Contract resets are landing 13% higher — SONAR's new index says the increases are sticking

Shippers who have reset truckload contracts over the past several months are paying about 13% more than the rates those contracts replaced, according to FreightWaves on Oct. 24. The figure comes from SONAR's new Contract Rate Change Direction index, which stood at 13.11% on Oct. 22 — up from 3.53% a year earlier — and it measures something narrower and, for drivers watching their pay, more durable than a spot-market spike: what happens to base rates when an established shipper-carrier relationship actually reprices.

The index, known by its SONAR ticker CRCD.USA, is the average percentage difference between a new contract base rate and the one it replaced. It counts a change only when the old rate had held steady for more than 90 days, which filters out short-term noise and isolates true bid-cycle repricing. It is a seven-day rolling average, updated daily. The metric also strips out the effects of temporary route guide waterfalling and contract-plus pricing, the two mechanisms that can make a rejected load look like a rate increase when freight tumbles down a routing guide to a backup carrier at a one-off price. What is left, FreightWaves says, is the more durable change — the rate a shipper has agreed to live with.

There are limits a driver should understand before treating 13.11% as money already in the bank. The index measures only contracts that are changing, which makes it largely agnostic to volume, and its readings can thin out when few contracts are being reset. It also does not account for whether a carrier moves up or down in a shipper's routing guide after a rate change — a carrier can win a higher rate and lose position, or the other way around. That gap is not theoretical. In 2025, contract resets ran at roughly 3% to 4% starting in late 2024, yet the average contract rate index, VCRPM1, showed flat to slightly lower invoiced rates through most of the year. Pairing the two indexes is how FreightWaves suggests judging whether increases are real: CRCD leads the invoice data directionally, but it does not predict whether an increase will stick.

This time, the pairing looks better for carriers. The current reading near 13% shows most contract changes landing well into double digits, nearly a year after tender rejection rates jumped above 9%. Contract rate changes lag rejection rates — it takes a sustained period of elevated rejections before shippers accept higher contract rates — and with rejection rates averaging close to 13% over the past few months, the increases are still coming in above 10%. FreightWaves notes the takeaway for shippers plainly: carriers are still securing strong rate increases, and the contract rate index suggests those increases are sticking. One caution from the same analysis is that carriers were also pushing for increases a year before the recent cycle turned, which is a warning to shippers now navigating extreme rate inflation not to assume every ask reflects the market.

The new index does not stand alone. When SONAR launched the dataset group on Oct. 22, CRCD.USA stood at 12.58% as of Oct. 20 — already well above its 12-month average of 8.34%, and climbing steadily since late 2025. The companion Routing Guide Premium datasets put a price on what happens when the first carrier says no: as of Oct. 20, loads accepted on the second tender cost shippers a median 22.02% more, all-in, than first-tender loads, and third-tender loads cost 26.44% more. Both premiums spiked above 30% around the December holidays, early February and late June into July. And freight is slipping past the first tender more often than it used to: 89.05% of accepted loads were accepted on the first tender as of Oct. 20, below the 12-month average of 91.60%, with 6.84% accepted on the second tender and 4.11% on the third. SONAR is clear that all three datasets measure shipper-to-provider costs — what shippers pay brokers and carriers — not carrier operating costs or broker margins.

Two more details matter for reading the number correctly. CRCD is not an annualized rate: it measures the average change in a contract at the moment it moves, and a change does not register until it is implemented. And the run may not last at this pace — FreightWaves expects the average increase to moderate as carriers move onto more financially healthy contracts. What could keep it elevated longer is capacity: both FMCSA data and tender data suggest capacity has not grown meaningfully over the past 12 months despite the elevated rates, so it may take time for the curve to flatten.

The practical takeaway: this is bid-season evidence, not a spot quote. If your carrier is resetting contracts 13% above the rates they replace, that is the strongest documented leverage drivers and owner-operators have had in this cycle to talk about pay, detention and surcharge pass-through — but it lands carrier by carrier and lane by lane, and a reset rate is not the same thing as a raise until it shows up in invoiced revenue. Watch whether your fleet's renewed contracts actually carry the increase, and whether your pay package moves with them.