The Inland Empire's trucking base is shrinking as its lifeline gets more expensive

Trucking employment across Riverside and San Bernardino counties fell to 31,300 jobs in May 2026, down 3.1% from a year earlier, according to state labor data — with general-freight trucking down 3.8% and couriers and messengers off 11.2%.

The decline is notable because it runs against the region's warehousing employment, which grew 2.6% over the same year. The freight economy is splitting: the storage side is still adding jobs, while the trucking that moves goods in and out of those buildings is losing them.

That contraction meets a second pressure that operates on the finances of small carriers. Most owner-operators and small fleets run on freight factoring — selling their invoices to a third party for immediate cash rather than waiting 30 to 60 days for a broker to pay. For a small fleet carrying six figures in outstanding receivables against weekly fuel and payroll, that cash-flow bridge is not optional; it is how the business stays solvent between loads.

The cost of that bridge is rising. Factoring rates for small carriers now average around 2.8% per invoice, with newer operators paying 4% or more, and advance rates have compressed. The market is also consolidating — Love's Financial acquired TBS Factoring and eCapital absorbed TAFS over the past year — reducing the number of independent providers, a shift industry analysts expect to weaken pricing competition going forward.

The combination matters for a region whose economy is built on freight movement. The Inland Empire's small carriers are exactly the operators most exposed to factoring costs, and they are being squeezed on both ends: a freight market that has thinned their ranks for three years, and a financing tool that is growing more expensive as the number of providers shrinks.