Spot rates slipped $0.023 this week — reefer broke a four-year seasonal pattern — but every segment is still up more than 40% on the year

Spot rates slipped again this past week — a third straight soft week after a plateau — but the year-over-year picture remains the story: total spot rates are still up 41% from a year ago, according to FleetOwner on Oct. 29, reporting the weekly figures from FTR Transportation Intelligence and DAT Freight & Analytics. Total spot rates fell $0.023 this past week, slightly more than the minor decreases of the two weeks before it. Inside that small decline, the three equipment types moved in three different directions, and one of them broke a seasonal pattern that had held for four years.

Dry van is the quiet outperformer. According to FTR, dry van spot rates rose $0.02 last week, with rates up over 48% year over year, even as dry van load volumes dropped almost 2%. A rate that rises while loads fall is a capacity story, not a demand story. DAT's national linehaul picture for dry van was slightly softer: its linehaul spot rates dropped $0.02 last week, averaging $2.24 per mile. The two series measure the market differently — FTR's figures and DAT's linehaul averages are not the same basket — so the honest read is a dry van market that is roughly flat on the week at a level nearly half again higher than a year ago, with the direction depending on which index you price against.

Refrigerated freight is where the week genuinely disappointed. FTR put reefer spot rates down almost $0.06 last week, with refrigerated loads down 5% — and FleetOwner notes the rate drop came in a week when reefer rates have risen around this time of year for the past four years. That broken pattern is the week's most useful warning: the seasonal reefer firming that produce and holiday food freight usually delivers did not arrive on schedule. Even so, the level remains historically strong, with FTR's reefer rates almost 42% higher than last year. DAT's reefer linehaul average dropped $0.02 to $2.73 per mile — still the highest per-mile linehaul average of the three equipment types, which is the normal reefer premium, preserved even in a down week.

Flatbed did what flatbed usually does in late October. FTR reported flatbed spot rates down almost $0.02 last week, a decrease FleetOwner describes as expected seasonally, with flatbed loads down 4% and rates up 42% year over year. DAT's flatbed linehaul average also dropped $0.02, to $2.63 per mile. Construction and industrial freight easing into the fall is the textbook pattern, and nothing in this week's numbers breaks it — the segment is cooling on schedule from a very high base, not falling out of the market.

Put the three together and the week's real message is about levels versus momentum. Momentum, for three weeks now, has been mildly negative: a plateau, then minor decreases, then a $0.023 decline in the total rate. Levels, by contrast, remain extraordinary by any recent standard — up 41% overall year over year, with every equipment type up more than 40% on both FTR's measures (dry van over 48%, reefer almost 42%, flatbed 42%). A market can drift down for several weeks from a capacity-shock peak without the underlying tightness changing, and that is the distinction a carrier pricing November freight has to hold: the weekly drift says shippers are testing whether the peak is in; the year-over-year level says the trucks that left the market have not come back.

There is also a discipline point in the DAT linehaul averages themselves. At $2.24 per mile for dry van, $2.73 for reefer and $2.63 for flatbed, linehaul — the rate before fuel surcharge is layered in — is where a carrier's real margin argument happens. Loads quoted all-in can look similar while hiding very different fuel exposure; the linehaul split is what tells you whether a rate covers the work after the fuel is paid for. Comparing any offer against the segment average for your equipment, rather than against a blended spot number, is the difference between pricing your truck and pricing someone else's average.

The practical takeaway: do not reprice your operation off one soft week, and do not ignore three of them either. If you run reefer, the broken seasonal pattern is your planning fact — the expected late-October firming has not shown up, loads fell 5%, and holiday freight may arrive later or thinner than the last four years taught you to expect. If you run van or flatbed, your segment is doing what the season says it should, at rates more than 40% above last year. In every segment, the negotiating ground remains the capacity shortage that produced those year-over-year numbers — and nothing in this week's $0.023 dip changes who holds it.