Transport M&A builds momentum alongside freight market

“It is going to get extremely busy,” Tenney says. (adamkaz/Getty Images)

Trucking mergers and acquisitions have been building momentum this year alongside the freight market, fueling experts’ optimism about an incoming surge in deals.

“It is going to get extremely busy,” Tenney Group CEO Spencer Tenney said. “We’ve had a significant segment of the trucking industry that has wanted to exit, that had planned to exit, but have just not had the right conditions to go to market.”

The Tenney Group 2026 Mid-Year M&A Report found that capacity reductions have started to drive industry consolidation alongside other key factors like rising freight rates, inflationary pressures, aging business owners, artificial intelligence and increasingly interested buyers. This comes after a few slow years for dealmaking that coincided with a freight market downturn.

“We’ve been waiting for the right conditions to unlock a lot of M&A activity that has been shelved over the last three and a half years,” Tenney said. “So I’m very excited about the opportunities ahead and just the activity that transpired in the first half.”

Tenney said the earlier problem was that conditions were too good, so many potential sellers held on. But then the freight market quickly turned and interest rates increased, leaving them with lower valuations and fewer interested buyers.

“I’m hoping we’re going to see an even better market in the second half,” said Jonathan Britva, managing director at Republic Partners. “The first half has been spent seeing improved numbers and getting everyone’s bearings together. But I think in the second half, we’re going to start to see more activity.”

PMCF Investment Banking found that overall deal activity had stabilized for transportation and logistics this year. It tracked 121 transactions that closed on a trailing-12-month basis through the first half. The total was in line with last year but below the 168 deals reported in 2024. The firm is nevertheless tracking market trends that could favor more dealmaking.

“Commercial trucking has had a standout year in the public markets, with the PMCF T&L index showing a 35.2% share price increase within the subsector in Q2,” said Eddie Zukowski, a director at PMCF. “The increase is primarily driven by multiple expansions indicating increased investor certainty in the sector.”

Freight market upside

BMO Transportation Finance has been tracking a recovery in the broader transportation market that has been primarily driven by the asset-light segment. The asset-heavy side was subdued until more recently, with M&A activity taking hold as trucking appears to recover as well.

“I believe that the banking market has recently started believing that the upturn in the trucking industry is sustainable,” said Ken Kramer, director of corporate banking at BMO. “The capital markets have been more supportive. I would expect the second half of the year to have more robust M&A activity.”

The Department of Transportation hastened an ongoing decline in capacity late last year by tightening enforcement of non-domiciled commercial driver licenses and English-language proficiency standards. Britva noted that this rebalancing of the freight market helped drive improved performance for many transportation companies, which is also helping to drive deals.

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“The question will be how long that will last and what sort of structural changes we’re going to see,” Britva said. “But to this point, the market, I would certainly characterize as good.”

Zukowski is optimistic that industry players are getting more accustomed to all the noise and uncertainty. He also noted that private equity firms have cash they’re eager to deploy. His main takeaway is that volumes appear to be finally stabilizing after a multiyear correction and that the underlying fundamentals, especially in trucking, are turning in favor of dealmaking.

“The macroeconomic landscape seems to be stabilizing, but there still remains geopolitical risk across the board,” Zukowski said. “Continued conflict amongst global powers is trickling down and impacting unit-level economics on nondiscretionary costs of doing business.”

Not equal across the board

“There’s still reason to be cautiously optimistic,” Tenney said. “It’s just really important, as we see these numbers come in, to understand that the impact is not spread evenly across each sector of the transportation and logistics space.”

Tenney recalled that deal discussions started coming together during the first half of the year as market conditions stabilized enough to free up capital. He expects conditions to keep improving as buyers and sellers become increasingly aligned going into 2027.

“Transportation M&A improved during the first half of 2026, but it wasn’t a broad-based recovery,” said Gaurang Shastri, managing director at Lincoln International. “Activity remained highly selective, with buyers gravitating toward businesses that offer differentiated capabilities and defensible market positions rather than simply adding more capacity.”

Shastri added that trucking companies heavily exposed to commodity freight, the spot market or undifferentiated truckload capacity continued to face challenging valuations. He noted that buyers instead remain focused on businesses with competitive advantages, differentiated service offerings and leadership positions.

“The simplest way to describe today’s market is that buyers are acquiring capabilities rather than capacity,” Shastri said. “They’re looking for platforms that expand their service offerings, deepen customer relationships and provide access to attractive, resilient end markets.”