# Housing Market Crash Slams Last-Mile Delivery: What’s Next? > Source: > Published: 2026-07-30 02:00:05+00:00 *The last-mile delivery sector for big and bulky items is experiencing a significant slowdown, with growth rates halved. FreightWaves’ Eric Kulisch breaks down how a weak housing market, high mortgage rates, and shifting consumer behavior are directly impacting the movement of furniture, appliances, and more. Learn why execution and AI-driven technology are becoming crucial for survival in a highly competitive landscape.* The big-and-bulky last-mile delivery market is cooling sharply, and the housing market is largely to blame. A joint report from Armstrong & Associates and the National Home Delivery Association found that the segment — covering items such as furniture, appliances, and exercise equipment delivered by box truck with in-home installation — grew at just over 10% annually over the past eight years but is now forecast to expand at roughly a 5% rate between last year and 2027. High mortgage rates are the primary drag. Homeowners who locked in low rates years ago are reluctant to trade up to a new property at today’s 6% to 7% range, while elevated home prices are keeping potential buyers on the sidelines. Fewer home sales mean fewer furniture and appliance purchases, directly suppressing demand for white-glove delivery services. “The big thing is kind of this housing market influence on the last mile delivery sector and e-commerce,” said the industry analyst appearing on the program, who identified home delivery as his area of expertise. Tariff-driven cost pressures on steel-heavy goods such as appliances added to last year’s headwinds, though those costs have “kind of normalized,” the analyst said. Discretionary spending remains squeezed, keeping consumers cautious about large-ticket home purchases even as some of the tariff volatility fades. Competition inside the sector has intensified after a wave of entrants over the past five to 10 years, squeezing margins and making differentiation difficult. The Armstrong & Associates report concluded that winning providers will focus on execution over novel service offerings, leaning on AI-driven tools — route optimization, predictive ETA, and computer vision for damage assessment — to wring out efficiency gains. Consolidation is also on the horizon, according to the report, particularly as the economics of serving rural and suburban stops grow more challenging. Building scale or a broader national footprint is increasingly necessary to make unit economics work in lower-density markets. Labor availability adds another layer of uncertainty. Regulatory enforcement targeting non-domiciled CDL drivers — a group that has historically filled straight-truck and box-truck roles attractive to last-mile operators — is shrinking the available driver pool, according to the analyst, who noted the concern is widespread among industry members even though specific data on the impact are not yet available. - Big-and-bulky last-mile growth is forecast to slow to ~5% annually through 2027, down from 10%-plus over the prior eight years, per Armstrong & Associates and the National Home Delivery Association. - A stalled housing market — driven by 6–7% mortgage rates and high home prices — is the chief factor suppressing furniture and appliance delivery demand. - The sector faces fierce competition, pressure to invest in AI-driven efficiency tools, likely consolidation, and a tightening driver pool due to CDL regulatory enforcement. **Speaker 1** [0:00] Eric, how are you, sir, today? **Speaker 2** [0:02] Hey, good morning, Craig. Thanks for having me on. **Speaker 1** [0:04] Do you wanna narrate our F3 video or do you wanna talk home delivery? **Speaker 2** [0:09] Home delivery is my wheelhouse, so I’ll stay there. **Speaker 1** [0:12] All right, you’re not a professional voice actor, but let’s talk about this report that came out from Armstrong and Associates and the National Home Delivery Association, all about growth in the big and bulky and last mile delivery segment. What did you learn? **Speaker 2** [0:29] Well, it’s interesting, you know, as you know, last mile delivery, most people think of that for parcels and your home delivery for packages you get from Amazon and other retailers and they drop it at your doorstep. But, you know, there’s this whole other market when you order bigger things like exercise equipment or furniture and someone comes in a box truck and drops that off. And lots of times you don’t want to deal with it because it’s too heavy. So you have them bring it in the house. You know, instead of dropping it at the curb, and then they install it. So that market’s been growing a lot, especially since COVID It really took off, and, uh, but then it’s slowed down some since then. But, uh, so Armstrong and Associates did some survey and work and research, and they basically saw that the, you know, the growth rate for the market was a little over 10% over the last 8 years or so. But now between last year and 2027, they say the market’s going to grow at about a 5% clip. So it’s, it’s kind of slowing by half. And they attribute a lot of that to the housing market that, you know, home sales have slowed, especially for existing homes because mortgage rates are high. And people who, like you and me, who might have lower, you know, bought