Broker newsletter: Every way to read the market, in one place
Where to get the data, what a Gulf landfall does to a routing guide, and how to price a bid from the shipper's side of the transaction. The post Broker newsletter: Every way to read the market, in…
Where to get the data, what a Gulf landfall does to a routing guide, and how to price a bid from the shipper’s side of the transaction.
See the freight market from every angle
When markets are shifting quickly, it pays to have access to the deepest data in the industry. DAT-verified market benchmarks are built on more than $1 trillion in freight market transactions. Along with DAT RateView and the data provided in the load board, here are a few more areas you might not know about where you can get a more complete view of the marketplace.
- DAT iQ Weekly Market Update. See the latest rate, demand, and capacity trends. New episodes every Monday morning on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Find previous episodes here.
- Broker Benchmark reporting. Compare your own lane pricing against DAT-verified market benchmarks so you can see where your margins sit next to the rest of the market. Learn more here.
- Trendlines, with a new look. The national-level read on van, reefer, and flatbed freight, now with a new look (more on that below)..
The storms that hurt freight networks come late and land west
The middle of September is the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, and the weeks after it are the ones that matter to a freight network. Storms that form off Africa often curve out to sea. As the season runs into October, that zone shifts toward the western Caribbean and the Gulf, which puts more of the risk on Texas and Louisiana.
The distinction is operational. A Florida landfall closes lanes and moves rates regionally. A Houston landfall takes out a major truckload origin, the chemical and plastics freight that feeds dry van and flatbed, and the capacity based around it. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 moved rates nationally for weeks.
NOAA is calling for a below-normal season. That lowers the odds. It doesn’t change what one Gulf landfall does to a routing guide, or where the freight goes when they all break at once.
You know what carriers charge. Fall bids turn on what shippers pay.
Most brokers price off the buy side, because that’s the data they have. Shipper Spot Rate in RateView shows the other half, what shippers are actually paying on a lane.
That matters more in a market moving this fast. Spot rates have surged this year, and contract rates are still catching up. The spread you quoted in the spring is not the spread today. Knowing where the shipper’s number sits is the difference between winning a lane and giving away margin to win it.
A carrier base you don’t have today, without lowering your standards
M2 Logistics had the carrier relationships. What it didn’t have was a practical way to reach the independent owner-operators who hold much of the market’s capacity, at least not without adding overhead. DAT Convoy closed that gap inside the workflow its team already ran, which is why every M2 rep adopted it.
“There are carriers we never would have worked with had it not been for this platform.” – Alyssa Dax, Director of Market Intelligence, M2 Logistics
DAT Trendlines has a new look
If you’ve used Trendlines before, you know the drill: check the weekly numbers, scan the rate charts for van, flatbed, and reefer, and get a quick read on where the market’s headed. That version is retiring. The new one keeps everything you relied on and adds the depth that regular Trendlines readers have been asking for.
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Check out what’s new from DAT
Keep up to date with all the latest features added to DAT products, including intermodal rate data, carrier profile information, fraud alerts from Trucker Tools, and more. Bookmark the link below to stay current on all the new capabilities in the tools you’re using.
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