PORTLAND, Ore. -- The holidays and severe weather appear to have contributed to an unseasonal double play: both truck loads and truck capacity increased on TransCore’s load boards. For the week ending January 15, TransCore Trendlines, a free weekly barometer for the spot freight market, showed that truck loads bounced up 31 percent and truck postings increased 26 percent compared to the previous week.

The surge in truck load availability was led by flatbed freight, which increased 40 percent week over week. Not surprisingly but less dramatically, flatbed rates were also up 2.6 percent (4 cents) on the spot market compared with mid-December’s rates.

The increases followed two consecutive weeks of post-holiday declines in truck load posts. A slowdown in freight postings is not unusual in the winter months, but truck posts usually increase only when load posts decline. Last week and the week before, demand and capacity increased in tandem.

Looking back over the most recent four-week period, it appears that increased activity offset the typical holiday slow down, bringing truck load and equipment postings back to pre-holiday levels.

TransCore Trendlines is a free, weekly subscription with key indicators from TransCore's U.S. Freight Index, the standard spot freight market barometer based on more than 60 million loads and trucks listed annually by freight brokers, 3PLs, shippers and carriers across the U.S. TransCore Trendlines also includes industry data from the American Trucking Associations and the U.S. Department of Energy.