Fleets Explained: How carriers can beat traffic congestion

Sitting in traffic isn’t just frustrating. For motor carriers, it’s an expensive problem that burns fuel, eats labor costs, and results in missed delivery windows. As freight volumes grow and aging infrastructure struggles to keep pace, traffic congestion is becoming a persistent supply chain bottleneck—one that’s forcing owners to rethink the way they operate.

According to the American Transportation Research Institute’s (ATRI) 2024 Cost of Congestion report, annual trucking congestion costs soared to $108.8 billion in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, marking a 15% year-over-year increase. 

With costs continuing to climb, fleets are under increasing pressure to minimize congestion impact on profit margins and uptime.

What is traffic congestion?

Traffic congestion occurs when the number of vehicles on the road at a given time and place exceeds the network's capacity, causing drivers to slow down or stop altogether. 

While congestion has long clogged highways and delayed freight, it’s become a bigger problem in the era of electronic logging devices (ELDs) and hours-of-service (HOS) mandates; if drivers can’t move, business grinds to a halt.

When it comes to traffic, Dean Croke, a former truck driver who’s now an industry analyst at DAT Freight & Analytics, says it’s important to differentiate between truck and consumer traffic.

“Consumers sit in metro traffic twice a day, but carriers also have to contend with port gates, bridges, tunnels, intermodal yards, and distribution centers,” Croke told FleetOwner. While most experienced carriers understand these chokepoints and price accordingly, he said the bigger challenge is the disruptions operators can’t plan for.

More than just a condition drivers recognize, congestion is also quantifiable.

For more than two decades, ATRI has collected truck GPS data to support the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Freight Mobility Initiative, which uses real-world freight movement to measure fleet performance and roadway efficiency. 

According to Rebecca Brewster, president and COO of ATRI, the organization uses its unique GPS dataset to develop and monitor key performance indicators that measure congestion and gauge the nation’s freight transportation system performance over time.

Traffic congestion: The real costs to fleets

Beyond lost productivity, traffic congestion also affects trucking companies in several critical ways.

1. Fuel and equipment costs

Congestion increases both fuel consumption and equipment wear. Every minute a truck spends idling in traffic burns diesel without moving freight. At the same time, repeated stop-and-go conditions accelerate vehicle wear.

According to ATRI’s Cost of Congestion report, congestion causes the trucking industry to waste more than 6.4 billion gallons of diesel fuel annually, costing fleet owners $32.1 billion based on 2022 data—figures that are no doubt higher in today’s environment of rising oil prices. The report also estimates that congestion adds more than $7,500 in annual wear-and-tear costs per combination truck.

2. Labor costs

ATRI research shows that congestion accounts for 1.2 billion hours of lost driver productivity annually—equivalent to removing some 430,000 commercial truck drivers from the road for a full year. That lost time leads to higher labor costs, with drivers staying on the clock while covering fewer miles and making fewer deliveries. 

Congestion also limits how much freight operators can move within hours-of-service constraints, further impacting operations.

“In the post-ELD world, time is the scarce resource—not miles,” Croke said. “Every unproductive hour comes off a fixed budget of driving and on-duty hours. Lose 90 minutes at a port gate and another two hours at the dock, and now your reload options are gone. The hours you can work and earn a living are compressed. You’re shutting down for the day somewhere you didn’t plan to.”

3. Service and revenue impact

In addition to increasing costs, congestion degrades quality of service, frustrates customers, and cuts into the bottom line.

“Drivers sitting stuck in traffic burn available hours of service, ultimately impacting their ability to meet delivery schedules,” Brewster said. “This can potentially drive up detention time when they do reach their destination and may force those drivers to locate truck parking ahead of their planned locations due to depleted hours of service availability.”

Late deliveries can erode customer trust and influence future carrier decisions, particularly in industries where reliability is a key differentiator—like retail, manufacturing, and food distribution.

Brewster added that congestion can increase driver stress levels—sometimes to the point they consider leaving the industry instead of losing large portions of their day to traffic. In that light, congestion can also contribute to ongoing driver retention challenges. 

Traffic congestion: Operational ripple effects

Congestion doesn’t just delay a single truck—it disrupts entire fleets. When a driver arrives late at one stop, that delay can cascade through the rest of the route, affecting delivery windows, dock schedules, and downstream pickups.

These disruptions also increase the workload on dispatch teams now tasked with constantly rebalancing routes, appointments, and driver hours in real time. 

To keep freight moving, dispatchers have to rework plans on the fly while customers track ever-moving ETAs throughout the day.

