What Percent Do Freight Brokers Keep on a Load? Public Broker Margin Data (2026)

1 What Share of Each Load Do the Biggest Brokers Keep?

Read the table as two pairs, not a ranking. C.H. Robinson's segment took in 3,593,269 thousand dollars of revenue in the second quarter and kept 469,389 thousand as adjusted gross profit. A year earlier those figures were 2,918,227 and 432,248. Revenue grew faster than profit, so the share slipped even though the company still earned more dollars. The same logic applies when you work out your own cost per mile: a percentage can fall while the dollar amount holds or rises.

Adjusted gross profit is the company's own measure and leaves out certain software amortization, and RXO's figure comes from the truck brokerage line of its results. Neither number is what one broker kept on one load on one day. Individual loads vary widely around these averages, which is what the spot market data in section three tries to capture.

Why do these two companies matter to a carrier who never hauls for either? Because their quarterly reports are the only regular, public view of broker economics that anyone can read. Private brokers and small shops do not publish their margins, so analysts and carriers lean on public filers as a proxy for the market. They are also large, which means their numbers blend contract freight for big shippers with spot loads, and contract freight is usually priced differently from a single urgent load. A small broker covering one hard to place shipment can charge a very different spread than a national account desk handling a routine lane.

2 Why Did Broker Margins Fall While Freight Rates Rose?

That arithmetic is the whole story of the squeeze. When the carrier rate climbs faster than the customer rate, the broker's gap narrows in percentage terms even if dollars per mile creep up. RXO shows the same pattern: truck brokerage revenue rose from 1,025 million dollars to 1,349 million, nearly a third more, yet gross margin dollars went from 148 million to 144 million. If you want to translate a quoted rate into a number you can compare, the guide to calculating rate per mile walks through it.

For a carrier, the useful part is that the broker's cut is not fixed. This quarter it shrank because what brokers paid carriers rose faster than what shippers paid brokers. What you keep after your own costs is a separate question, covered in our breakdown of owner operator pay after expenses.

A simple illustration shows why a percentage can mislead. Imagine a broker charges a shipper one hundred dollars and pays the carrier eighty five, keeping fifteen. If the market moves and both sides rise by ten dollars, the broker still keeps fifteen dollars, but its margin is now just under fourteen percent because the base got bigger. That is a hypothetical, not a quote from any filing, yet it captures what the second quarter data shows: a margin percentage can fall without the broker earning less money per load, which is why both the percentage and the dollar figures belong in the same table.

3 What Do Spot Quotes and Carriers Say Brokers Keep?

Tabi also reported that its quote to market spread narrowed to 13.5% on a four week average basis, from 18.8% at the prior reading. The report as published by AJOT does not define either measure, and Tabi says its index uses live quoting activity and excludes contract freight, so treat both figures as a read on the spot market only. If you hunt for freight on the free load boards, these are the spreads you are working inside.

The carrier lawsuit sits at the far end of the range. In a civil racketeering complaint filed in the Eastern District of Texas against four C.H. Robinson entities and Total Quality Logistics, six carriers allege that net margin per load was 5% to 8% before 2021 and that brokers have since increased their margins to 15% to 20%. The complaint ties that claim to brokers' alleged use of illegal carriers. These are the plaintiffs' allegations and no court has tested them. The complaint does not define net margin, so the figures cannot be compared directly with the filings above. A rule of thumb often repeated in the industry puts truckload gross margin at 15 percent (commonly cited; no primary source traceable), but no primary source for it is traceable, and the filings suggest it runs high for the largest public brokers right now.

Treat any single reading as a snapshot. Tabi's two awarded margin readings moved by nearly two points in one month, which shows how quickly spot conditions change when capacity tightens or loosens. A carrier who books a load on a bad week and one who books on a good week can see very different spreads from the same broker. The practical lesson is to compare what you are offered against the market rate for that lane on that day, not against a headline percentage, and to remember that a quoted margin on awarded loads is not the same as the margin on every load a broker moves.

4 Can You See What Your Broker Made on Your Load?

The rule at the center of this is the federal broker transparency regulation, and the proposal would put a clock on it. FMCSA sent a revised version of the rulemaking, still at the proposed rule stage according to FreightWaves, to the White House review office on August 27, 2026. That review can run up to 90 days, and a revised proposal would still need public comment before any final rule, so the timing is uncertain. Until then, the practical step is to ask in writing. Name the load number, cite your right to review the transaction record, and ask for the compensation the broker received. Before you work with any broker, confirm its operating authority and look up its MC number.

Keep your rate confirmation with every load. If a broker refuses a reasonable request for the record, that refusal is itself information about how you want to do business with them.

5 What Does the C.H. Robinson and RXO Deal Change?

Nothing in the announced deal terms says what percent a merged broker would keep. The stated case is cost savings of $300 million, which is a statement about overhead, not about what carriers or shippers will pay. The question to watch is whether fewer large buyers of capacity changes the carrier side of the equation described in section two.

An announced deal is not a closed deal. Expected closing is in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval and a vote of RXO's stockholders, and the figures above will change as the combined company reports. If the vocabulary in this article is unfamiliar, our trucking glossary defines gross margin, linehaul and the other terms used here.

For carriers and owner operators, the near term is unchanged: the broker you deal with today will keep negotiating rates one load at a time, and the transparency rules described in section four apply regardless of who owns the brokerage. If your broker changes hands, it is worth confirming that its operating authority and contact details are still current, and keeping your own records of every rate you agreed to, so you can compare what you were paid against what the market was offering when the load moved.