National benchmark rates per mile for all eight truckload equipment types, for the week of 20 July 2026 to 26 July 2026. Benchmark snapshot recorded 21 July 2026. What moved, what did not, what it means if you are buying capacity and what it leaves the truck that hauls it.
Carrier rate per mile is what lands on the rate confirmation. Shipper rate per mile is the all-in number before any accessorial actually incurred on the load. Every equipment name links to its full rate hub.
| Equipment | Carrier $/mi | vs prior snapshot | Shipper $/mi | Prior |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dry Van | $3.00 | ● unchanged | $3.45 | $3.00 |
| Reefer | $3.39 | ● unchanged | $3.90 | $3.39 |
| Flatbed | $3.72 | ▲ +0.8% | $4.28 | $3.69 |
| Step Deck | $3.77 | ▲ +0.8% | $4.34 | $3.74 |
| Conestoga | $3.82 | ▲ +0.8% | $4.39 | $3.79 |
| Power Only | $2.55 | ● unchanged | $2.93 | $2.55 |
| Hotshot | $2.40 | ▼ −7.7% | $2.76 | $2.60 |
| Box Truck | $2.55 | ● unchanged | $2.93 | $2.55 |
Against the previous recorded snapshot: flatbed, step deck and conestoga moved up, with flatbed the largest at +0.8%; hotshot moved down, hotshot furthest at −7.7%; dry van, reefer, power only and box truck came in unchanged.
A word on how much weight to put on any of this. Week-to-week movement in a national benchmark is mostly noise; the signal is in the seasonal shape and in where a lane sits relative to the national blend. A single week’s arrow is a data point, not a trend, and it is a much worse guide to what to pay than the month you are in and the direction your lane runs.
Every rate on this page is a loaded-mile number, and that is the single most misread thing about a rate per mile. A truck does not get paid to drive to the pickup. If the load pays $2.95 a mile over 700 miles and the driver ran 140 empty miles to reach it, the real revenue per mile the truck actually turned is not $2.95 — it is roughly $2.46, because the same $2,065 now has to cover 840 miles of fuel, tyres and hours.
That is a 17% haircut that appears nowhere on the rate confirmation, and it is why two loads at identical rates can be a good week and a bad week. It also explains something brokers see constantly and misdiagnose: a load paying less from 30 miles away books faster than a load paying more from 200 miles away. The carrier is not being irrational or holding out. He is doing this arithmetic in his head, correctly, in about four seconds.
The practical consequence for anyone posting freight is that your pickup location is a pricing lever you are probably not using. A posting that shows a precise city rather than a vague region lets every carrier within reach work out his own deadhead and decide. A posting that hides it makes every carrier assume the worst case and price defensively — or skip it. Precision costs you nothing and it is worth more than the twenty-five cents you were about to add to the rate.
July is peak produce and peak construction at the same time. Refrigerated capacity is being pulled out of general freight, which lifts reefer sharply and quietly firms up dry van as a side effect, while flatbed runs on its own construction calendar entirely.
This matters more than the week-over-week column above. A benchmark without a month attached to it is close to meaningless, because the same lane genuinely costs different money in February and October and neither number is wrong. Read the table against the season first and against last week second.
The spread in this table is the useful part, not any single row. Conestoga sits highest this week at $3.82 and Hotshot lowest at $2.40, and the gap between them is roughly what specialised equipment is worth over general freight right now.
Buy against the benchmark, but cover against the posting. A load re-posted three times has already burned the margin the re-posting was meant to protect. Why posting here is free →
Use this as a sanity check on a quote, never as a quote. If your number sits well above the row for your equipment, the usual causes are a hard appointment, a slow dock, or a destination trucks do not want to run to — and two of those three you can change.
Ask the broker which one is driving it before accepting. A good one will tell you, and the answer is frequently worth more than the negotiation. Shipper solutions →
Hold every row against your own cost per mile rather than against the row above it. The gap is not profit; it is what absorbs deadhead, an unpaid wait, and the repair that has not happened yet.
