Does the 2025 Measure Up Survey Give any Signs of Freight Recovery?

It has been a long freight recession, and while carrier rates are rising, capacity restriction is not the same as a demand-led recovery. Brokers with contracts are getting squeezed until they can renegotiate, shifting the secondary health metric from load count to GM%.

I was curious what our latest Measure Up® compensation survey would show, comparing 2024 to 2025, since we have many of the same companies and employees. Most surveys report a role median and stop there, but that may mislead as the people filling a role change year to year. So using employee IDs, I looked at the same people in both years.

I tracked 2,059 employees across 13 companies. Their median total comp rose 15.9%, but base pay did not move at all, against a broader US market salary increase of 3.5%. For brokers, the raise came entirely through incentive, and 75% of the 2,059 employees tracked earned more in 2025 than in 2024.

Carrier sales led the pack. Following 661 of them in the same seat across both years, median total comp rose 23.4% with base flat, better than all customer-facing roles combined, which rose 11.8%.

Tracking individuals also changes what you conclude about roles that look soft. Account managers are a good example: the role’s median total comp fell about 2%. Stop at the role median and you would think people lost money. They did not. The same managers I could follow earned 7.6% more. The decline was about who moved in and out of the role, not the pay of those who stayed.

I also checked whether the same dollars were just spread among fewer people. They were not: for carrier sales, headcount grew at the same companies and total dollars paid rose 13%, meaning there were more people and there was more money. Those who stayed earning more almost entirely through incentive.

I would not call this proof that freight demand recovered in 2025. What the survey appears to show is the beginning of a supply-led turn, with incentive opportunity improving before base salaries or freight volumes. For an owner, this is encouraging: fixed salaries stayed controlled while producers shared the upside.

But more incentive is not, by itself, an owner win. The test is whether contribution margin and operating profit grew faster than incentive expense. Owners should weigh every added dollar of incentive against the incremental GM$ it generated, net of claims, fraud, bad debt and service costs. Many pay carrier reps per load, which is risky now: as profit per load shrinks, that fixed rate eats a higher share of each load’s value, higher pay against shrinking margin.

So yes, the 2025 Measure Up data shows a sign of a freight turn, but just the beginning. The right owner response is to protect contract margins, reprice losing freight faster, preserve fixed-cost discipline and reward profitable performance where the return is measurable. When freight comes back, it comes back through incentive first.

Beth Carroll is CEO of Prosperio Group. Figures come from the Measure Up compensation survey.  Copies of the full Measure Up report and/or custom cuts may be purchased by emailing Katie.Burkholder@ProsperioGroup.com