Abuse Reform and Insurance Costs, are directly related to one another, so as one becomes a growing issue, so too does the other.
Further, if you consider the top left quadrant of the graph, or the highest-ranking issues in the most recent years, you’ll notice that a new issue hasn’t debuted in the top six since 2019. What does that tell us? I interpret that as meaning our greatest challenges aren't disappearing overnight and still need to be confronted and addressed.
Finally, with so many different and varied issues to tackle, we need to be smart as an industry and prioritize where we place our efforts. This goes back to the quote I mentioned earlier, that finding solutions will require the collective effort of all the stakeholders who all, ultimately, want the same thing: better conditions so the trucking industry can thrive.
Looking ahead
So, how should the industry interpret and utilize the data in ATRI’s annual issue report? First, we need to accept that a lot of these issues are going to take more than a year to resolve—clearly, if they’ve stuck around for the last three, four, five years, then resolving them will take some effort. At the same time, we shouldn’t simply accept them as insurmountable challenges that are completely out of control. There are always things we can control.
Building into the new year, I encourage leaders in the industry to reflect on their role in affecting change. This is the time to check in, take a look around, and see what else we can be doing to move the needle and get as many parties to understand what’s at stake for transportation fleets and why they should care.
