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The spot market just saw one of its biggest mid-year jolts in recent memory.
During the week ending July 4 (week 26), spot rates for dry van and refrigerated freight surged in what’s typically a seasonally strong week, but this year’s increase was anything but typical. Broker-posted dry van spot rates jumped 21.4 cents – the second-largest gain in any week of the year since at least 2008. Refrigerated spot rates climbed 20.3 cents, far exceeding normal July 4th-week gains.
Flatbed spot rates ticked up just slightly, but solid increases in flatbed are not nearly as dependable as they are for van equipment at the midpoint of the year.
What's Driving the Surge?
For starters, the 25th and 26th weeks of the year have proven to be reliably strong for refrigerated and dry van rates over time due to a combination of demand for produce transportation and the approaching “food holiday” – i.e., the Fourth of July.
The average week-over-week (w/w) increase in dry van spot rates in week 26 was more than 9 cents from 2014 to 2024 with gains of more than 15 cents in three of those weeks. The average increase for refrigerated spot rates over that same period was about 11 cents, including four years when the increase during week 26 was more than 16 cents. In fact, the increase in 2017’s week 26 was even higher than it was this year at 22.1 cents. This year’s refrigerated spot rate increase was well above the norm, though.
Another important point is that spot market volumes naturally fell sharply during the week given that it included a major holiday. Very little shipping would have occurred on July 4 and probably not all that much on July 3, either. Low volume is an important consideration in rate analysis because it increases the likelihood of wide rate variability. The lower the national spot volume, the greater the potential for geographic distortions and just plain randomness to skew the national figures?
In other words, perhaps the question should not be “What’s driving the surge?” but rather “Should we even pay attention to the surge?” The short answer is that if this proves to be a one-week phenomenon, not really.
Just for the fun of it, though, let’s assume that data for the current week and beyond does imply some sort of turn in the market. What might be the cause?
It’s possible that the stronger freight market seen in the first few months of this year has continued and is resulting in some tightening of the market. To be clear, this is not something that has been reflected in the spot volume or rate data for dry van and refrigerated this year, so this would be an unexpected development. On the other hand, May was a strong month for general freight truckload payroll employment, so it’s conceivable that demand for route guide freight finally is outpacing the supply of drivers, leading to a tipping point that is showing up in the spot market. Again, this is possible, but would be a new development.
What about changes on the supply side? As highlighted in FTR’s Trucking Market Update podcast (Episode 321), a plausible – though unlikely – factor is the new English language proficiency enforcement policy, which went into effect on June 25. Drivers who cannot demonstrate adequate English skills at the roadside are now being placed out of service.
Roadside violations alone simply could not have this big of an effect this quickly. There’s no way that law enforcement officials have put enough drivers out of service already to trigger a fundamental change in the truck freight market. However, it is not totally out of the question that broker and/or shipper worries about service failures and perhaps even tort liability have created a shift in the market. It’s unlikely but not unthinkable.
Want more weekly insights like this? Subscribe to FTR’s Trucking Market Update podcast and download the full slides at ftrintel.com/trucking-podcast.
By the Numbers
We have focused mostly on the sharp w/w rate changes and basically ignored the year-over-year (y/y) changes. There’s a reason for that: 2024 was something of an outlier. Due simply to how the calendar fell, last year ended up with 53 weeks of data – i.e, the week after the 52nd week fell mostly in 2024 and, therefore, was counted as a 53rd week. It happens occasionally.
For most of the year, this quirk doesn’t make much difference, but because holidays cause big swings in volumes and, sometimes, rates, a strict y/y comparison can be misleading. Therefore, as we summarize the changes below, we show both a y/y comparison of week 26 and a y/y comparison of the respective weeks that included the Fourth of July.
Frankly, for rates, it doesn’t make all that much difference – at least not this year. For volume, though, a strict y/y comparison naturally makes volume look very weak currently while a comparison of July 4th weeks shows this year to be stronger.
- Total Spot Rate Market: Up 5.2¢ w/w – strongest Week 26 increase since 2020
- Dry Van Rates: +21.4¢ w/w
- Up 6% y/y vs the same 2024 week
- Up more than 5% y/y vs last year’s July 4th week
- Excluding fuel: +8% y/y
- Refrigerated Rates: +20.3¢ w/w
- Up 8% vs same 2024 week
- Up 5% vs 2024’s July 4th week
- Excluding fuel: +10% y/y
- Flatbed Rates: +0.5¢ w/w
- Roughly 3% higher y/y for both the same 2024 week and July 4th week
- Excluding fuel: +4% y/y
What to Watch Next
The scope of the rate increases for refrigerated and, especially, dry van not only was unusual for a week 26, but it also was very much out of character for 2025. Dry van rates have been down y/y in 16 of 26 weeks, and none of the handful of meaningful y/y increases were close to that in week 26. Refrigerated rates have been negative y/y for 17 weeks of 2025 and were within 2 points of week 26’s y/y increase only once.
July traditionally is a softer month than June for van rates in the spot market. Given results for most of the year coupled with seasonal expectations, if dry van and refrigerated spot rates were to hold steady in the coming weeks – or perhaps rise further, which would be very unusual – that would indicate an inflection in the spot market that would, in turn, imply a broader shift in the truck freight market.
Stay tuned as we track whether this surge was a holiday anomaly or the start of something more sustained.
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