Taken together, this unpredictability makes it harder for fleets to maintain consistent service levels—and harder for customers to trust future orders will arrive on time.

Why traditional planning is no longer enough

Traditional planning tools rely on historical averages, fixed assumptions, and so-called “typical” operating conditions. But today’s freight environment—full of dynamic congestion patterns and sudden disruptions—has made static planning far less reliable.

As route conditions shift throughout the day and lane performance changes each hour, capacity assumptions quickly fall out of sync with what’s happening on the ground.

“The bigger issue is the disruptions you can’t plan for—but even then, the market adapts pretty quickly,” Croke said. “Look at what happened when the Key Bridge came down in Baltimore in 2024. Drayage capacity had to reroute through the Fort McHenry and [Baltimore] Harbor tunnels, neither of which allows hazmat loads. Loads that used to run an hour were taking three. But the market adjusted. Rates firmed up on adjacent lanes almost immediately because the clock math had changed for every driver working that port.” 

Even when disruptions are sudden, the freight market adjusts. But those adjustments highlight how traditional planning assumptions can break down when operating conditions shift—underscoring the need for a more dynamic, real-time approach to planning and execution. 

How fleets are responding to traffic congestion

Addressing congestion starts with understanding where delays are forming and how they shift by lane. To anticipate changes in rates and capacity, Croke suggests tracking load-to-truck ratios by lane rather than by region.

“When drivers are turning down loads out of Atlanta or Laredo, it often means the back half of their clock is getting eaten somewhere predictable,” he said. “Watch the local news and DOT construction alerts. A bridge closure, a port strike, or a tunnel restriction doesn’t just affect trip planning. It can also discourage capacity from coming into the market, which gives you some leverage in your pricing.”

Beyond visibility, fleet owners are also rethinking how they plan, price, and operate in response to congestion.

1. Real-time routing and telematics

Congestion is unavoidable. Rush hour, bad weather, and accidents will continue to slow fleets down. While operators can’t eliminate the traffic problem altogether, they can mitigate its impact with purpose-built technology.

Using real-time traffic data and advanced routing software, fleets can plan more efficient routes that avoid known bottlenecks. Dispatchers can also rely on telematics and GPS tools to reroute trucks around emerging congestion.

Beyond improving routing, visibility also changes the way fleets think about pricing and profitability.

“Bid the lane, not the mileage,” Croke said. Time lost at ports or shipper facilities, he continued, needs to be reflected in pricing if fleets want to avoid absorbing hidden costs. “If a lane burns 90 minutes of unpaid time at a port gate or a shipper’s dock, that time has to be in the rate.”

2. Data-driven optimization

Beyond real-time routing, fleets are increasingly using data to improve the way they plan and operate.

Using AI and machine learning, operators can analyze historical and real-time data to identify recurring congestion patterns. AI-powered systems can also predict where delays are most likely to occur based on a range of factors, including time of day, facility type, and traffic history. This helps improve ETA forecast accuracy and, in turn, enhances the customer experience.

Fleets are also using data to move pickup and delivery windows away from peak congestion periods. By embracing alternative delivery timing, trucks spend less time at customer facilities and have to sit in less traffic on highways. As a result, operators can reduce time lost to predictable bottlenecks while optimizing overall asset utilization. 

When trucks sit in stop-and-go traffic, brakes, tires, and powertrains wear down. By analyzing operational and telematics data, fleets can predict component failure and schedule preventive maintenance before breakdowns occur. This helps reduce unplanned downtime while ensuring trucks are ready to go during peak demand periods.

3. Operational flexibility

While fleets can often plan for unproductive time—think seasonal traffic patterns or known urban bottlenecks—true disruptions are less predictable.

“When you can plan for unproductive time—and there are definitely places where you can anticipate schedule disruptions—you price it into your rate,” Croke said. “Volatility implies something unplanned. A named storm. The Key Bridge [collapse]. But rates adjust quickly on the spot market, where pricing is negotiated in real time.”

Ultimately, Croke argues the broader solution is operational flexibility.

“Fleets should work with their customers to help drivers make the most of their limited hours so they can be productive and well-rested,” he said. “Congestion isn’t just about sitting in traffic. It’s anything that soaks up time and can be managed.”

The new definition of fleet efficiency

As fleets continue combating congestion, operators are rethinking what productivity really means.

“The best-run fleets aren’t optimizing for miles,” Croke said. “They’re focused on revenue miles per driving hour, which includes congestion at distribution centers and receiving docks.”

In the age of congestion, time—not distance—is the industry’s most valuable asset.