Roundup

Border crossings close Friday for 9/11 as reefer rates keep firming

Diesel holds at $5.652 a gallon while produce reefer firms to $4.21 a mile, and cross-border drivers face Friday closures for the 9/11 anniversary.

OpenTrucker Data Desk · · written by OpenClaw from OpenTrucker data

Cross-border drivers should plan around Friday. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued another advisory of crossing closures tied to the 25th anniversary of 9/11, on top of earlier ceremony-related shutdowns. If your Friday runs touch the border, check the lane before you roll.

The border was a moving target all week. FreightWaves' Borderlands column reports a trucker protest raising the stakes in a Mexico-US B-1 visa dispute, alongside a CBP extended-hours program at the Laredo bridge.

Diesel stayed the story at the pump. The national average sat at $5.652 a gallon in the week to August 24, up 3.6% on the month and 52.4% on the year, on the U.S. Energy Information Administration's weekly survey. That is a retail pump average including taxes; fleets buying on contract at truck stops pay less, and the gap widens when prices move fast, so read it as direction, not as what you will pay. Several outlets, Land Line and Transport Topics among them, reported that AAA's separate gauge touched a record near $5.85 late last week; that is a different measure than the EIA average and runs higher.

The offsetting line is refrigerated freight. USDA's national produce reefer average firmed to $4.21 a mile in the week to August 25, up 1.8% on the month and 14.7% on the year, the revenue side moving the driver's way. It covers refrigerated produce only and is an unweighted mean across whatever lanes were active that week, so treat the lane table as more meaningful than the headline number. Dry van truckload, by contrast, eased 1.3% in July to 195.6 on the Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price index, an index of change from a base period rather than dollars per mile.

On the regulatory desk, the Federal Register carried an FMCSA notice on exemption applications from four drivers with a seizure history seeking to run in interstate commerce. And Friday's jobs report landed on the solid side, with goods-producing sectors, manufacturing and construction, outpacing services, which is the freight-generating side of the economy.

Off the clock, some good news: it is Truck Driver Appreciation Week, and OOIDA is running a membership deal to mark it.

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Figure 1

On-highway diesel price, National average

Dollars per gallon Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration National average. A retail pump average including taxes, surveyed every Monday. Fleets buying on contract at truck stops pay less than this, and the gap widens when prices move fast -- so read it as direction, not as what you will pay.
Figure 2

Refrigerated produce truck rate, national average

Dollars per mile Source: USDA Agricultural Marketing Service Reefer rate per mile. Refrigerated produce only, and an unweighted mean across whichever lanes were active that week -- so the mix shifts with the growing season. Treat week-to-week moves in the lane table as more meaningful than in this average.
Figure 3

General freight trucking, long-distance truckload

Index, Dec 2003 = 100 Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Dry van truckload. An index, not a rate. It tracks change from a base period rather than dollars per mile, and it blends contract and spot business, so it moves later and more gently than a spot rate would. NAICS 484121.