A Quantile Logistic Distribution Hypothesis and bargaining games: An application to the US spot trucking market

The US spot market for truckloads is characterized by a persistent imbalance between supply and demand. In this context, the long‐haul capacity constraints has become the leading indicator of freight rates, especially during the COVID-19 period. In this paper, we have investigated whether capacity can indeed influence rates. To this end, we have presented an extended version of the traditional theoretical perspective used in most transportation planning applications. It combines the dynamics of the matching relationship between carriers and shippers with a Nash trading solution that follows a stochastic process to estimate freight rate elasticities. We then apply this methodology to an exclusive database with information on the top 30 market areas in the US. Overall, we have found evidence that the trucking market structure only shifts due to a major prolonged extreme event, such as COVID-19 and government regulation could potential avoid freight rate surges as it happened during the healthy crisis.