Read on for expert insights on all things CPG freight market, retailer dynamics, and what shippers can expect heading into quarter four (Q4).
What Could Impact My Freight in Q4?
Freezing Temperatures & Winter Weather Disruption
Freezing temps vary across the U.S., but there are regions that almost always see dangerous cold weather. Typically starting in October and lasting through March, these regions include parts of the Northeast, upper Midwest, Rocky Mountains, and Canada. Although liquids are especially vulnerable, other products can be susceptible to freeze damage without proper precautions. Failure to arm shipments against this can result in spoiled or destroyed products and cost shippers big.
Click here for more information on how to protect your freight from freezing this winter.
Peak Holiday Shipping
During the holiday season, we usually see tighter capacity and slightly higher rates as shipping volumes increase. This can lead to service failures, lost sales, and retailer chargebacks.
Many consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands rely on the holiday season for a decent chunk of their revenue. In turn, most ramp up their production and supply efforts during this time of year, meaning more freight orders will need to be fulfilled.
Because carriers limit their hours to accommodate drivers and families around the holidays, they must complete more hauls with less available service days. Most are also closed for Thanksgiving and operate on reduced hours the day before and after. The same goes for Christmas, which noticeably shrinks available capacity for your freight. To complicate the situation further, increased demand for freight services and increased orders during peak means carriers often overcommit.
This can lead to service failures as they scramble to cover the increased volume, which equals freight left on the dock, missed deliveries, lost sales, and retailer chargebacks. This is rather problematic when it comes to fulfilling POs, particularly during the busiest shopping season of the year.
2025 Atlantic Hurricane Season
The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season officially began on June 1 and will end on November 30.
This year’s season has been uncharacteristically quiet so far, and that lull has prompted AccuWeather to adjust its forecast for the number of storms expected in 2025.
In March, 13 to 18 named storms and seven to 10 hurricanes were forecasted. Forecasters now expect 13 to 16 named storms and six to nine hurricanes.
The first of the season, Tropical Storm Andrea, formed on June 23, marking the latest start to an Atlantic season since 2014. Shortly after, Tropical Storm Barry formed and quickly made landfall in Veracruz.
In July, Tropical Storm Chantal impacted the East Coast of the United States. In August, Hurricane Erin became the strongest storm system of the year worldwide to date, reaching Category 5 strength. Though never making landfall, it impacted Cape Verde, where it killed several people and caused significant damage, along with the eastern Caribbean, and the Atlantic coast of the United States.
Since hurricanes can bring fierce winds and flooding that damage infrastructure and physical assets, manufacturers or shipping facilities will often shut down operations to avoid jeopardizing the safety of employees and company property.
Click here for more information about how to protect your supply chain during the 2025 hurricane season.
Tariffs on Consumer Goods
The trade wars taking place between the U.S. and 50+ countries have fluctuated almost non-stop over the last few months, making it difficult to know the current tariffs in place at any given time.
Initially, back in February 2025, the U.S. imposed a 25% tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on all imports from China. This resulted in retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. from all three countries, ranging from 10-25% on specific types of imports. In March, the U.S. then imposed a 25% tariff on all countries exporting steel and aluminum to the U.S..
The months following these initial tariffs have been a whirlwind to say the least, with some tariff amounts fluctuating from 20%, up to 145%, back down to 30%, and down again to 10%.
In early August 2025, the U.S. imposed a 10% baseline tariff on all countries not otherwise dictated, a 15% tariff on all countries with trade deficits with the U.S., and tariffs ranging between 18-50% on all imports from multiple other countries including (but not limited to) Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, and Thailand.
For the most up-to-date tariff information, please reference this tracker.
A Shifting Demographic of Truck Drivers
Although there are 90,000 more truck drivers operating today than there were in 2020, today’s driver population is mostly made up of tiny companies with limited operational flexibility. They are often cash-strapped, working off razor-thin margins, and don’t have many extra assets available.
Think about how impactful this is for the average CPG shipper. You’re not dealing with hyper-sophisticated carriers with massive databases of consignee information or an abundance of patience for receiver issues.
Just take the recent system failures at UNFI for example. At the beginning of June 2025, the distributor was hit by a cyberattack and was forced to shut down its entire network to contain the incident. The outage prevented UNFI from fulfilling and distributing customer orders at scale.
In the midst of unforeseen circumstances like this, it’s crucial to have seasoned carrier partners on your side who know how to control the controllables and navigate around disruptions.
These types of carriers are increasingly difficult to locate in today’s market, so it’s wise to leverage a well-connected third party to help you do so.
Inflation
Inflation can have ripple effects on the cost of fuel, equipment, labor, insurance, and inventory storage. The Federal Reserve sets a target rate of 2% for maximum employment and price stability.
Good news for us all: inflation rates have remained low and steady, consistently fluctuating between 2 and 3% this year. At the end of August 2025, they reside at 2.9%.
Fuel Prices
When the price of fuel goes up, carriers are required to increase their rates or take some losses. Good news for shippers and carriers alike: diesel prices have remained very consistent over the last few months.
In April 2025, we reported an average diesel price of $3.592. In July 2025, the average price increased slightly to land at $3.775. And at the end of September 2025, prices are averaging around $3.749.
How Are Freight Market Dynamics Trending in Q4?
For more insights on what’s to come in Q4, tune into The TRUCK YEAH! Podcast presented by Zipline Logistics. The latest episode features your hosts, Teddy Lee Knox and Jesse Juett, along with special guest Andrew Lynch, Co-founder of Zipline Logistics, and dives even deeper into the variables discussed in this article.
“We’re entering busy season, says Lynch in the latest episode. “This is the time typically, right? We normally see a peak during Q4 retail season: people start to prep for holiday shopping and start buying more snacks and sodas for tailgates. So, yeah, it should be humming out there.”
“Should be,” said Juett in response, “is the key word. What appears to have happened is some inventories were pulled in, which means the ‘stuff’ is already here. So ocean freight continues to drop. We’ll see what happens on the import side of things.”
“Yeah, there seems to be lag between what economic survey data says and what economic activity actually looks like,” replied Lynch. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like this. One month, the consumer is feeling down about inflation or their capacity to spend. So the next month, their spending is a bit lower. And then the following month, consumer sentiment polls really high. And then the month after that — sure enough — the consumer doesn’t perform as well as we expected them to. Last I saw, consumer sentiment surveys were pretty positive. So, I’d like to think that will translate to better consumer activity in October and November. But it will be interesting to see how consumer mindset and actual economic data compare.”
Tune in to Episode 72 for more updates in the CPG/retail freight market just like this: we’re talking all things tariffs, inflation, holiday spending, and more.
Trust Zipline With Your Freight in Turbulent Times
As you can see, there are plenty of variables in the CPG/retail freight market that make it difficult to keep a pulse on the best supply chain strategy. But the good news is, you don’t have to navigate all of this alone.
Zipline Logistics is the only third-party logistics solutions provider in North America exclusively servicing the consumer-packaged goods sector. Our uniquely qualified carrier network, world-class team of retail transportation experts, and state-of-the-art shipper intelligence tools maximize client revenue and gross margin by eliminating out-of-stocks through optimized, on-time in-full performance. By focusing on retail-specialization, we have maintained a customer satisfaction score ranking 5 times the industry average throughout consecutive years of award-winning growth.
Zipline processes were built specifically to resolve the most critical logistics challenges faced by consumer goods brands shipping into retail. We tailor strategies to reduce overall transportation spend, optimize retail performance, and beat out the competition for shelf space. 97% of our orders end up on retailer’s shelves such as Walmart, Costco, UNFI and KeHE, and Sam’s Club.
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