Spot truckload rates and volumes continued to climb last week as businesses looked to regain their footing and produce harvests fed supply chains with van and refrigerated freight.
National average van, reefer and likewise flatbed rates rose in response to an 18% increase in the number of loads posted during the week ending June 7, said DAT Solutions, operator of the DAT load board network. It’s a typical seasonal pattern for the month of June in some ways, yet for owner-operators like Forrest, Ill.-based Warren Hartman, who operates a three-truck mostly flatbed fleet, it can’t come soon enough, given the depth of the bottom hit just more than a month ago.
Hartman’s been supplementing longer-haul flatbed loads for himself and his two drivers out of the Midwest, loading back in with brokered freight, with local ag work to maintain revenue and income awaiting some semblance of normalcy in the markets. In the “second week of June now,” he said this week, “we have seen an uptick in business since last month.”
With the uptick in spot market volumes DAT notes for last week, truck postings grew, too, by 13% compared to the previous week. Clearly, plenty owner-operators are returning to the market in search of good-paying loads. As activity levels have improved, fortunately, so have rates, shown below as average linehaul, minus a calculated fuel surcharge to separate out diesel’s volatile effects.
National average spot rates (with fuel) through June 7
**Van: $1.75/mile, 15 cents higher than the May average
**Flatbed: $2.01/mile, compared to $1.90 in May
**Reefer: $2.10/mile, 8 cents above May’s average
Those are rolling averages for the month of June. On June 1, the van spot rate averaged $1.72 a mile, the flatbed rate was $1.98, and the reefer rate was $2.08.
Trend to watch: A milestone for flatbed freight
The coronavirus pandemic was an unexpected shock to the economy in March and April, but flatbed carriers have endured additional volatility in energy, construction, steel, heavy machinery and other industrial markets that use their services.
