A healthy U.S. economy has shipping rates poised to head higher, but an upcoming federal mandate to equip long-haul trucks with electronic logging devices could disrupt the industry and launch trucking prices into an even more rapid ascent.

Carriers are seeing the leading edge of a freight wave, according to analysts at DAT, an online freight exchange. For the first three months of 2017, load volumes are running 100 percent above the level of the same period a year earlier. And this is before April, when the peak season for freight usually kicks off.