Authority Trends Analysis

Analysis

· as of August 15, 2026

The most anomalous feature in this dataset is not the multi-year decline in authority grants — that trend is well-established — but the near-complete collapse of recorded revocations beginning in February 2026. From September 2021 through January 2026, monthly revocations ranged from roughly 2,600 to 8,456. In February 2026, total revocations dropped to 832. In March 2026, they fell to 1. April and May 2026 recorded zero revocations. This is inconsistent with any seasonal or market pattern visible elsewhere in the series and almost certainly reflects a data processing or reporting lag rather than an actual cessation of enforcement activity. Consumers of this data should treat the net change figures for March through August 2026 as artifacts of incomplete records, not as evidence of a supply surge.

Setting aside those incomplete months, the underlying grant trend tells a coherent story. Total grants in the trailing 12 months reached 48,028, down 22.2% from 61,729 in the prior 12-month period. Revocations in the trailing 12 months totaled 34,827, compared to 77,033 in the prior period, though the latter figure is heavily influenced by the elevated revocation activity that characterized 2022 through early 2024. The contraction in new grants is broad-based across authority types: common authority grants in the trailing 12 months totaled 43,534, broker grants totaled 3,367, and contract grants totaled 1,127, the last figure representing a sustained structural decline from levels above 250 per month that were routine in late 2021 and early 2022.

The persistent negative net change in contract authority — every month without exception across the full 60-month window — is the clearest compositional signal in the data. Common authority dominates gross grant volume, typically accounting for roughly 88 to 90 percent of monthly grants throughout the series, but broker and contract authority have both shifted from net positive to net negative as revocations of older authorities outpace new applications. This is consistent with a freight market that has been contracting in active carrier count since the rate correction that began in mid-2022, with new entrant activity not keeping pace with attrition among carriers that entered during the 2020 to 2021 expansion. Over the full 60-month window covered by this dataset, total net authority change across all types was 25,044, meaning that cumulative gross growth in the registered carrier and broker population has been modest relative to the volume of activity, and the direction of that net figure has been negative on a month-to-month basis for the majority of months since late 2022.