Truckload Linehaul Rate Benchmarking: DAT and Truckstop Spot Indexes vs Contract Pricing

Spot and Contract Are Two Different Markets

Truckload freight moves through two pricing channels that share the same trucks but behave very differently. Contract freight is priced through a shipper's request for proposal, usually for a term of several months to a year, and awarded into a routing guide where the primary carrier gets the first tender at an agreed rate. Spot freight is priced load by load, often the same day, through a broker, a load board posting, or a direct phone negotiation. Contract rates are sticky by design. Spot rates respond to every change in capacity, weather, seasonal demand, and regional imbalance within days.

That difference is why benchmarking matters. A carrier with a contract book priced during a soft market can find itself hauling primary freight below what the spot market pays a few months later. A broker who bought capacity at contract levels can be squeezed when spot rises and carriers reject tenders. Neither problem shows up in a monthly revenue report. It shows up when someone compares booked linehaul per mile, lane by lane, against a credible outside reference and against the carrier's own cost.

What Load Board Rate Indexes Actually Measure

DAT and Truckstop each operate load boards and publish rate benchmarking products to their subscribers. Those products draw on transaction and posting data reported through their networks and present lane level averages, ranges, and trends for spot freight, and in some products for contract freight as well. Methods, geographies, lookback windows, and data sources differ by provider and by product, and providers revise their methods over time. Read the methodology notes for whichever product you license, and record the product name and method version alongside any benchmark value you store.

Three questions determine whether a benchmark comparison is fair. First, is the figure all in or linehaul only? Many benchmark displays show both a total rate and a linehaul figure net of an estimated fuel surcharge. Second, what geography defines the lane: a three digit ZIP, a market area, a state, or a region? Third, what time window and equipment type sit behind the number? A van benchmark averaged over thirty days for a regional market is not comparable to a single reefer load booked yesterday between two specific cities. Getting those three answers right eliminates most of the arguments that pricing meetings usually have about whose number is correct.

Benchmark data is licensed, not public. The subscription agreement governs how values can be stored, shared, and displayed. Before loading benchmark values into a TMS table, a data warehouse, or a customer facing report, confirm with the provider that the use is permitted under your license. Strong Tower Consulting does not resell or redistribute any provider's data.

Separate Linehaul From Fuel Surcharge, Always

The most common benchmarking error is comparing an all in rate to a linehaul rate, or comparing two all in rates from periods with different diesel prices. Fuel surcharge in truckload is usually billed from a table keyed to a published diesel price index, most often the weekly U.S. Energy Information Administration on highway diesel average, with a base or peg price and a cents per mile step. When diesel moves, the surcharge moves, and an all in rate per mile moves with it even if the underlying market for capacity did not change at all.

The fix is structural. Every load in the TMS should carry linehaul, fuel surcharge, and each accessorial as separate charge lines, with the fuel table and index week that produced the surcharge recorded on the load. Flat all in quotes, which are common on spot freight, should be split at booking time into an implied linehaul and an implied fuel amount using the carrier's standard fuel table for that week. That split is an estimate, so flag it as derived rather than billed, but it lets spot and contract loads be compared on the same basis.

Example: a dry van load is booked spot at an all in figure equal to 3.00 dollars per loaded mile. The carrier's fuel table for that index week produces a surcharge of 0.55 dollars per mile. The implied linehaul is 2.45 dollars per mile. A contract load on a similar lane billed 2.30 linehaul plus the same 0.55 surcharge looks only 0.15 apart on an all in basis, and also 0.15 apart on linehaul. But if the contract load had moved in a week when the surcharge was 0.40, the all in comparison would show 0.30 apart while the linehaul gap stayed at 0.15. The numbers here are illustrative only. Our fuel surcharge peg scale calculator shows how peg and step choices change the surcharge, and the insight on DOE PADD fuel surcharge indexing covers regional index selection.

Building Lane Level Rate History in the TMS and SQL

Your own history is the most relevant benchmark you have, because it reflects your customers, your service, your equipment, and your network balance. Most carriers already own years of this data in the TMS, but it is scattered across load, stop, and charge tables with inconsistent lane definitions. A rate history table, refreshed nightly, turns that raw data into something pricing can use.

A practical design uses one row per delivered load with these columns: origin and destination at a fixed geography such as three digit ZIP and market area, equipment type, temperature mode for reefer, tender date, pickup date, loaded miles from a single mileage engine and version, empty miles to the pickup, linehaul amount, fuel surcharge amount, total accessorials, contract or spot flag, customer, and the benchmark linehaul per mile captured at quote time with the product name and method. From that table, SQL views can produce linehaul per loaded mile by lane and week, trailing averages, the spread between booked rate and benchmark, and the spread between booked rate and fully loaded cost.

• One mileage source - Mixing practical miles and shortest miles from different engine versions creates false rate per mile changes.
• Consistent lane keys - Define lanes the same way your benchmark product does, so joins compare like with like.
• Quote time snapshot - Store the benchmark value you saw when you priced, not a value looked up later.
• Minimum sample rules - Suppress or flag lane weeks with too few loads to be meaningful.

Data quality problems surface quickly once the table exists: loads with zero miles, linehaul and fuel lumped into one charge code, duplicate lanes caused by free text stops, and canceled loads that were never voided. A SQL data mining review is usually the first step, followed by a cleanup of charge codes and location masters so new loads land correctly. Carriers moving off an older platform should build these rules into the conversion plan; our TMS data migration work preserves historical charge splits rather than collapsing them into a single revenue number.

