Managing freight used to assume a market you could optimise inside. You picked the right carriers, negotiated hard, held your rates, and the system mostly kept its shape. That is no longer the market we are operating in.
Supporting the movement of more than 200 million items across Australia and New Zealand gives us a unique position from which to observe the freight market at scale, and that perspective makes the Freightability Report 2026 possible: a market where performance, price and capacity are increasingly moving apart, shaped by the carrier, the mode and the corridor.
When the ground shifts like that, the job itself changes. It stops being about managing freight and becomes about orchestrating it, which means running the whole network as one system and making decisions with the full picture in front of you rather than one rate at a time.
Performance is splitting, not declining
Start with reliability. The national average for delivery in full, on time (DIFOT) now sits at 78%, which on paper suggests the market is improving. The issue is that the average masks what is actually happening underneath it.
Leading carriers are consistently up in the high 90s while a long tail sits well below them, and that gap keeps widening. It is a structural shift, driven by demand volatility, urban congestion and labour supply rather than the performance of any one carrier.
One finding stands out. Non-premium services are now outperforming premium ones on reliability, which means in a lot of cases you are paying for speed and getting less certainty in return. The takeaway is that there is no single carrier performance number left to manage to. There is a spread, and knowing where each of your carriers sits within it is what separates a resilient network from an expensive one.
There is no single market rate left to defend
Pricing tells the same story from another angle. Parcel rates have come down 2 to 4% across every major corridor, particularly on the busy east coast lanes, which means anyone still on last year’s rates is now paying above market. Full truck load has gone the other way, with costs on our network up 12.48% year on year. Brisbane is the outlier. Pallet prices there are up 7.8% and demand has climbed at the same time, which usually means a corridor running close to its capacity rather than moving through a normal cycle. Fuel has kept feeding into real rates since the report came out. Put all of that together and there is no single market rate left to defend. There are dozens of them, all moving independently, and a rate card built on last year’s numbers is leaving money in the wrong places.
The carrier mix is where the advantage is
This is where orchestration becomes concrete rather than a concept. The average Australian B2B shipper now runs 5.4 carriers, because no single network can cover same-day, linehaul, regional and last-mile at the price and performance every lane needs.
Running several carriers is not a problem you fix. It is the reality of moving freight in this market, and the cost of it only shows up when it is left unmanaged, when allocation, performance and price all sit in separate spreadsheets and nothing ties them together.
The real advantage does not come from any one carrier relationship. It comes from how well you run the whole mix, and from being able to walk into your next carrier conversation with a clear view of exactly where each of them stands.
From managing to orchestrating
That is what the data is telling us. The market is not declining, it is pulling apart, and the advantage goes to whoever can see the whole picture and act on it. That is what MachShip is built for.
It is the operational layer a supply chain network runs through, connecting more than 500 carriers and every channel on one platform, whether you are moving a single consignment or running a complex multinational operation. It lets you manage your whole freight operation from one place. You set the rules once, across weight, zone, cost and priority, and they apply automatically to every shipment, with every carrier, order and delivery visible in a single view.
The best place to start is your own network, and where it sits against each of these trends, because that tells you the most about the carriers you depend on. The full picture, across every corridor, mode and carrier tier, is in the Freightability Report 2026.
Sam Rowse
Sam Rowse is CEO of MachShip, Australia and New Zealand's leading supply chain orchestration platform. With more than 15 years of experience in supply chain technology, Sam has focused on helping businesses move from managing freight to orchestrating it through better data, automation and a single platform that connects every carrier and channel.
Under his leadership, MachShip now supports the movement of 200 million items across Australia and New Zealand, connecting 25,000 customers to the region's largest carrier network. Sam works closely with carriers, 4PL providers and leaders across supply chain, logistics and procurement to understand the forces reshaping how freight moves.
