A dated benchmark report for every week we record one, covering all eight truckload equipment types: dry van, reefer, flatbed, step deck, conestoga, power only, hotshot and box truck. What the carrier is paid, what the shipper pays, what it leaves the truck, and — when the two snapshots are actually comparable — what moved.
Week 34, 2026 — snapshot recorded 17 August 2026, covering all eight equipment types, with this week’s equipment deep-dive on reefer.
Reports are never edited after publication. A week-30 report keeps showing the week-30 number, which is what makes the archive worth anything as a record. For the current figure, use the market rates page instead.
17 August 2026 – 23 August 2026. All eight equipment types, dry van at $2.95/mi.
10 August 2026 – 16 August 2026. All eight equipment types, dry van at $2.95/mi.
27 July 2026 – 2 August 2026. All eight equipment types, dry van at $3.03/mi.
20 July 2026 – 26 July 2026. All eight equipment types, dry van at $3.00/mi.
13 July 2026 – 19 July 2026. All eight equipment types, dry van at $3.00/mi.
6 July 2026 – 12 July 2026. All eight equipment types, dry van at $2.10/mi.
A single number described as “the rate” is doing at least four jobs, and most disagreements about freight pricing are really disagreements about which of the four is being discussed.
| What it hides | Why it moves the real number |
|---|---|
| Empty miles | Every rate quoted per mile is a loaded-mile rate. A 700-mile load with 140 miles of deadhead attached spreads the same money across 840 miles — roughly a sixth off the real revenue per mile, appearing nowhere on the rate confirmation. |
| Lane direction | Freight flows are not symmetrical. More goods move into a consumption market than out of it, so the same lane run the other way can price a third differently. |
| The receiving requirement | A hard appointment shrinks the pool of trucks that can legally make the window and takes control of the driver’s clock away from him. FCFS freight books faster and cheaper for exactly that reason. |
| Accessorials | Detention, layover, TONU and lumper fees all sit outside the per-mile number. On a short lane four hours at a dock can exceed the entire margin. |
It can tell you whether a quote is roughly in the right postcode. If someone offers you $1.40 a mile on reefer, the benchmark tells you that is not a market rate and you can stop the conversation there. That is a genuinely useful thing and it is most of what a benchmark is for.
It cannot tell you what your specific lane costs. It is a blend of every direction, every region, every receiving requirement and every season, averaged into one figure. Your load is one direction, one market, one dock and one week. The gap between those two things is not an error in the benchmark — it is the benchmark doing exactly what an average does.
The practical use, then, is as a floor and a ceiling rather than as a target. A quote far below the benchmark usually means somebody has not read the specification and will renegotiate at the dock. A quote far above it usually has a specific cause — appointment, dock speed, or a destination trucks avoid — and asking which one is frequently worth more than negotiating the number.
Each report is built from a benchmark snapshot recorded in the week it covers. The snapshot is written once and never edited, which is why a report from two months ago still shows the number recorded then rather than today’s figure. That is the whole point of a dated archive; a record that quietly updates itself is not a record.
These are national benchmark figures. They are not a proprietary rate index built from our own transaction history, and we label them that way on every page they appear on, because a rate is only useful when you know what stands behind it. Anyone presenting a rate without telling you what it is built from is asking you to trust the number rather than to understand it.
A week-over-week percentage is only printed when both snapshots were built on the same basis. When the basis changed, the cell reads n/c and the report says why on the page.
This is not a technicality. Our own recorded history contains exactly such a break: dry van was recorded at $2.10 under one method and $3.00 under the next. A naive comparison publishes “dry van up 43% week over week”, which is not a fact about freight at all — it is a fact about us changing how we count. A rate page that prints that once has spent credibility it cannot buy back, so when the comparison is not available these reports say so rather than guessing.
Each equipment type also has an evergreen rate hub carrying its specification table, seasonality, regional variation, posting guidance and full FAQ.
| Equipment | What it is for | Rate hub |
|---|---|---|
| Dry Van | Roughly two-thirds of truckload. The most rate-sensitive equipment on any board. | Dry van rates → |
| Reefer | Temperature-controlled. Swings hardest with produce season. | Reefer rates → |
| Flatbed | Tracks construction and industrial output, not retail. | Flatbed rates → |
| Step Deck | Freight too tall to be legal on a flatbed. | Step deck rates → |
| Conestoga | Flatbed access with a rolling tarp system. | Conestoga rates → |
| Power Only | Tractor to a trailer somebody else owns. | Power only rates → |
| Hotshot | Class 3–5 pickup and gooseneck, expedited and partial freight. | Hotshot rates → |
| Box Truck | Straight truck freight, often final-mile and non-dock. | Box truck rates → |
The most common mistake made with a weekly rate print is comparing it to last week instead of to the same week last year. Truckload freight has a shape that repeats with more reliability than almost anything else in the business.
