Metzler, whose employer operates about 5,000 trucks and has a freight-brokerage business, agrees that the industry has seen a sharp reduction. But there are other factors that come into play.

For instance, “a lot of shippers have locked in rates for the next year or so,” he said. “That’s going to be a factor going the other way.”

Tom Sanderson, president and CEO of the Frisco, Texas, third-party logistics provider Transplace Inc., said that freight rates will climb only with substantial growth in the economy.

“Although we’re seeing a little bit of economic growth, we’re a long way from a robust economy,” he said.

Sanderson pointed to lower housing starts and drop-offs in retail sales and auto sales. “It’s going to get better,” he said. “But it has a long way to go to get to the average levels” on an annual basis of freight shipping, he said.

And although the industry has lost capacity, it’s “not as much as you’d expect, given how severe the freight recession has been,” Sanderson said.

John Esparza, president and CEO of the Texas Motor Transport Association argued that although the industry has shrunk, many trucking operators have put their vehicles into parking lots, furloughed drivers, and weathered the storm until demand picks up.

Pohlen says that there are other factors at work that haven’t been in play during previous recessions and recoveries, and that these have left capacity in the industry unusually tight.

Many people simply got out of the industry in the recent years because of the drop in demand and high fuel prices, Pohlen said. As a result, in 2007 and 2008, more than 40,000 trucks were shipped overseas, Pohlen said. Those trucks were sent to places such as Eastern Europe, Russia, and Nigeria, where there was demand for movement of freight via less-expensive trucks, he said.

The projected rise in trucking prices will eventually be passed along to consumers, he said. “Companies have absorbed all they could to hold the line to this point,” he said. “I think they’ll have to pass this along.”