Insurance Up 18.6%. Your Carrier Costs Are a Hidden NetPPM Leak.

18.6% higher insurance costs. Fewer crashes than the prior measurement period. Those two facts existing simultaneously tells you something important: your carriers are paying more for risk that isn't their fault, and they will pass it to you. They already are. The American Transportation Research Institute confirmed the premium spike in a recent industry report. Crash frequency dropped. Premiums climbed anyway. Jury verdict inflation and nuclear verdicts in liability cases are doing what safer drivers could not undo. The cost structure of every lane you run just changed.

Where This Shows Up in Your Numbers

It does not show up as a line item labeled 'insurance surcharge.' It shows up as a carrier rate increase at your next bid cycle. It shows up as a fuel-and-risk accessorial buried in an invoice. Multiply that across your inbound freight volume and your outbound parcel spend. Now look at your NetPPM by ASIN cohort. A 3% carrier rate increase on a product already running thin margin can flip a profitable SKU negative before your next quarterly review. The brands that catch this early are the ones who audit landed cost at the SKU level, not the category level.

The Decision in Front of You

You have a narrow window before Q3 contract negotiations close. Most brands wait for carriers to raise rates and then react. That is the wrong sequence. Pull your top 20 highest-velocity SKUs by inbound freight spend. Calculate current landed cost per unit including all carrier line items. Then pressure-test what a 6% carrier rate increase does to that number—because 6% is a conservative estimate given the insurance trajectory ATRI is reporting. If your margin floor disappears at 6%, you have a positioning problem, not a freight problem.

Three Moves That Actually Matter

First, diversify your carrier mix before you need to. Single-carrier dependency on any lane gives you zero negotiating leverage when that carrier reprices. Identify two qualified alternatives for every lane carrying more than $40,000 in monthly freight volume. Second, revisit your inbound routing guide. Consolidation opportunities at origin often exist that brands ignore when freight feels cheap. They are not cheap right now. Third, look at your DC dwell time. Carriers price risk partly on detention exposure. Tighter inbound scheduling reduces your exposure and gives you a credible counterargument when a carrier cites risk-based surcharges.

The Optimistic Read

Your competitors are absorbing this passively. Most brands in the mid-market tier treat freight as a fixed cost and move on. That creates an arbitrage window. The brands that build tighter carrier programs now—shorter dwell, consolidated inbound, documented routing compliance—will price their landed cost more accurately going into the back half of 2026. Accurate landed cost means better promotional decisions. Better promotional decisions protect sell-through without sacrificing margin. That is a real competitive advantage built from a freight audit, not a product launch.

Three Questions to Pressure-Test Your Freight Position

Can you name the current all-in landed cost per unit for your top five SKUs by revenue—not category average, unit-level? If your primary carrier on your highest-volume inbound lane raised rates 8% tomorrow, which SKUs cross into negative NetPPM territory? When did your team last run a carrier alternatives analysis on lanes above $30,000 monthly—and was it before or after your last contract renewal? Answer those three. Then book the freight review.