The Loadstar: A Rough Ride for US Shippers as the Carriers’ ‘Black Swan’ Event Goes Golden
West coast ports were still seeing surging volumes that are now being foisted onto the trucking market, said Dean Croke, principal analyst for DAT Solutions.
West coast ports were still seeing surging volumes that are now being foisted onto the trucking market, said Dean Croke, principal analyst for DAT Solutions.
Following two straight months of records, in February and March, the April edition of the DAT Truckload Volume Index, which was recently issued by DAT Freight & analytics, an online marketplace for spot market truckload freight, trended down but still was strong.
Truckload freight activity declined last month but April was still the second busiest month on record for shippers, freight brokers and motor carriers, according to DAT Freight & Analytics.
DAT Freight & Analytics highlighted the trend in its trendlines report for the week ending April 11. The spot load posts within its network have increased since that time and remain exceedingly high compared with past years for the week ending May 9.
According to the load board network operator DAT Freight & Analytics, spot truckload rates remained near all-time highs during the week ending May 3, just a year after they bottomed out during pandemic business and travel closures.
The 7-day average line-haul rate for dry vans was $2.27 a mile last week, 95 cents higher than the same period one year ago (line-haul rates exclude a fuel surcharge), according to DAT Freight & Analytics, which operates the industry’s largest load board network and the DAT iQ freight-data analytics service.
The seven-day average line-haul rate for dry vans was $2.27 a mile last week, 95 cents higher than the same period one year ago (line-haul rates exclude a fuel surcharge), according to DAT Freight & Analytics, which operates a load board network and a freight-data analytics service.
What it means there aren’t enough truck drivers to move this wood around. DAT, which is the largest truckload freight marketplace in North America, can speak to that. In the first four months of 2021, there were an average of 72 available jobs on the spot market for each truck driver who posted on the DAT flatbed boards. Compare that to 2019’s Jan. to April average of 21 job post per driver post and 2020’s average of 16 jobs.
Currently, trucking is undergoing a resurgence, something quite different from a year ago when spot TL rates hit painful lows. Spot rates have shot up since then, from $1.59 in May 2020 to $2.66 in March, according to data from DAT. It is a big rise over 10 months, given the economy was in recession, and the world grappled with the coronavirus.
"Flatbed carriers are capable of hauling a wide range of loads, from raw materials like steel, to manufactured goods like pipe and lumber, to heavy machinery and even produce," said Dean Croke, principal analyst at DAT. "As the weather warms up, the number of flatbed loads naturally increases as construction, agriculture and other activities that use flatbed trailers pick up."