Box Freight Cools While Open-Deck Rates Keep Climbing

1. October Split the Market in Two

The North American truckload market did not turn over in October. It diverged. Dry van and refrigerated spot rates posted their first modest month-over-month declines after a long run of escalation. Specialized open-deck equipment moved the other direction. Step Deck and Conestoga rates rose on infrastructure freight and seasonal weather protection, while standard flatbed was essentially unchanged.

The result is a market that still looks historically tight on a year-over-year basis, and noticeably less uniform from one trailer type to the next. Van, reefer, and flatbed all gave a little ground from September. Removable gooseneck barely moved. Step Deck and Conestoga kept climbing.

Rates are national spot averages in dollars per mile. Margins are October brokerage gross yield. Source: Transport Pro internal analytics.

2. Van & Reefer Ease Off the Peak

Dry van, still more than half of tracked volume, fell $0.05 from its all-time peak of $3.20/mile to $3.15/mile. Reefer followed, down $0.05 to $3.68/mile. These are small moves against the run-up that carried van through $3.00 in the spring and reefer well above $3.50 by summer. They are large enough to change the month's story.

Two forces lined up. DAT Trendlines showed spot load postings up 11.4% while truck postings rose 5.3%, which kept the load-to-truck ratio from tightening further. At the same time, retail diesel backed off its late-summer extremes, so fuel-surcharge pressure stopped pushing linehaul higher. The capacity picture stabilized. It did not loosen back to 2025 levels. Van is still 37.6% above October 2025, and reefer is still 43.2% higher.

Produce geography is part of the reefer story. USDA reports the domestic fall harvest winding down in California and the Pacific Northwest. Cold-chain velocity is shifting toward Mexican imports through Nogales and South Texas. That relocates demand. It does not erase it. Brokers who still have reefer trucks staged for a Pacific harvest will feel a softer book even while southern border crossings stay active.

3. Step Deck, Conestoga, and Flatbed

Step Deck is the outlier of this cycle. The national average reached $4.65/mile in October, up 1.8% from September and 79.5% from October 2025, when the same equipment averaged $2.59. That is an $0.81 premium over standard flatbed. The operating reason is straightforward: a step deck deck height of roughly 36 to 40 inches, versus about 60 inches on a standard flatbed, lets carriers move machinery up to 10 feet high without the permits and escort costs of an over-dimensional load.

Federal infrastructure work and private manufacturing investment continue to support that premium. Consumer freight can cool without taking specialized open-deck capacity with it. RGN heavy haul tells a similar, quieter version of the same story. At $5.74/mile it was only 0.2% higher than September, and its 31.4% year-over-year gain is the smallest of the six equipment types. The rate was already high. It stayed high, and October brokerage margin on RGN held at 20.0%.

Conestoga Takes the Weather Premium

Conestoga was the fastest monthly mover, up 6.4% to $3.85/mile. That is a penny above standard flatbed at $3.84, which slipped 0.5% on the month and is still up 38.1% year over year. Autumn rain is doing the commercial work. A rolling tarp system covers a load in two to five minutes. A manual tarp job can take the better part of an hour and puts the driver up on the freight. Shippers moving finished steel and machinery are accepting roughly a 2,500-pound payload penalty from the tarp frame in exchange for fewer water-damage claims and less dwell at the dock.

4. The Multi-Year Rate Path

A one-month dip in van and reefer sits on top of a much larger break from the 2023–2025 range. Quarterly van averages spent most of those three years between about $2.09 and $2.38 per mile. The 2026 path is $2.63 in the first quarter, $3.02 in the second, $3.14 in the third, and $3.15 in October. Reefer followed the same shape, from the mid-$2.40s through 2025 to $3.01, $3.45, $3.58, and then $3.68.

Step Deck is the chart that explains why open deck feels like a different market. It sat near $2.60 for most of 2024 and 2025, printed $2.95 in the first quarter of 2026, and then jumped to $4.27, $4.52, and $4.65. Conestoga has been choppier: it reached $3.99 in the second quarter, eased to $3.74 in the third, and recovered to $3.85 in October as weather protection came back into the bid. Standard flatbed leveled off at $3.84 after the second- and third-quarter climb. RGN has ground higher for two years and now sits at $5.74.

5. Broker Margins Hold, Losses Shrink

Aggregate brokerage gross margin held flat at 14.0% in October. The more useful change is in the loss column. The share of shipments that lost money fell from 7.2% to 6.7%. That is a long way from the spring, when roughly one in nine brokered loads was underwater, and it lines up with lane-level repricing catching up to carrier cost.

The equipment mix inside that 14% average moved in different directions. Reefer gross margin expanded 70 basis points to 12.2%, a year-to-date high. Carrier spot buy rates on reefer fell about $0.05 per mile, and contracted shipper rates held, so the spread widened. Dry van margin slipped for a second straight month, to 13.9% from 14.3% in September and 14.8% in August. Step Deck margin contracted 70 basis points to 14.9% as carrier linehaul moved ahead of short-term contract adjustments. Conestoga margin recovered to 18.2% after a sharp September dip, flatbed eased to 15.8%, and RGN returned to 20.0%.

6. Diesel Retreats and Imports Drop

On-Highway Diesel

EIA retail diesel peaked at $6.529 per gallon in late September, eased to $6.276 by October 19, bounced to $6.352 on October 26, and then settled at $6.292 on November 2, down six cents from that late-month high. The retreat takes some cost-push pressure out of November linehaul. It does not make fuel cheap, and a national average still hides a wide regional gap.

California diesel in PADD 5 ran $8.076 to $8.281 per gallon. Gulf Coast diesel in PADD 3 averaged $5.912. At 6.5 miles per gallon, that is about $1.24 per mile of fuel in California against $0.91 along the Gulf Coast, a $0.33 per mile difference before any brokerage markup. A single national fuel surcharge flattens that spread and misstates landed cost on long lanes that touch either region.

Import Loads Fell After an Early Peak

Internal import load counts dropped to 606 shipments in October, down 29.5% from 859 in September and well below the 1,130 recorded in October 2025. The 2026 path was front-loaded: a soft January, a February spike, a July peak of 1,353 loads, and then a steady fade through August, September, and October.

That pattern matches the NRF and Hackett Associates Global Port Tracker. U.S. ports handled about 2.30 million TEU in August and 2.28 million TEU in September as shippers pulled retail freight forward. Distribution centers entered November already stocked, which is why dry van spot pressure cooled even though the year-over-year rate comparison remains extremely strong.

Internal Transport Pro import load counts. Port-level TEU figures cited in the text are from the NRF/Hackett Associates Global Port Tracker. Diesel prices are from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

7. What to Do With a Split Market

November does not look like a return to the 2024 rate regime. Van and reefer have room to stay near current levels if import volumes remain off their summer peak and diesel does not spike again. Step Deck and weather-protected open deck still have a bid underneath them from construction, manufacturing freight, and seasonal tarping. The practical response depends on which side of the transaction you sit on.