The “Great Freight Recession” hit the trucking industry like a sledgehammer between 2022 and 2025.
Rates tanked, loads dried up, and suddenly everyone was bleeding money. Small trucking companies, brokers, and shippers watched their margins disappear while fuel, insurance, and truck payments kept coming.
Even Carroll Fulmer — a company that survived 70 years — couldn’t make it through.
However, the companies that survived did something different. Instead of treating their business model like gospel, they embraced flexibility and supply chain resilience. When owning trucks made money, they owned them. When it didn’t, they partnered with owner-operators or used power-only arrangements.
In other words, hybrid trucking at its finest.
Most businesses in trucking run the same way their founders did. That works until it doesn’t. The freight market has crashed before and will crash again, but the difference the next time will be whether you’ve learned to roll with the punches or are still waiting to get knocked out.
Carroll Fulmer’s Collapse — The Cost of Being Asset-Heavy
On paper, Carroll Fulmer looked solid. It was a 70-year-old Florida-based carrier that owned 400 trucks, 1,700 trailers, and employed 600 people.
But in reality, once the freight recession hit, they were sitting ducks.
Carroll Fulmer’s massive fleet became an anchor, dragging it to the bottom. Truck payments, insurance, driver wages, and maintenance costs kept piling up while loads disappeared. Every month, Carroll Fulmer bled more cash trying to cover fixed expenses with shrinking revenue. “Bogus” accident lawsuits made things worse, driving legal and insurance costs through the roof.
Even a desperate $27 million credit line in May 2024 couldn’t save the company. Once July 2025 came around, Carroll Fulmer shut down for good.
The Fork in the Road: Own Your Trucks or Broker Your Way Out?
Carroll Fulmer’s downfall raises the million-dollar question every freight company faces: Do you go asset-heavy and own your fleet or go asset-light and lean? Both models have their place, but getting to the bottom of their strengths and weaknesses could save your business when the time comes.
Asset-Heavy Carriers: Owning a Fleet
Asset-heavy carriers own everything — trucks, trailers, drivers, etc. Think of traditional trucking fleets or owner-operator companies that haul with their own assets.
The upside is control. You know exactly who’s driving your freight, when it’ll arrive, and its handling. Shippers love dealing with carriers that have skin in the game, and you can build premium services around dedicated routes and specialized equipment.
The downside, though, hits like a freight train during downturns. Those trucks become financial anchors when loads disappear. The costs keep rolling whether you’re moving freight or parked in the yard. Scaling up means buying more trucks and hiring more drivers (expensive and slow). And when the market crashes, asset-heavy carriers bleed money faster because they can’t shed costs quickly enough.
Asset-Light Operators: Freight Brokers/Non-Asset 3PLs
Freight brokers play a different game entirely. They own little beyond computers and phone systems, connecting shippers with carriers through pure matchmaking. When freight volumes tank, brokers can slash costs immediately, like truck payments or expensive, depreciating equipment.
The flexibility advantage is huge. Brokers can scale up instantly by tapping their carrier networks, and scale down just as fast when demand drops. Their hybrid trucking approach lets them survive market swings that kill traditional carriers.
There is a catch, though. Brokers control nothing beyond the deal itself. Service quality depends entirely on which carrier shows up, and margins can disappear when competition heats up. Success depends on relationships and market knowledge rather than physical assets.
The Hybrid Advantage: Blending Assets and Brokerage
What if we told you, though, that you don’t have to pick exclusively between owning trucks or staying asset-light? Adopting a hybrid trucking model is like having your cake and eating it too: owning fleets and running brokerage operations under the same roof while building supply chain resilience.
Capacity That Bends Without Breaking
Hybrid operators never turn down profitable freight because they ran out of trucks. When their fleet is maxed out, they broker loads to partner carriers. When demand drops and trucks would sit idle, they park the iron and let third-party carriers handle the freight at lower margins.
Carroll Fulmer could have survived if it had embraced this flexibility. Instead of bleeding cash trying to keep 400 trucks moving during the recession, the company could have parked half its fleet and brokered freight through other carriers. The fixed costs would have dropped while it maintained customer relationships and revenue streams.
Companies like Anderson Trucking Service prove this works. They haul freight on company trucks when it makes sense, but seamlessly switch to brokerage mode when customer demand exceeds their capacity. No load goes unserved, and no customer gets handed off to competitors.
