The Highs and Lows of Freight Brokerage — 10 Years of Truth

There are seasons in freight brokerage where everything clicks. The phone rings with the right freight, your carriers are reliable and communicating, margins are healthy, and the money hits the account on time. Over ten years in this industry — working for brokers-only operations and asset-based brokerages — I have lived through enough of those seasons to know what they feel like. It is not glamorous. It is not passive income. But when the business is flowing, there is a kind of tranquility to it. You wake up, you work the board, you cover loads, you solve problems, and at the end of the month the numbers make sense. That is all most of us are really asking for.

The good seasons are earned. They come after you have built relationships with shippers who trust you, after you have vetted carriers who actually show up, and after you have learned the hard way which lanes pay and which ones bleed. Nobody hands you a good book of business. You build it one load, one phone call, one solved problem at a time. And when it is working, there is a deep satisfaction in knowing that you did this — you built something real from nothing but a phone, a computer, and the willingness to figure it out.

I have had stretches where the margins were strong enough that I could invest back into the business, take care of my family without stress, and actually enjoy what I do. Those are the times that keep you in the game. The memory of what this business can be when the market cooperates and your operation is tight. That memory matters, because you are going to need it.

Since January 2026, things have been particularly challenging. Freight rates are still subpar — we are barely hanging below the spot market on most lanes, and customers who used to pay reasonable rates have gone quiet on increases despite years of rising costs on our end. The market that used to reward hustle and relationships is now rewarding whoever is willing to move freight at the thinnest margin. That is a different game, and it wears on you differently than a slow freight market does. This is not a drought where there is no freight. There is freight. It just does not pay.

On top of the rate pressure, fuel costs have been spiking drastically. When you book a load on Monday and diesel jumps fifteen cents by Wednesday, your carrier is either eating it or calling you to renegotiate. Either way, the margin you quoted is gone. You are trying to hold neutral and hoping you do not drift negative on loads that were already tight. Then add the non-domicile CDL situation tightening the carrier pool, reducing capacity in ways that are hard to plan around, and you have a market where everything that can squeeze you is squeezing you at the same time. Any one of these pressures is manageable on its own. Stacked together, they are suffocating.

I want to be honest about what this does to a person. There are days where the discouragement is heavy. Not the kind you shake off over lunch, but the kind that follows you home and sits on your chest at two in the morning. I have been on the edge of explosive frustration — the kind where you want to throw something, shut the laptop, and walk away from the whole thing. I have been in stretches where the emotional weight of it starts to feel like genuine depression. Not because you are weak, but because the math is not working and you do not know when it will.

The hardest part is the weight of other people depending on you. When you have a family to feed, bills that do not care about your freight market, and expectations that come with being the provider — every bad week feels personal. Every load that falls through, every customer who ghosts on payment, every carrier who no-shows on a pickup — it all compounds. And from the outside, people think this is easy. Just sitting in a seat pushing loads on someone else's truck. They do not see the phone calls at eleven at night, the claims you are fighting, the invoices you are chasing, the mental load of managing risk on every single shipment. This career is an incredibly exhausting process of highs and lows that most people never see, and the lows can be absolutely crushing.

What gets me through it is knowing I am not alone. The entire broker community is fighting through the same season right now. I talk to brokers every week who are dealing with the exact same pressures — the same rate environment, the same unresponsive customers, the same carrier challenges. There is real solidarity in that, even when nobody talks about it publicly. We are all in the same trench.

Staying the course matters more than anything else right now. Freight is cyclical. It always has been. The brokers who survive the valleys are the ones who dominate when the market turns — because they kept their relationships, kept their systems, and kept showing up when it would have been easier to quit. History rewards endurance in this business.

Physical fitness has been essential for me throughout my career. This is a sedentary, high-pressure job, and if you do not move your body, the stress has nowhere to go. Working out is not optional for me — it is how I manage the mental side of this work. When I am consistent in the gym, I handle bad days better, I sleep better, and I make clearer decisions under pressure. When I let it slip, everything gets harder.

And underneath all of it, my faith is the foundation. I am not going to preach at anyone, but I will say plainly that my relationship with God is what everything else is built on. The company name — 20-2 — comes from Exodus 20:2. That verse means something to me personally, and it reminds me every day that this business is not just about revenue. It is about building something with purpose, serving people well, and trusting that the hard seasons have meaning even when I cannot see it.

The lows do not last. Neither do the highs. The brokers who build systems, protect their margins, and take care of themselves — physically, mentally, spiritually — are the ones still standing when the market turns. If you are in the valley right now, keep going. The other side is coming.

If you are in the trenches right now, I built 20-2 Dispatch for people exactly like us. Not during the easy times — during the hard ones. When every dollar of margin matters, when your tools need to work as hard as you do, and when you need a platform that was built by someone who understands what this job actually costs.