Following May, which saw ongoing spot truckload rate gains while volumes headed down, June represented more of the same, with tighter truck capacity leading to profits, as opposed to freight demand, according to the new edition of the DAT Truckload Volume Index, which was released this week by DAT Freight and Analytics.
The DAT Truckload Volume Index reflects the change in the number of loads with a pickup date during that month, with the actual index number normalized each month to accommodate any new data sources without distortion, with a baseline of 100 equal to the number of loads moved in January 2015. It measures dry van, refrigerated (reefer), and flatbed trucks moved by truckload carriers.
The June Van TVI, at 262, rose 11% compared to May and was flat annually, said DAT. The Reefer TVI, at 184, was up 5% compared to May and down 8% annually. And the Flatbed TVI, at 308, increased 12% over May and fell 4% annually.
The biggest takeaway of the report, cited by DAT, was that the national average van truckload spot rate, at $3.00 per mile, topped the van contract rate, at $2.89 per mile, for the first time since February 2022, with overall rate growth coming in ahead of volume growth. The firm added that spot linehaul rates rose at least 39% annually for van, reefer, and flatbed, as volumes came in flat to lower.
“Capacity has continued to tighten amid regulatory changes and immigration enforcement, reducing the supply of available truck drivers,” said DAT.
DAT’s data highlighted the following takeaways for truckload volumes, and rates, for the month of June:
- the national average spot van rate was up $0.11 sequentially and $0.98 annually, to $3.00 per mile;
- the national average spot reefer rate was up $0.04 sequentially and up $0.97 annually, to $3.39 per mile;
- the national average flatbed rate increased $0.04 sequentially and $1.12 annually, to $3.69 per mile;
- the national contract van rate, at $2.89 per mile, was down $0.03 sequentially, and the national contract reefer rate, at $3.22 per mile, fell $0.06, and the national contract flatbed rate, at $3.80 per mile, rose $0.03;
- the national average contract linehaul rate saw across-the-board gains, with van up $0.07, to $2.26 per mile, reefer up $0.04, to $2.53 per mile, and flatbed up $0.15, to $3.05 per mile, with annual gains, for the three segments, up $0.49, $0.48, and $0.71, respectively
In an interview with LM, DAT industry analyst Dean Croke described the current state of the market as being supply-led, with truckload pricing firming faster than freight demand, with the structural capacity loss doing what he called the heavy lifting, as opposed to any broad-based demand.
“We’re not seeing broad-based demand in the economy, it’s still a split, two-tiered freight economy, certainly on the spot market side of things, where consumer confidence and retail spending is soft, and imports are not really delivering any broad-based freight lift, although that we are seeing some sort of front-loading and peak season activity now, and into July. Demand is still fragmented rather than economy-wide, but I think anything tied to industrial freight and related to data centers continues to dominate the freight landscape. That AI data center and power build out is one of the biggest freight supporters in the market, for steel, concrete modules, transformers, racks—any sort of open deck freight related to that, is doing exceptionally well, and is part of the reason we’re seeing record high spot rates that have just bumped over $3 this week, which is a record high.”
Addressing the TVI, Croke said that the findings in the June report collectively point to what are considered normal seasonal trends in the markets it covers.
Croke added that the June data serves as an indicator that spring seasonality flowed into May and also continued into June, with the “flip side” of that being rates continuing to climb higher than volumes.
“This wasn’t a hard prediction back in January,” said Croke. “My headline for 2026 year was ‘stabilizing demand meets constrained supply,’ and whenever that happens, at the bottom of this market, where we get to equilibrium, any shock in the market sends rates skyrocketing, and then they come back down. We saw it during Road Check week, we saw it during Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, even back to Super Bowl, when produce volume soared in that week before. So, when you get to sort of this equilibrium part of the market, where roughly loads equals trucks, in a fairly simplistic manner, anytime you get a surge in volume and the capacity has sort of lost its elasticity and is largely exited the market before we start adding capacity back in, you see these surges in spot rates, which is what we saw during Road Check week was record high week-over- week increases in spot rates. The crazy thing is the market has held onto those gains from Road Check week right through to July 4, which is extraordinary, but it really points to how much capacity has exited and how tight the market is from a spot market capacity perspective.”