| Period | What normally happens |
|---|---|
| January–February | The annual floor. Holiday volume has cleared, northern construction is stopped, and there are more trucks than freight almost everywhere. |
| March–May | Recovery. Retail resets, building season opens across the Midwest and South, and produce begins pulling refrigerated capacity out of general freight. |
| June–July | Peak produce and peak construction together. Reefer runs well above its annual average out of the growing regions; van firms up as a side effect. |
| August | Transition. Harvest tapering, reefers returning to general freight, retail not yet building for Q4. One of the flatter stretches of the year. |
| September–November | The strongest stretch for van and reefer as retail builds toward Q4 and capacity tightens. Flatbed tapers in the North, stays active in the South. |
| December | Firm through roughly the second week, then a sharp drop once holiday freight is positioned, sliding into the January floor. |
Every report holds the week’s benchmarks 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. Newer equipment on a good fuel programme runs below it; an older truck with a real maintenance history runs well above.
That comparison is worth as much to a broker as to a carrier. A broker who knows the floor stops posting numbers that were never going to move and covers freight faster. A shipper who knows it stops being surprised when the cheapest quote falls through two days before pickup. And the gap itself is not profit — it is what absorbs deadhead, an unpaid wait, a bad reload and a repair that has not happened yet.
Calculate your own cost per mile → Every report reads differently once you have your real number rather than an industry average.
No benchmark in these reports contains a cent of accessorial. LoadBoot publishes fixed terms rather than renegotiating them load by load, so both sides know before the truck moves and detention is timed against GPS rather than against whose account of the afternoon is better.
| Accessorial | Standard | Where it usually shows up |
|---|---|---|
| Detention | $60/hr after 2 free hours | Grocery, retail DCs, anywhere with a live unload. |
| Layover | $250/day | A missed appointment window that pushes delivery to the next day. |
| TONU | $250 | Truck ordered, then the freight is not there or does not fit. |
| Lumper | Reimbursed with receipt | Food and grocery distribution, almost every time. |
Use the spread across equipment rather than any single row — it is the cleanest read on what specialised capacity is worth over general freight right now. Then cover against the posting, not the rate: a load re-posted three times has already burned the margin the re-posting was protecting.
Use it as a sanity check on a quote you have been given. If your number sits well above the benchmark, ask which of the three usual causes is driving it — appointment, dock speed, or destination market. Two of the three you can change.
Hold every figure against your own cost per mile rather than against last week’s benchmark, and remember every number here is a loaded-mile number. Deadhead is the part that decides whether the week worked.
A combined report covering all eight equipment types is published for each week a benchmark snapshot is recorded, and one equipment type per week gets its own dated deep-dive on a rotating basis, so each equipment comes round roughly every two months.
Where a week has no recorded snapshot there is no report for that week, and no back-filled one either. Inventing a figure for a week we did not measure would defeat the only thing a dated archive is good for. There are currently 6 reports covering 6 equipment deep-dives.
One combined report covering all eight equipment types for each week a benchmark snapshot is recorded, plus one rotating equipment deep-dive per week. Weeks with no recorded snapshot get no report rather than an invented one.
No. They are national benchmark figures, not a proprietary index built from our own booked loads, and every page that carries them says so. A rate is only useful when you know what stands behind it.
Because the previous snapshot for that equipment was built on a different basis. A percentage across that break measures a change in our own method rather than a change in the freight market, so it is not printed.
Never. A dated report keeps showing the number recorded in the week it covers, which is the only thing that makes an archive worth having. Use the market rates page for the current figure.
All eight: dry van, reefer, flatbed, step deck, conestoga, power only, hotshot and box truck. Each also has an evergreen rate hub with full specifications, seasonality and regional detail.
Yes — these are all-in per-mile figures, so fuel sits inside them at roughly a fifth to a quarter at current diesel levels. In contract freight fuel is normally quoted as its own line instead. How fuel surcharge works →
No. Detention, layover, TONU and lumper fees all sit outside the per-mile number. On a short lane they can be worth more than the entire margin on the load.
A national benchmark blends both lane directions, every region, appointment and FCFS freight and every season into one figure. Your load is one direction, one market and one dock. Direction alone can move a real quote by a third, and that is the benchmark working correctly, not failing.
Posting is free for brokers and shippers — no subscription and no per-post fee. Every carrier who can accept your load has had authority, insurance and safety checked first, every load carries live GPS, and the accessorial terms above are written down before the truck moves rather than argued about after.