Trucking news and briefs for Monday, Jan. 15, 2024:
If you're headed into a snowy area North, South, East or West this week, you can keep tabs on new road updates via Overdrive's Roads 511 list on X/Twitter aggregating state DOTs' 511 and other travel-info services.
Broker-posted rates in the Truckstop system fell during the week ended Jan. 5, as they always do during the first week of the year, though the fall was the smallest for the beginning of a year since 2018. That’s according to the weekly spot update from FTR Transportation Intelligence and the Truckstop load board.
Refrigerated spot rates gave back less than 20% of their gains in the prior two weeks, and the decline in dry van spot rates was barely more than a penny. Flatbed spot rates, which usually decline in the first week of the year, rose slightly. Total load volume was up sharply.
The total broker-posted rate during the week decreased 7.4 cents after rising nearly 10 cents during the previous week. Rates were nearly 11% below the same 2023 week and about 6% below the five-year average.
Spot rates always fall during the first week of the year as capacity starts to normalize past the holidays, but the decrease was the smallest since the first week of 2018, which was just a couple of weeks after the electronic logging device mandate took effect.