Using Benchmarks in Contract RFP Pricing

A contract bid should start from cost, not from an index. Calculate a fully loaded cost per mile for the equipment type, then adjust each lane for expected empty miles based on how well the destination market reloads in your network. A lane into a market where your trucks wait two days for a reload carries a hidden cost that no spot benchmark captures. Our cost per mile calculator is a starting point for that floor.

Next, compare the cost based bid to three references: your own trailing linehaul on the lane, the licensed spot benchmark, and the licensed contract benchmark if your product includes one. The goal is not to match any of them. The goal is to understand where your bid sits. A bid far below the contract benchmark may win volume you cannot profitably haul if the market tightens. A bid far above may be fine if your service on that lane is strong and the customer values reliability, but you should know that before submitting.

Example: a 40 truck regional reefer fleet receives a bid package with 120 lanes. The pricing analyst sorts lanes into three groups. Core lanes match existing network flow and are priced near cost plus target margin. Balancing lanes fix a known headhaul imbalance and are priced more aggressively. Out of network lanes require long deadhead and are priced high or declined. Benchmarks are used to sanity check each group, not to set the number. This grouping method is an illustration of a common approach, not a claim about any specific fleet.

Bid term matters as much as rate. A one year fixed rate locks in whatever spread exists today. Indexed contracts, mini bid rights, and reopener clauses tied to a benchmark threshold share that risk between shipper and carrier. If the contract references a third party index, both parties need rights to that data, and the clause should name the specific product, lane definition, and measurement window. Rating engines need to support those mechanics; our carrier rate matrix optimization practice builds lane tables, minimum charges, and effective date versioning so a mid term adjustment does not require rebuilding the tariff.

When Spot and Contract Diverge

Divergence is normal and cyclical. When capacity tightens, spot rises first because it reprices daily, while contract rates stay fixed until the next bid. Carriers then reject more primary tenders because the spot market pays better, freight falls down the routing guide to backup carriers and eventually to brokers, and shippers pay spot prices on volume they thought was contracted. When capacity loosens, spot falls below contract, shippers call mini bids or shift volume to the spot market, and carriers see their contract volumes shrink even though their rates did not change.

Carriers and brokers can watch for divergence in their own data before it becomes a surprise. Track the spread between booked contract linehaul and the spot benchmark by lane each week. Track your own tender acceptance rate by customer and lane, and for brokers, track the gap between customer rate and carrier cost on contract loads. When the spread crosses a threshold you set in advance, trigger a review: reprice spot quoting, renegotiate with the customer, or deliberately shift capacity. The insight on lane scorecards and tender acceptance covers how to measure acceptance consistently.

Brokers, Records, and Owner Operator Pay

Brokers face an added recordkeeping duty. Under 49 CFR 371.3, a property broker must keep a record of each transaction, including the name and address of the consignor, the name, address, and registration number of the originating motor carrier, the bill of lading or freight bill number, the amount of compensation the broker received and the name of the payer, a description of any non brokerage service performed in connection with the shipment with its compensation and payer, and the amount of any freight charges the broker collected and the date paid to the carrier. Those records must be kept for three years, and each party to the brokered transaction has the right to review the record of that transaction. Clean charge separation in the TMS makes that review accurate and quick.

Carriers that pay leased owner operators a percentage of revenue have a parallel obligation. Under 49 CFR 376.12, when compensation is based on a percentage of gross revenue for a shipment, the lease must give the lessor the right to see a copy of the rated freight bill or computer generated equivalent before or at settlement. If linehaul, fuel surcharge, and accessorials are lumped together or relabeled, settlement disputes follow. Separate charge lines support both benchmarking and fair settlements.

Practical Steps for the Next 60 Days

Days 1 to 20, audit charge codes and confirm every load separates linehaul, fuel, and accessorials, then pick one mileage engine version for all rate per mile reporting. Days 21 to 40, build the nightly rate history table and the lane spread views, and agree internally on lane definitions that match your licensed benchmark product. Days 41 to 60, add a quote time benchmark snapshot field to spot quoting and to RFP pricing worksheets, set spread thresholds that trigger review, and run the first lane level report for management. Each step produces something usable on its own.

Related practice areas for this work include Carrier Rate Matrix Optimization, SQL Data Mining, Reporting, and Freight Broker Consulting. Each practice page describes scope, deliverables, and how an engagement starts with a short discovery call.

How Strong Tower Consulting Helps

Strong Tower Consulting helps carriers and brokers turn rate data into a repeatable pricing system inside the TMS instead of a spreadsheet that one analyst maintains. The work starts with a charge code and lane definition audit, moves to a rate history table and spread reports, and then supports contract RFP pricing with cost based floors and benchmark sanity checks. Strong Tower Consulting, LLC and Exspeedite LLC are separately organized sister companies under common ownership. That separation keeps consulting advice vendor neutral, and Strong Tower Consulting has no commercial relationship with DAT or Truckstop.

To discuss your lanes, your contract book, and your current rating setup, contact us or call 763-244-1373 and ask for Scott Elliott. A short call is enough to identify which lanes need attention first and what data you already have to support the next bid.

Frequently Asked Questions