New trucking companies in Illinois, April 2026
Illinois is adding about 384 new for-hire carriers a month (average of the three complete months to April 2026), +32% versus the prior three months and +33% versus a year earlier. The provisional count for August 2026 is 209, 130 of them single-truck operations. Over the last 12 months Illinois added 3,594 new carriers against 36,278 currently active, a 9.9% annual entry rate.
The two most recent months are provisional (census lag and MC-docket assignment delay); read trends on the three-month averages.
| Month | New carriers | With ≥1 power unit | Single-truck | Share of US |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 (provisional) | 209 | 198 | 130 | 5.6% |
| July 2026 (provisional) | 387 | 370 | 260 | 5.2% |
| June 2026 (undercounted) | 155 | 147 | 107 | 5.0% |
| May 2026 (undercounted) | 198 | 170 | 133 | 5.0% |
| April 2026 | 425 | 361 | 316 | 5.6% |
| March 2026 | 366 | 315 | 276 | 4.7% |
| February 2026 | 361 | 313 | 275 | 5.4% |
| January 2026 | 365 | 307 | 271 | 5.4% |
| December 2025 | 262 | 225 | 194 | 5.1% |
| November 2025 | 243 | 206 | 171 | 4.8% |
| October 2025 | 289 | 260 | 236 | 4.7% |
| September 2025 | 334 | 294 | 237 | 5.5% |
| August 2025 | 301 | 251 | 199 | 4.8% |
| July 2025 | 315 | 258 | 206 | 5.0% |
| June 2025 | 271 | 242 | 186 | 4.6% |
| May 2025 | 323 | 280 | 206 | 5.4% |
| April 2025 | 303 | 264 | 196 | 5.0% |
| March 2025 | 304 | 262 | 185 | 4.4% |
| February 2025 | 262 | 240 | 166 | 4.4% |
| January 2025 | 307 | 274 | 180 | 5.3% |
| December 2024 | 253 | 223 | 162 | 5.7% |
| November 2024 | 224 | 191 | 131 | 5.1% |
| October 2024 | 252 | 220 | 146 | 5.0% |
| September 2024 | 237 | 209 | 137 | 5.0% |
Browse the carriers themselves, with authority and insurance status, on USDOT Index: Illinois carriers.
May 2026 and June 2026 are undercounted. FMCSA moved carrier registration to a new system on 2026-05-14 and stopped writing the MC docket into the census for several weeks. This series counts carriers that carry a docket, so those months show roughly half their true entries; the underlying registration rate did not change. The headline averages on this page skip them, and the monthly table marks them. Treat any average spanning the cutover as a floor rather than a measurement.
Method
Active carriers in the FMCSA Company Census with a physical address in Illinois, an MC docket, and a USDOT number issued in the month shown. Older months understate entries slightly because carriers that have since gone inactive are excluded. Source: FMCSA via data.transportation.gov (public domain), reloaded monthly.
Last updated 2026-09-08 · first published 2026-09-07. Data sources are listed on each page; see About for methodology.