Freight Rates 2026: Where Spot Rates Actually Stand Per Mile

In July 2026 the national dry van spot average was $3.00 per mile including fuel, and the most recent weekly reading available at that check was $3.06 per mile for the week of June 28 – July 4, 2026. Those readings come from DAT Trendlines national van rates, recorded in our market snapshot on 2026-07-18.

National averages hide most of what matters. In that same July reading the Southeast averaged around $3.20 per mile while the Northeast averaged around $2.45 per mile — a spread of roughly seventy-five cents on the same equipment in the same week. You do not haul freight nationally, so the national number is a sanity check, not a quote.

We deliberately do not publish quarterly averages by equipment type on this page any more. The equipment-level table that used to sit here carried figures for step deck, power only, hotshot and box truck that no public source we can open actually publishes, and a "year over year" column computed from two quarters one quarter apart. If you need equipment comparisons, our reefer vs dry van profitability breakdown works from cost structure rather than invented averages.

On the indicators we can verify, yes. Three of them moved together in the first half of 2026.

Spot passed contract. Dry van spot overtook the contract rate in June 2026. The last time that happened was February 2022. A spot rate above contract is what a shortage of trucks looks like in pricing terms: shippers cannot cover freight at the rate they budgeted, so they pay the open market. Our spot vs contract freight guide explains what the crossover does and does not tell you.

Tender rejections are elevated. The Outbound Tender Rejection Index held a 13–14% band through the first quarter of 2026 and has run above 15% since mid-May 2026. OTRI measures how often carriers decline freight they are contracted to haul; a rising index means carriers have somewhere better to put the truck. We break down how to read it, and what it does not predict, in our tender rejection rates guide for carriers.

Load-to-truck ratios are high. The national van load-to-truck ratio was 9.38 at our July 2026 verification, after averaging 11.12 through May and spiking to 12.11 in the week after July 4. Holiday weeks distort this badly in both directions, which is exactly why a single reading is not a trend — see load-to-truck ratio explained.

What we are not going to tell you is how far rates go from here. We removed a broker forecast revision from this page because we could not open the report it was attributed to, and we removed a claim that historically OTRI above a threshold produces a specific contract increase within a specific number of quarters, because no study was ever named for it. If you want the wider outlook, our 2026 trucking industry forecast and freight market indicators guide cover the full indicator set.

Read the right-hand column carefully. At a national-average rate against an industry-average cost, a truck at 6.5 mpg clears roughly $0.34 per mile gross — before a dispatch fee, before a truck payment that differs from the average, before an insurance renewal. That is a working margin, not a windfall, and it is why rate discipline matters more in this market than it did when rates were obviously bad.

It is also why the industry average is the wrong number to run your business on. Your fixed costs, your fuel economy, your maintenance profile and your deadhead percentage all move this materially. Put your own twelve months of expenses through our cost per mile calculator and use that figure, not ATRI's, as your floor input. If diesel is the variable worrying you, our 2026 diesel price outlook tracks the series this table is built on.

A rate floor is your measured cost per mile plus the margin you need, and it only works if the cost side is real. Worked from the ATRI benchmark as a reference: 2.336 × 1.20 = $2.80 per mile for a 20% margin over the 2025 industry-average cost. Worked from the fuel-adjusted figure in the table above, the same 20% margin lands near $3.20 per mile at 6.5 mpg.

That is not a rate you are entitled to. It is what the arithmetic says a 20% margin costs at industry-average expense levels. It is also well above the floor range this page used to recommend, which sat below what the average truck cost to run before a drop of diesel was bought — advice that lost money for anyone who followed it. That range has been removed.

Two practical notes. First, a floor set on an industry average is a placeholder — replace it with your own number from the cost per mile calculator as soon as you have twelve months of expenses to feed it. Second, the floor is per total mile, not per loaded mile: a load at your floor rate that comes with 200 deadhead miles is below your floor. Run the round trip through our deadhead calculator and our profit per load calculator before you accept it, and see how to avoid deadhead miles for the structural fixes.

Once the floor is set, the job is holding it in a conversation. Our rate negotiation guide covers how to quote against the current reading instead of the posted rate.

The case for spot right now: the crossover and the rejection index both say the open market is where the pricing power is. If your measured cost per mile is meaningfully below the current spot reading on your lanes, spot is where the margin is. Test that against your own number, not the national average.

The case for keeping contract volume: spot can reverse in weeks, and fixed costs do not. A contracted base that covers the truck payment and insurance means a soft month is a thin month rather than a loss. We are not going to tell you the contract rate range that guarantees this, because whether a given rate covers your fixed costs depends entirely on what your fixed costs are.

Where a dispatcher fits: the useful part is watching rate movement on your lanes daily and negotiating against the current reading rather than the posted one. We used to quote a per-mile and per-month uplift for professional dispatch on this page. We removed it, because we have not measured one we can stand behind, and a number like that is a promise dressed up as market data. Run your own inputs through our dispatch ROI calculator instead. For the deeper strategy version of this section, see maximizing revenue on spot rates in 2026.

The deadhead trap: several of these corridors pay well inbound and thin outbound. A high rate into South Florida, a rural construction site or a border town stops being a high rate once you count the empty miles to your next load. Always price the round trip — our deadhead calculator does it in about a minute, and our state-by-state freight guides cover regional lane dynamics in detail.

Position before the surge, not after it: the predictable seasonal windows — produce, construction, pre-holiday inventory build, and the Atlantic hurricane season, which NOAA defines as June 1 to November 30 — reward carriers who are already in the market when demand arrives. What we will not do is hand you a to-the-day positioning date and a lane rate to go with it, the way this page used to — neither had a source behind it. Our seasonal freight calendar is the right place for timing.

Our assessment, labelled as such: the rate side of the freight recession has turned, and we expect spot to stay above the 2024–2025 trough through 2026. We are not forecasting a level, and we are not repeating the "this time is structural" argument in the strong form it appeared in here before, because the figures it rested on did not survive checking. What we will say plainly is that a carrier whose costs are under control benefits from this market and a carrier whose costs are not does not, at any rate per mile.

"Recovery" is not 2021 again. It is rates returning to levels where a well-run truck makes money, against a cost base that has moved up underneath them. If you want a second pair of eyes on where your lanes sit against the current readings, talk to our team.