December 9, 2025
Black Friday 2025 has come and gone, and peak season is in full swing. If you’re like most shippers, you’re trying to make sense of demand patterns, capacity constraints, and rising costs while planning for 2026.
We sat down with Michael Obi, FRAYT’s Director of Strategic Solutions, for a mid-peak check-in. Obi works daily with shippers on strategic planning, recurring routes, and peak capacity, giving him a direct line of sight into what’s breaking down and what’s working.
Below, based on Obi’s insights, we cover five lessons we’re learning on the fly in the thick of peak season 2025 and five concrete expectations for 2026, plus how FRAYT can help you execute on them.
Even though Black Friday just wrapped, volumes are still building, promotions keep rolling, and the operational picture of peak season 2025 remains a work in progress.
Obi sees different behaviors and lessons playing out across three key segments: construction, consumer retail/e-commerce, and automotive. Each tells a different story, and together, they’re shaping how shippers approach middle mile delivery and last mile strategies.
Construction and homebuilding have cooled off, and Obi treats that signal seriously.
“When you really break it out into three different segments, [on] the construction side, things have slowed down. And I think that’s always a good indicator when you’re looking at what the freight side will look like.”
Fewer large home projects, renovations, and DIY overhauls mean less demand for bulky, heavy shipments. The freight mix is shifting toward smaller items and consolidated runs. For peak planning, expect fewer “big and bulky” swings and a steadier flow of must-have products.
Shippers should adjust their mode mix, capacity reservations, and route structures accordingly. FRAYT’s rightsized box trucks and cargo vans are well-suited here, offering flexibility that large, fixed assets simply can’t provide.
Here’s a curveball: the classic November and December surge is flattening out. Consumers have figured out that deals run year-round, and they’re timing their purchases accordingly.
“Maybe we’re not seeing that historical spike in November and December because, hey, maybe I have a better opportunity to order this in June when I know I’ll have a little bit more surplus cash to spend,”
In other words, people are stretching their dollars and making more calculated moves amid economic uncertainty. Peak season is no longer a single tidal wave — it’s becoming an extended period of pressure that demands sustainable networks and teams, rather than an all-hands-on-deck sprint for a few weeks.
Demand forecasting has to account for this flatter, but longer, tail.
Nobody hands out trophies for last-minute saves. Obi is adamant about addressing problems before they become problems: “It never hurts to say it enough: over-prepare for the things that you know are preventative. It's better to get ahead of it.”
Over-preparation means lining up an adequate fleet before volumes hit, keeping driver documents current, training drivers on standard operating procedures, and aligning on service expectations and contingency plans early.
FRAYT works with shippers ahead of peak to model capacity, validate recurring lanes, and document SOPs. The best peak seasons are often the ones that look boring from the outside — because all the preventative work happened weeks or months earlier.
LTL has been the default for a long time, but many shippers have been burned and are looking for alternatives.
“People have shipped LTL, and with that, they have experienced damages, they’ve experienced shortages, they’ve experienced delayed transit times, and then the most painful one is the cost that comes with that,” Obi remarks.
Dedicated space solves those pain points. A van or box truck fully allocated to your product means better control of transit times, lower risk of damage and shortages, clearer visibility, and fewer unpleasant surprises.
“When you know it’s dedicated, you have full feasibility, and it really helps minimize the surprises down the line. It gives you a little more peace of mind.”
Shippers under stress will change modes if reliability and predictability are on the table. FRAYT’s vehicles deliver that dedicated capacity on demand, whether same day or scheduled.
Ad hoc, last-minute runs get painful fast, especially during peak season. Every unplanned shipment competes for limited capacity and drives up costs.
That’s precisely why Obi pushes shippers toward planned, recurring runs whenever possible:
“Where you have opportunities to schedule things, go with as many planned and recurring events as possible, rather than ad hoc, for-the-moment things. It works better for all parties involved: the drivers, the freight, the service provider, and ultimately the end customer.”
FRAYT has leaned hard into recurring models throughout 2025.
Obi continues: “We have really tried to plan ahead with our customers and our partners to get to more of that repeatable, consistent, recurring model — staffing the capacity when we need to, making sure that we’re able to fulfill any orders that we may receive.”
Daily or weekly store replenishments, regular warehouse-to-store transfers, milk runs, scheduled pickups, and returns: they all thrive on predictability. The more volume you convert from chaotic ad hoc to recurring and planned, the smoother your peak season will be.
Everything happening during peak season 2025 is pointing somewhere. These patterns aren’t random, and they won’t disappear when the calendar flips. Obi spends his days talking with shippers, watching the following trends take shape in real time.