Riding Market Waves Instead of Drowning
Market volatility becomes manageable when you can adjust your operating model in real time.
Schneider National mastered this approach, running thousands of company trucks alongside Schneider Logistics, its massive brokerage operation. Tight markets mean deploying owned trucks on profitable loads while brokering everything else. Soft markets mean parking expensive company trucks and letting cheaper third-party capacity handle low-margin freight.
Midsized carriers learned this lesson during the 2023-2024 downturn through fleet rightsizing. Smart operators stopped forcing all trucks to chase rock-bottom rates and switched to operating maybe 70% of their fleet while brokering the rest.
The hybrid model works like a shock absorber that smooths out the extremes that crush single-model operators.
Smart Money Decisions and Customer Loyalty
Hybrid carriers make economic choices that pure asset or brokerage companies can’t. Modern TMS platforms let them see everything — company trucks and brokered loads — in one place, while cross-trained teams can flip between dispatching and brokering as markets change.
The real magic, though, happens with customers. Hybrid operators can promise shippers something pure asset or brokerage companies can’t: “We can always get your load covered.”
Company fleet available means direct service. Fleet maxed out means they tap extensive carrier networks without missing a beat. Especially during volatile times, shippers are more likely to choose providers who deliver consistent performance regardless of what the market does.
Foundation + Action: Your Blueprint and Implementation Strategies for Supply Chain Flexibility
Seeing how the winners play the game is one thing. Putting their strategies to work in your operation is another. Building supply chain resilience by embracing flexibility doesn’t happen overnight, but you can start putting the wheels in motion with the below blueprint and tips:
Your Blueprint for Successful Flexibility Implementation
First, a quick blueprint:
- Senior Management Commitment: Leadership must set a clear vision and business plan, ensuring strong management and sufficient resources for both asset carrier and broker/3PL divisions.
- Strong Services Branding: Clearly communicate to customers that you offer both robust asset carrier and broker/3PL services.
- Flexible Contracts: Negotiate agreements with equipment suppliers and customers that allow you to adjust your vehicle capacity quickly and without heavy penalties and shift a part of asset carrier freight to third party carriers, respectively.
- Advanced Transport Management System (TMS): Use a top-tier TMS with integrated solutions, so you can easily shift your business mix and optimize performance.
Additional Tips for Enhancing Operational Agility and Resilience
Consider also these additional six tips that you can start adopting today:
- Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket: Asset carriers should grab brokerage authority, and brokers should secure some guaranteed capacity through leased trucks or dedicated owner-operators. Even a small hybrid capability gives you a pressure valve when markets flip.
- Watch the Market and Move Fast: Monitor load-to-truck ratios, spot rates, and fuel prices like your life depends on it. When you see trouble coming, park trucks or scale up before your competitors figure out what’s happening.
- Keep Your Fixed Costs Lean: The lower your overhead, the longer you can survive downturns. Consider equipment leases instead of purchases, use owner-operators for variable capacity, and question every fixed expense that doesn’t directly generate revenue.
- Let Technology Do the Heavy Lifting: Invest in TMS systems that handle both fleet management and brokerage. Good data tells you whether to use company trucks or farm loads out, and automation helps you scale without adding headcount.
- Build Your Safety Net Through Relationships: Brokers need solid carrier networks, carriers need loyal customers, and everyone needs backup plans. Strong relationships smooth out the bumps when you need to make sudden capacity adjustments.
- Plan for When Things Go Sideways: Develop playbooks for different scenarios before you need them. What happens if your biggest customer cuts volume in half? Having predefined responses beats scrambling when a crisis hits.
The Road Forward: Flexibility Wins
Carroll Fulmer’s collapse teaches a clear lesson about survival in freight’s new reality: Companies married to single operating models get crushed when markets turn ugly. The winners embrace hybrid trucking strategies that let them pivot between asset-heavy and asset-light operations, and build supply chain resilience that bends without breaking. Whether you own trucks, broker loads, or do both, flexibility beats size every time.
At EKA Solutions, tools like our Omni-TMS™ make this flexibility possible for trucking companies, brokers, and shippers who refuse to get locked into rigid business models. We unify all operations, use AI to optimize load decisions, and connect all your tools without the tech sprawl that kills agility. While legacy systems trap companies in single-mode thinking, our ecosystem empowers the automation and operational agility you need to make a hybrid model work in the first place. Add to that EKA’s unsurpassed consultative and on-going support services and your company is primed to thrive in all market conditions.