FreightWaves unveiled the winners of its 2026 FreightTech 25 awards on Wednesday, the final day of the F3: Future of Freight Festival. This was the eighth year the FreightTech 25 list has been announced.
The FreightTech 25 honors the most innovative companies in transportation and logistics over the past calendar year and is open to transportation providers as well as technology companies.
Earlier this year, FreightWaves opened nominations for the FreightTech awards. An internal panel of FreightWaves experts narrowed down all the nominees to a list of 100 companies, the FreightTech 100. That list was then sent to approximately 80 CEOs, industry leaders, academics and investors who served as industry judges.
Those judges create their own ranked top 25 lists; their votes are tabulated electronically with FreightWaves’ accounting and audit partner, HHM supervising and validating the count. A simple points system, based on voters’ rankings, determined the FreightTech 25. A company scored 25 points for each first-place vote, with descending points through to the 25th place, which received 1 point. The companies were then ranked by total points. This scoring method mirrors that of the USA Today Sports College Football Coaches Poll, The Associated Press Pro32 rankings and the AP Top 25 for college basketball.
This year, freight fraud was once again at the top of the industry’s mind, and Highway took the first spot, making the tech startup focused on solving carrier identity a back-to-back FreightTech 25 winner. Incumbents with a renewed focus on leading-edge technology also surged in the rankings: after acquiring Convoy, Trucker Tools, and Outgo, DAT Freight and Analytics took the #10 spot. Logistics incumbent C.H. Robinson spent much of the year deploying agentic AI throughout its Navisphere platform, cutting headcount and growing operating income—a performance good enough to snag Robinson’s first appearance on the list at #13.
Trailer management platform Repowr got a new CEO, Chris Hines, and made their way to the first appearance on the FreightTech 25 at #12; Transflo, a perennial FreightTech 100 winner made its first appearance on the list after launching an AI workflow for carriers that is saving its customers millions of dollars.
Acquisitions also powered Triumph’s first top ten and top five finish—acquiring Greenscreens and ISO was instrumental to the launch of Triumph’s Intelligence platform, and helped earn the Dallas-based bank the #4 spot.
Eight tech-enabled transportation providers made the list (#6 Amazon Freight, #11 Echo Global Logistics, #13 C.H. Robinson, #15 J.B. Hunt, #18 RXO, #19 BlueGrace Logistics, #23 XPO, and #25 aifleet). Three autonomous truck companies made the list (#2 Aurora Driverless Trucks, #7 Gatik, and #14 Waabi).
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