Weekly Market Intelligence: Week of September 21, 2026

DAT's print for the week ending 9/19 showed all-in spot rates up in every mode, but linehaul, the part that pays the carrier to move the trailer, went the other way in dry van and flatbed. Every dollar of increase that week was fuel: diesel printed a fourth consecutive record at $6.529 per gallon, up 74.2% year over year.

• $6.529U.S. diesel, $/gal (EIA, week ending 9/21; up 24.4¢)
• $3.59Reefer all-in $/mi (linehaul $2.73, up 2¢)
• $2.96Dry van all-in $/mi (linehaul $2.17, down 3¢)
• $3.55Flatbed all-in $/mi (linehaul $2.60, down 1¢)

Three takeaways

• Re-index fuel surcharges weekly; monthly is now indefensible. Four record prints in four weeks moved the illustrative truckload surcharge from 50.5 to 54.3 cents per mile. A table anchored to the July 6 low under-recovers by about 30 cents per mile, or roughly $30,000 per year on a 100,000-mile lane.
• Negotiate the linehaul, not the all-in. A renewal quoted as a single blended number hands the carrier today's fuel spike as permanent base margin. Insist on an indexed, origin-PADD-aware fuel mechanism priced separately from a base rate set to lane capacity.
• The demand floor just moved. Cass reported August shipments up 2.1% year over year, the first annual gain since January 2023, ending a 42-month downturn. Load posts jumped 15% in dry van and 25% in flatbed. Re-run Q4 and 2027 volume assumptions.

Inside the 11-page package

Executive summary · Reefer · LTL · Dry van · Flatbed · EDI tender decline report · Fuel surcharge report, all modes · Diesel cost by PADD (regional) · Reefer rate and reefer ROTRI 13-week comparisons.

Data sources include DAT Freight & Analytics, U.S. EIA, and the Cass Freight Index; full citations are in the PDF. The EDI tender decline section is illustrative, and some historical comparisons are analyst estimates, labeled as such in the report.

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