Ken Adamo, the former Chief of Analytics at DAT and current Chief Strategy Officer at broker Ease Logistics, has reconnected with his old outfit and published some hard numbers on broker margins.
Looks like in June, when spot rates were hitting record highs and climbing, brokers got whacked.
"The weighted average gross margin on spot loads was 13.45% for the month of June 2026," said Adamo.
That includes nearly 20% of loads coming in with a "fat lip," or the negative, with the broker losing money on the load. That's the opposite of a "fat rip," when a broker takes a big margin, and what his old Fat Rips and Fat Lips index used to look at.
The picture for broker margins gets a little worse when looking at contract rates, which Adamo said DAT data placed at just 9%.
"Spot broker margins came in for June around 13.5% with contract margins in the 9% range," he said. "Spot would be loads that brokers won from shippers on the spot market and contact would be fixed rates they have with the shipper."
Nine percent, while not an outright fat lip, still stings for the broker, Adamo said.
"For most brokerages, 9% isn’t covering overhead and means that the contract book of business is not accretive to the bottom line," he said.
Margins on spot loads themselves are still a good bit down from last year, too.
"The spot margin is down almost 13%" since last June. Basically, last June, broker's spot margins would be at around 15%, Adamo said.
While brokers are getting hit, carriers are seeing diesel dip but insurance rates jump.
Overall, most carriers report smooth sailing.
That might change after the last week, though, when diesel prices reversed course and jumped more than 20 cents during the week ending July 13, while spot rates lost all the gains seen during July 4 week.
For carriers, now might be a good time to try to land a new contract.
"I can say from our own contract repricing efforts here at Ease and conversations I’m having across the industry, I suspect that there’s approximately 10-15% of pent-up contract rate increases that will materialize over the next quarter based on these repricing efforts," said Adamo.
He expects rates to "cool off a bit" between July 4th and Labor Day, "which should give brokers time to catch their breath and get things set for the retail peak this fall," he said.
Until then, good hunting, owner-ops!
[Related: Diesel prices, spot rates reverse course]