homes a while ago with really low interest rates, might not want to trade to another house and get an interest rate that’s, you know, 6 or 7%. And then of course, houses— the housing market’s so expensive right now, so a lot of people are staying put. And that’s just spurring a little less home turnover, spurring less ordering of furniture and things to upgrade homes that, you know, you’ve moved into. So that was kind of the big initial takeaway. **Speaker 1** [2:12] Yeah, I’ve got some real estate on the market right now, and I’m just talking to the agents as just the general state of it. It’s just not It’s not the same market. We hear that from folks in terms of that are in real estate, just how soft housing is. And it’s not a surprise the last mile would be slow and the forecast would drop simply because of it. **Speaker 2** [2:32] Yeah, and, you know, then people are squeezed a little bit with discretionary spending. You know, last year with the tariffs and so forth, a lot of the appliances are made of steel and other things that are hit by tariffs, but a lot of those costs have kind of normalized. So, you know, the big, the big thing is kind of this kind of home, home housing market influence on, on the last mile delivery sector and e-commerce. **Speaker 3** [2:59] Yeah, there’s an interesting— we won’t have time to get into it today, but there is a full Sonar sitrep on the weak housing market and that impact that it has on freight overall. And it touches on a lot of the things that Eric was talking about. Regarding housing starts and new housing starts, and that there are more multifamily housing starts actually happening than single-family housing starts, and then how that affects the flatbed market. And as you see, flatbed is strong, but you can also see that it still follows the same— **Speaker 1** [3:30] it tends to follow single-family home starts. Did you get a sense, because I always heard the number 20% of the trucking market is indirectly, directly related to housing, is there any Certainly, yes, certainly in flatbed. **Speaker 3** [3:45] But then, yes, but that has been muted this year because of all the industrial renaissance and the AI data center buildout. While you would think that would have much more of an effect on freight demand based on the housing market being so slow, a lot of that’s been made up for by— **Speaker 1** [4:01] The flatbed folks are not struggling at all. Eric, what is the final conclusions on this in terms of Obviously, the freight market is difficult for these last-mile providers, not a super bullish growth area. What is the takeaway from here? **Speaker 2** [4:17] Yeah, I mean, the competition’s really fierce. A lot of companies have moved into this space over the last, you know, 5 to 10 years. And so there’s, you know, heavy competition and, you know, it’s hard to differentiate yourself with more specialized, you know, value-added services. So You know, the report said basically it comes down to the people are going to win. It’s going to come down to execution, not new fancy, you know, services that you provide. So, and that means you need more AI-driven technology that’ll help you increase your efficiency and, you know, provide that execution level with, you know, route optimization, predictive ETA, you know, computer vision, you know, damage assessments and so forth. So And then there’s potentially gonna be some consolidation in the sector they predict, you know, ’cause it’s expensive, especially in more rural or suburban areas to provide this last mile service. So, you know, getting some scale or a broader national footprint helps your economics. **Speaker 1** [5:20] Real quick, Eric, go ahead, Julie, did you have something? **Speaker 3** [5:22] I was gonna say, how are you seeing this reflected in earnings of final mile companies like JB Hunt and others that have segments that do this final mile? **Speaker 2** [5:30] I mean, it’s a small segment of a lot of these LTL and truckload carriers. I don’t really have the breakout, you know, it’s a small niche portion of their business, but important. **Speaker 1** [5:41] So Eric, real quick, non-domiciled CDL drivers, my understanding is that some of these, particularly smaller vehicle types, straight trucks, et cetera, is attractive to non-doms who have been put out of market. Is that showing up in any of the data that you look at? You read about? **Speaker 2** [6:02] Um, you know, I, I don’t have any specific numbers, but that is a concern among members of the, the industry that, you know, the regulatory crackdown, as just as in all other segments of the trucking market, is, you know, shrinking the driver pool. Labor avail— labor availability is a big concern going forward for these last mile, um, you know, big, big and bulky providers. So Yeah, I don’t have specific numbers on this, on the pressure, but it is there. **Speaker 1** [6:32] Well, Eric, thank you so much for coming in. Unfortunately, this is a crazy news day, probably the biggest story to hit our newswires in forever. Stay with us. Brokerage Compliance Symposium The day before F3. Every compliance issue you face - fraud exposure, carrier liability, FMCSA rules, cargo theft, insurance gaps - navigated by attorneys and operators defining best practices in a changing industry. 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