Surface Transportation spot rate rose 5 cents week to week to $ 2.26 per mile for the week ending Oct. 10, a 59-cent gain from a year earlier, according to DAT Freight & Analytics.
Early October’ s increase came on top of a 12-cent sequential jump in late September, which closed out the third quarter and followed a steady decline in spot rates from a July peak.
DAT’ s dry-van rates were $ 2.42 per mile, including fuel surcharges, on July 11, up 47 % year over year. As of mid-October, the annualized pricing gap had narrowed to a still-wide 35 %.
US average shipper-paid spot rates tracked by Journal of Commerce are climbing as well, with the weighted average rate rising 8 cents in September to $ 3.30 per mile. The unweighted shipper-paid dry-van average rose 10 cents to $ 3.52 per mile.
The spot market’ s upward turn reflects“ thin capacity”— i. e., fewer trucks available for transactional loads— rather than a surge in demand, DAT said, adding the“ supply pullback” in the spot market is as deep as 20 % to 26 % year over year.
Higher diesel prices are pushing more truckers out of the market, but so is stricter regulatory enforcement, Dean Croke, principal analyst at DAT, told Journal of Commerce.
“ There’ s a safety enforcement action somewhere every week,” he said.“ I think it’ s having a huge impact on whether carriers stay in the business.”
The recent pricing gains may also be an early sign that spot rates are starting to climb toward a typical pre-holiday peak later this fall after a reset this summer.
email: bill. cassidy @ spglobal. com
There are 16,000 fewer domestic intermodal drayage drivers than there were in 2022. Mario Tama / Getty Images
Lorin Rotstein, owner of drayage provider Performance Intermodal, said even drivers who kept their trucks may not be able to return quickly.
“ A truck that sits for a couple of years is going to need a lot of work, and that’ s not cheap,” Rotstein said at the Inland26 conference.“ It’ s not as simple as adding capacity.”
With more loads available than drivers to haul them, owner-operators can pick and choose which jobs they want and reject those they don’ t. Drivers who’ ll lose hours inside a congested rail terminal can demand more money, insist on detention protection, or simply say no to the job.
‘ I’ m not working today’
No easy task
The pool of drivers available to haul 53-foot domestic containers has shrunk since the freight recession began in 2022, making it harder for providers to respond quickly to the current surge.
Jason Hilsenbeck, founder of Drayage. com, said there are about 16,000 fewer drivers available now to haul domestic intermodal containers than there were in 2022.
“ About 42 % of the drayage trucking companies only handle ocean boxes, [ they ] won’ t touch 53-foot containers,” Hilsenbeck wrote in a LinkedIn post.“ Drayage trucking capacity is the limiting factor in 53-foot intermodal growth, not the railroad network capacity.”
The loss is particularly difficult for intermodal providers that rely heavily on owner-operators; many intermodal providers outside the largest asset-based fleets rely heavily on owner-operators.
Zach Bayer, managing director of Genesis Intermodal, said his company has tried calling former drivers only to discover that many no longer own trucks.
“ The most common response we recorded was‘ I sold the truck,’” Bayer told Journal of Commerce.“ A lot of those same drivers expressed interest in coming back. However, with current interest rates, the barrier for entry is so high.”
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That leverage is already showing up at congested rail terminals, where drivers can refuse the work entirely or demand more money to deal with the delays.
“ We are having to pay a significant premium to the drivers to go into CSX in Atlanta and the CPKC in Dallas,” Bayer said.“ And there’ s still a number of drivers that will tell you there’ s no price that they will go for.”
Rotstein said the same dynamic has emerged at CPKC’ s Bensenville terminal near Chicago.
“ Some drivers will tell us,‘ I’ m not working today. I’ m just going to park the truck at home because I don’ t want to go to that rail ramp,’” he said.
It also happened at Norfolk Southern’ s Harrisburg ramp in September.
The economics are particularly important for owneroperators, whose earnings depend heavily on how many moves they can complete in a day. Time lost to a bad chassis or a long wait for a container lift can reduce the number of daily moves and cut into take-home pay. The same calculation applies to the receiver. Drivers are more likely in the current market to reject loads being delivered to receivers known to have long dwell times or narrow appointment windows.
The constraint, in other words is not simply how many drayage drivers are available, but how many productive hours the industry can get from the drivers it already has.
email: ari. ashe @ spglobal. com
November 2, 2026 | Journal of Commerce 43