For an owner-operator who often enough spent time the last few years choosing to sit rather than waste it hauling at rates that were substandard, to say the least, 2026 marks a big change.
"I spent January 1 on the road," said Landstar-leased Jay Hosty, and since then "things have gone really good in terms of rates."
There's no doubt "still a lot of garbage out there," he added. Yet the positive pickings he's seen on the internal Landstar load board, where agents around the nation post freight available to contractors like Hosty, have been so positive "I've already knocked out 30,000 miles" these first few months and change in 2026.
To put that in perspective, for the entirety of 2025 Hosty ran between 65K and 66K miles, and averaged 70K-75K miles the couple years prior.
"If the rates stay up, I probably will keep it up," he said.
While total spot rates overall increased in the most recent week ended April 10, others around trucking may have seen rates for dry vans leveling off, even falling slightly. The latest weekly report from FTR Transportation Intelligence and Truckstop.com highlighted a 2-cent/mile decline in dry van rates, coupled with an 8-cent fall for reefers. Flatbed rates were up 8 cents during the week, the firms noted.
Flatbed and otherwise specialized freight led the charge for a total broker-posted rate increase of 7.3 cents/mile week over week. It's the smallest weekly increase in the last five, yet has spot rates broadly at their highest average since June 2022, FTR and Truckstop.com reported. All-in broker-posted rates were about 26% higher than in the same week last year, while rates excluding a calculated surcharge were up close to 17%.
DAT Freight & Analytics' load board network reported somewhat different spot-rates results for the most-recent week, ending April 12, with an 18.6% increase in dry van rates. Reefer rates, on the other hand, fell 22.5%, DAT noted. Flatbed rates in the DAT system were up 9.9% week over week.
Looking back to last year, DAT shows the average spot van rate for the month of March up 53 cents/mile over March 2025, the reefer rate up 70 cents, and spot flat rates increased 56 cents.
Fuel taking heat off weekly rates increases? Pump price falls, finally
Freight rates followed trucking demand up this year, certainly -- but trucking costs, too. There's good news for costs this week: with tensions de-escalating a bit in the Middle East, average pump prices actually dropped for the first time in 12 weeks, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Diesel's national average during the week ended April 13 was down 3.5 cents from the prior week to an average of $5.61/gallon.
Fuel fell in all but three regions across the country, led by an 18.3-cent decrease in the West Coast less California region. Average diesel prices by region, according to EIA:
- New England -- $6.02 (up 2.7 cents from last week)
- Central Atlantic -- $6.00 (up 1.6 cents)
- Lower Atlantic -- $5.52 (down 10.6 cents)
- Midwest -- $5.38 (up 7.8 cents)
- Gulf Coast -- $5.31 (down 10.5 cents)
- Rocky Mountain -- $5.26 (down 15.6 cents)
- West Coast less California -- $6.18 (down 18.3 cents)
- California -- $7.56 (down 0.8 cent)
ProMiles’ diesel averages during the same week went the opposite direction and jumped by 4.3 cents to $5.38/gallon nationwide. According to the ProMiles Fuel Surcharge Index, the most expensive diesel can be found in California at $6.49/gallon -- down 53.8 cents from the prior week -- and the cheapest in the Rocky Mountain region at $5.01/gallon.
In short, it's still something of a horror show on truck stops' fuel-pricing signs all around the nation. Owner-operators like Hosty find ways to mute some of the horror.
Speaking Tuesday, under a load bound for West Virginia with an expected fuel-surcharge compensation of 76 cents/mile, Overdrive 2023 Trucker of the Year Jay Hosty noted his real fuel cost in Landstar's discount network amounted to just 70 cents/mile.
He keeps it in mind looking at posted rates on the internal load board, which include the surcharge portion paid 100% to the owner, irrespective of Landstar's cut of the rest of the underlying rate.
Fuel's less a horror here -- he's "making an extra 6 cents" in revenue as a result of the fuel spikes, he knows. Some fairly recent dry van loads around the time of Mid-America Trucking Show:
- To New Mexico out of Louisiana: $4/mile-plus gross
- Arizona then back across the country to Georgia: $3.50/mile and some change
- Atlanta, then, back to Yuma, Arizona: $3.75.
Personal gross anchor rates he's of course adjusted since war broke out. "Before all of this I'd look at rates like anything over $2/mile" had profit potential in it, he said.
Now, "anything over $3 is good, really good, and I've been staying above the $3 mark," Hosty said.
[Related: Looking for the rates ceiling ... Oh wait, is that a floor?]
Since putting his 2022 Western Star finally in service in late 2024, he just recently passed the 100,000-mile mark, with a lifetime fuel-mileage average of between 6.4 and 6.5 mpg for the Detroit DD15-powered unit, with an automated 13 speed transmission and 3.08 rears.
"I’m still a 60 mph driver," Hosty said, as evidenced in insignia on both sides of the hood of his Western Star shown here. When he started to see the diesel-price signs pass $4 and $5/gal. with the rest of us in March, he half expected more company in the slow lane, as it were. So many of his fellow truckers still "just blow by me like it’s nothing." Cruise speed remains, he knows, one fuel-saving factor any driver has complete control over. It used to "make a difference that fuel’s $5.50/gal.," he added, but no more it seems. "Everybody drives the same."
FTR and Truckstop.com noted this week that even at a conservative fuel economy assumption of 6 mpg, the increase in broker-posted rates for dry van equipment essentially has matched the approximately 29 cents of additional cost per mile due to higher fuel prices over the past five weeks.
Hosty lauds examples like the one provided by one among his successor Truckers of the Year, noting current reigning champ owner-operator John Penn "has got it dialed in" with his 2019 Freightliner at 10-plus mpg. "I've never seen those double-digit numbers," Hosty noted of his own operation. "Hats off to him. It's pretty amazing."
One addition coming soon stands to help, in any case. A new Great Dane dry van is "supposed to be ready in May," Hosty said, and is spec'd with the usual aluminum wheels, a few "extra lights, stainless front and rear."
Hosty's current trailer is more than 10 years old, he said, and showing its age in the paint on the sides.
"My biggest feature," he said, is a forward lift axle for the tandem, something even John Penn as of MATS hadn't yet done with his trailers. (It's in the works for Penn's two vans, though.)
"I haul a lot of lightweight freight," Hosty said, and he's "anxious to see what kind of difference [the lift axle] makes on fuel."
More than likely he'll be able to run it lifted more for more than half of his increasing miles, if rates can keep up.
[Related: Diesel keeps climbing ... Can rates keep up?]
