The U.S. freight economy has reached equilibrium with rates rebounding due to reduced capacity from regulatory enforcement, but carriers must maintain rate discipline as diesel costs and per-mile expenses continue rising. McLeod Software emphasizes adopting AI-driven rate intelligence tools while preserving human relationships to balance profitability with customer retention.
- Trucking costs per mile have risen from $1.65 in 2020 to $2.34 in 2025, with diesel fuel hovering around $6 per gallon.
- McLeod is investing heavily in AI-driven tools, including RespondAI, voice agents, and AI assistants integrated across products.
- AI should augment, not replace, human relationships—carriers must balance market-driven AI pricing with customer retention strategies.
- McLeod added 250 new functions including dispatch intelligence, detection management, and unified backhaul experiences alongside AI capabilities.
McLeod Software Founder and CEO Tom McLeod stitched together a picture of cautious optimism for the U.S. freight economy Monday during his keynote message at the company’s 36th-annual user conference held this year in Nashville.
He highlighted heavy uncertainty in the general economy but noted the freight economy has reached a point of equilibrium as regulatory enforcement around CDL mills, English language proficiency, non-domiciled CDL and cabotage helped right size capacity and bring freight rates up.
“We’re riding a rate rebound that’s driven by reduced capacity,” McLeod said. “If these had been enforced all along, the freight recession wouldn’t have lasted as long.”
But he warned customers to maintain rate discipline — to strike a balance between rates that maintain customers and rates that cover costs — because rates may be up but so are costs.
McLeod pointed to diesel fuel prices hovering around $6 per gallon and American Transportation Research Institute data that shows the cost per mile in trucking has risen steadily since 2020, from $1.65 to $2.34 in 2025.
“You've got to be careful when you make a decision to expand or move into another area … and make sure you're proceeding on solid ground,” McLeod said during a meeting with press Monday. “I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the ground is shifting under our feet. If you take off running, you could end up in the wrong location because the targets keep moving,” which he previously attributed to tariffs.
AI for rate intelligence
McLeod emphasized the role of technology, including the importance of “getting involved” with AI, to help carrier and broker customers find areas within their businesses to improve efficiencies and lower costs.
The way McLeod customers rate freight varies across a wide spectrum from velocity driven to rate driven, said Doug Schrier, senior vice president of strategy and partnerships, whose team oversees McLeod’s rate intelligence tools.
“Optimization is probably somewhere in the middle, where velocity is key to operational profit, but I can't be profitable if I don't have a rate that covers my costs, and we see what costs are doing,” Schrier said. “So I think what we'll see with rating intelligence is injection of AI. We'll also see the acceleration of market insights,” which he added are already a couple days old by the time that data is available.
Schrier pointed to McLeod’s MPact.Benchmark tool that offers advanced performance comparison tools for tracking profitability and bidding strategies and the MPact.IQ product that provides role-specific operational, financial and revenue reporting dashboards.
He said AI will play a role in combining the functionality of those tools, alongside the rate intelligence tools, to make it easier for customers to identify areas of improvement within their operations.
IQ, for example, identifies the people bidding and booking freight and how their performance compares to each other and to an AI agent that’s doing the same.
“They all operate differently. Here's who's doing a great job. Here's who's not,” he added. “When that person is an AI agentic agent, I still have to have that same scrutiny. Is an AI agentic agent performing like I want it to, or is Sally, who has done this for the last 15 years, outperforming the agent and why? Then we have to go in and close the gap.”
A human touch
Where AI comes into play, Schrier said, is replacing a human to reply faster and, therefore, potentially win more freight. But removing the human element comes at a cost, he added.
“I've been working with a transportation manager for Procter & Gamble for years. We have a great relationship. If they need help, AI doesn't really take that into consideration,” he said as an example.
A human, he said, may give P&G a cheaper rate today so they can retain their business tomorrow, whereas AI is going to rate it based on market conditions and cost projections.
“To maintain the relationship, you have to take AI outside of the narrow perspective of, ‘What should this freight be,’ to look at the margin impact of that customer,” Schrier said.
Ahmed Ebrahim, McLeod’s vice president of partner alliances, said AI will be most beneficial in augmenting the multitude of calls that happen in a broker-carrier communication prior to rate execution. Those conversations typically aren’t noted — only the final call when the booking gets made.
He said AI promises to capture that data.
“I think the agentic AI is going to exponentially capture that information as part of an additional source that can be harvested and aggregated for intelligence for rating,” Ebrahim said.
Doubling down on innovation
McLeod has been implementing AI itself and partnering with other vendors to give customers choice, Ebrahim said, noting a symbiotic relationship.
McLeod said during his keynote that the company has added a new development department dedicated to AI and has hired Chief AI Officer Mario Moore.
Recent AI additions to the product line McLeod noted include RespondAI, which organizes unstructured data that comes in via email, such as rate quotes, and automates responses. The provider has partnered with Microsoft to make an AI assistant available within IQ and is also launching an AI assistant in its base product for customer queries.
McLeod noted that the company is also adding a model context protocol connector for direct connection with other applications to enable customers to fully utilize data and AI in their systems.
Coming by the end of this year are inbound and outbound voice agents for trucking and brokerage. McLeod said early agents will include track and trace and responding to driver requests.
Outside of cultivating an AI ecosystem, McLeod said, “We’ve been working on a lot more stuff. We haven’t neglected the regular features and functions of the system”
The company has added 250 new functions, including dispatch intelligence, streamlined cash receipts, smarter rapid alerts, expanded detention management, unified backhaul experience and more.
