What mode-shift data is really telling us about supply chain adaptation
- Blog
The modal data from 2025 isn't a disruption story. It's a capability test.
Air freight's share in tariff-affected corridors rose 12 percentage points and stayed there. Truck freight gained 8 points and held through year-end. Ocean dropped. China's origin share fell and didn't reverse. The companies whose shifts held weren't better-positioned—they had execution infrastructure in place before the pressure hit. The ones that snapped back had workarounds, not strategies.
Air freight's share of shipments in tariff-affected corridors rose 12 percentage points in 2025—from roughly 24 percent to 36 percent—and it did not come back down. Most analysts saw the surge and called it disruption. The more important signal is that it held.
Not everything held, though. That distinction is where the real story lives.
Two waves, two very different outcomes
The 2025 modal data show two distinct patterns and conflating them leads to the wrong conclusions.
Wave one was reactive. Companies scrambled to reroute through Mexico when tariffs hit—Mexico's origin share jumped 5.2 percentage points almost immediately. Air freight surged. Both moves looked like adaptation. Within 60–90 days, most of those gains had reversed. Mexico's share roughly halved by the second half of the year. That's a workaround that ran out of road.
Wave two looked different. The modal shifts that emerged in the second half of 2025 held through Q4 and into 2026. Air freight stayed at its elevated share. Truck freight gained 8 percentage points and held consistently through July–December—a signal of shorter supply chains, predictable border crossings and real cross-border production integration, not short-term hedging. Ocean freight fell 10–12 percentage points across both analysis windows as slow-transit, high-risk imports became harder to justify when tariff uncertainty changed the math on long lead times. China's origin share fell 2.8 percentage points across the full period and did not reverse.
Rail stayed flat at roughly 1 percent throughout. There was no meaningful alternative mode substitution—just a genuine redistribution of volume across air, truck and ocean.
What separated the companies that held from the ones that snapped back
The companies that sustained their modal shifts weren't smarter or better positioned. They had pre-approved carrier relationships, pre-negotiated spot capacity and multi-modal procurement frameworks already in place before the pressure hit. When urgency struck, they had something to execute against.
The companies that improvised and then drifted back to baseline didn't lack strategy. They lacked the execution infrastructure to make the strategy stick.
A modal mix that held through 2025 tells you a company had execution capability when it mattered. One that snapped back tells you they responded with workarounds. The question isn't which category you fall into—it's whether you know the difference, and whether your systems helped you see it.
Mode selection is no longer a cost optimization exercise
Mode selection has historically been a cost and service trade-off: pick the mode that gets the freight there at the right price. In 2025, it became something closer to a policy-risk decision. The choice between air and ocean is now inseparable from questions about duty exposure, in-transit policy changes and financial risk per entry.
Most transportation management systems (TMS) are built to optimize freight cost and delivery time. They aren't built to reason about tariff exposure, classification risk or the financial consequences of a hold at the border. There's a real gap between the decisions supply chain teams are actually making and the decisions their software thinks they're making.
The companies reading mode data as a behavioral signal—not just a cost metric—have the earliest view of where supply chains are heading next.
The analysis referenced in this post draws from Infios's proprietary aggregated U.S. customs entry data.
What is your modal data telling you right now? If the answer is "cost and delivery time," your TMS might be solving last year's problem.
FAQs
Companies that had multi-modal procurement frameworks in place before the tariff pressure hit were able to sustain air freight at elevated share—roughly 36 percent—rather than reverting to baseline. The shift held because it was backed by pre-approved carrier relationships and pre-negotiated capacity, not improvised spot buying.
A modal shift that reverses within 60–90 days typically indicates a reactive workaround rather than a structural change. In 2025, companies that rerouted through Mexico saw those gains roughly halve by mid-year—a sign they had responded to disruption without the execution infrastructure to sustain a new operating model.
Ocean freight dropped 10–12 percentage points as tariff uncertainty changed the risk calculus on long lead times. When in-transit policy changes can alter landed cost before a shipment clears customs, slow-transit modes carry financial exposure that faster alternatives don't.
Traditional mode selection optimizes freight cost and delivery time. Post-2025, it also requires reasoning about duty exposure, tariff classification risk and the financial consequences of a border hold. Most TMS platforms aren't built to surface that kind of risk—which is where the execution gap shows up.
Modal data read as a behavioral signal—not just a cost output—reveals how companies are actually responding to external pressure. Sustained shifts indicate execution capability. Reversals indicate over-reliance on workarounds. Teams that track mode mix over time can identify structural vulnerabilities before they become visible in cost reports.