Work out your real number → then come back to this table — it reads completely differently once you have it.
Against a working all-in operating cost of $1.90 per mile for a one-truck carrier — fuel, payments, insurance, maintenance, tyres, permits and the driver’s own pay. The right-hand column is the same margin on a 700-mile run, before deadhead and before any unpaid time at a dock.
| Equipment | Carrier $/mi | Over operating cost | On 700 mi |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dry Van | $3.00 | +$1.10 | $770 |
| Reefer | $3.39 | +$1.49 | $1,043 |
| Flatbed | $3.72 | +$1.82 | $1,274 |
| Step Deck | $3.77 | +$1.87 | $1,309 |
| Conestoga | $3.82 | +$1.92 | $1,344 |
| Power Only | $2.55 | +$0.65 | $455 |
| Hotshot | $2.40 | +$0.50 | $350 |
| Box Truck | $2.55 | +$0.65 | $455 |
None of the numbers above contain accessorials, and accessorials are frequently what decides whether the load was profitable. LoadBoot publishes fixed terms rather than renegotiating them load by load, so both sides know before the truck moves.
| Accessorial | Standard | When it bites |
|---|---|---|
| Detention | $60/hr after 2 free hours | Four hours at a dock can exceed the whole margin on a short lane. |
| Layover | $250/day | A missed appointment that pushes delivery to the next day. |
| TONU | $250 | Truck ordered, then the load is not there or does not fit. |
| Lumper | Reimbursed with receipt | Grocery and food distribution, almost every time. |
Each week one equipment type gets its own dated breakdown — the week’s number applied to real lane distances, what it leaves the truck, and the specification and posting detail that decides whether a load covers at all. This week it is power only.
Read the power only deep-dive for week 30 → · Power Only rate hub (evergreen) →
These are national benchmark figures. They are not a proprietary rate index built from our own transaction history, and we say so plainly on every page that carries them, because a rate is only useful when you know what stands behind it. A benchmark is a sanity check on a quote. It is not a quote.
Each report is built from a benchmark snapshot recorded in the week it covers, and the snapshot is never edited afterwards — which is why a report from eight weeks ago still shows the number that was actually recorded then rather than today’s. Week-over-week change is only printed when the two snapshots were built on the same basis. When the basis changed, the cell reads n/c and this page says so, because a percentage across a methodology change measures us, not the market.
What a national benchmark cannot tell you: which direction your lane runs, what the receiving requirement is, how long the dock takes, and how far the nearest truck actually is. Those four things move a real quote more than the national number does. All equipment on one page →
The reports are dated. The hubs are evergreen — specifications, seasonality, regional variation, lane examples and the posting detail for each equipment type, refreshed as the benchmark refreshes.
The national benchmark for the week of 20 July 2026 to 26 July 2026 was $3.00 per mile on dry van, $3.39 on reefer and $3.72 on flatbed, with all eight equipment types listed in the table above. Those are carrier rates per mile; the shipper all-in figure runs roughly 15% higher before accessorials.
Because the previous benchmark for that equipment was built on a different basis, so a percentage would be measuring a change in our own method rather than a change in the freight market. We would rather print nothing than print a number we cannot stand behind.
No. They are national benchmark figures, not a proprietary rate index built from our own booked loads, and we label them that way everywhere they appear. Treat them as a sanity check on a quote you have been given.
Less than most people assume. Week-to-week movement in a national benchmark is largely noise. The seasonal position and the direction your specific lane runs both move a real quote considerably more than the weekly arrow does.
Accessorials. Detention, layover, TONU and lumper fees all sit outside the per-mile number, and on a short lane they can be worth more than the margin. The standard terms are in the table above.
Usually one of three things: a hard delivery appointment, a slow-loading dock, or a destination market trucks do not want to run into. Two of the three are changeable, which is why it is worth asking which one it is before accepting the number.
A new report is published for each week a benchmark snapshot is recorded, and past reports are never edited afterwards — a week-30 report keeps showing the week-30 number. The evergreen market rates page always shows the current figure instead.