Nobody wants to chase down updates anymore. Shippers have endured too many peak seasons refreshing tracking pages and firing off “where’s my freight?” emails. That era is ending.
“A couple of things that come to mind for 2026 are visibility and transparency. I think that overcommunicating with shippers will become a standard as we get into the next year,” Obi says.
His point is blunt: if you’re only reaching out when something breaks, you’re already behind. Shippers want providers who figure this out will pull ahead; those who don’t will still be sending end-of-day batch updates like it’s 2015.
“That will be a key differentiator in who is being proactive,” Obi emphasizes. “Who is going above and beyond to make sure that customers consistently get the best service?”
Shippers are done scattering freight across a dozen carriers and hoping it all arrives intact. Consolidation is winning, and local box trucks are becoming the workhorse of choice.
“Just that shift away when it’s something local or at the regional level of going to that box truck — [that has] that flexibility and possibly even cheaper cost,” Obi says.
Think about it: You don’t need a 53-foot trailer to move product between a distribution center and three stores across town. You need a box truck, a reliable driver, and a sensible route. Rightsized vehicles on tighter loops beat the old hub-and-spoke model for speed, cost, and control.
Expect 2026 to bring more regional hubs, smaller but more frequent transfers, and zero patience for delays. FRAYT’s network was designed for exactly this: local and regional capacity that flexes with your volume.
Here’s the elephant in the room: many shippers run nationwide operations with critical information trapped in silos, spreadsheets, and overextended employees’ heads.
“When you’re thinking about big-scale operations nationwide, you have a lot of siloed systems today — a lot of the things that live in employees’ heads that never make it to the central database,” Obi says.
Critical knowledge disappears when people change roles, market-specific workarounds go undocumented, and communication gaps between regions create chaos during peak. None of that scales.
Shippers heading into 2026 will prioritize centralized platforms that unify transportation data across markets and modes. They’ll look for partners who integrate cleanly rather than adding another login or dashboard to manage.
Obi stresses that “being able to scale your operations, but keep it centralized with a platform or solution [like] FRAYT, where we’re able to offer you solutions nationwide throughout several markets, will make all the difference.”
Technology should make decisions easier, not harder. Obi expects 2026 to reward shippers and providers who can offer the right option at the right moment without endless back-and-forth.
“Optimization, being able to offer the most efficient, fastest, and economically smart delivery experience, will be key to clients,” he says.
Smart offers mean systems evaluate cost, time, and capacity, then recommends the best path forward — no more wading through rate sheets or waiting for quotes. Automated decision-making that balances speed, savings, and customer experience will become the expectation.
And customers? They want control over delivery windows.
“Being able to give customers that flexibility and really shift the personalization preferences to the customer is something that also comes to the forefront,” Obi notes.
Precise windows, grouped deliveries, and options that save money or reduce carbon footprint are increasingly expected. FRAYT supports same day, scheduled, and on-demand runs, letting shippers plug into that flexibility without rebuilding their entire operation.
Pricing pressure isn’t going away. Middle mile and last mile delivery costs during peak will stay tight, and shippers who treat every provider conversation as a rate negotiation will find themselves stuck in a reactive cycle.
Obi recommends a different approach: anticipate Q1 and peak dynamics by monitoring large retailer forecasts, and work with providers on strategic planning and forecasting. Get ahead of the pricing conversation rather than chasing it.
“One thing that we’ll also start to see more of is grouping or batching,” he says.
Batching means organizing orders into consolidated delivery windows. Fewer trips, lower emissions, better economics. Customers will opt into these windows when the trade-off is clear: wait a bit longer, save money, and feel good about the environmental impact.
Shippers who design their networks around batching will outperform on cost and sustainability metrics. And FRAYT’s scheduling tools and network structure are tailor-made to make it happen.
The patterns are impossible to ignore. Demand isn’t spiking the way it used to. Customers are spreading their spending across the year, and shippers who treat November and December like a four-alarm emergency are burning through budget and goodwill for diminishing returns. Obi has been watching this all play out in real time. You can keep white-knuckling through peak every year, or you can take what 2025 is teaching you and actually build it into how you operate in 2026.
FRAYT fits the model Obi describes perfectly. Vans and box trucks that show up when you need them, without the damage claims and surprise invoices that come with traditional LTL. Recurring local runs for store transfers and milk runs your team can count on. A platform that centralizes everything so you’re not duct-taping information together from six different systems. Same day, scheduled, on-demand — whatever the situation calls for.
So, if you’re done treating peak season like a survival exercise, sign up with FRAYT. Improve your peak season efficiency while 2025 is still rolling around, and put the wheels in motion to build something even better for 2026.
