LTL led July's freight retreat, down 4.6%, while truckload held near flat

Less-than-truckload freight rates fell 4.6% in July, the sharpest drop of any trucking segment on the Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price index, which put the LTL reading at 293.7. Truckload segments barely moved by comparison: dry van truckload slipped 1.3% to 195.6, and flatbed and specialized freight eased 1.2% to 168.2.

For a driver, that gap is the story. July was not a broad rout, it was an LTL one. The all-trucking index fell 1.9% to 205.4, but that headline number is dragged down by the outsized LTL move; strip the noise and the truckload lines that most over-the-road drivers actually run held within about a point of flat.

The revenue line that moved the other way was refrigerated. Produce reefer rates averaged $4.21 a mile in the week to 25 August, up 1.8% and up 14.7% on the year, on U.S. Department of Agriculture produce tracking. That makes reefer the firmest segment in the set. If you can run a cold trailer, that is where the rates are holding.

The cost side kept climbing. The national retail diesel average rose 3.7% to $5.454 a gallon in the week to 17 August, on U.S. Energy Information Administration figures, up nearly 47% on the year. A softer rate on most freight and a rising fuel bill is the squeeze owner-operators have carried all summer, and it did not let up in July.

Read the fine print before you act on any of it. The July PPI figures are preliminary and will be revised. They are indices, not dollars per mile: they track change from a base period and blend contract with spot business, so they turn later and more gently than the spot market does. LTL is a special case even among indices, its pricing set by published tariffs, negotiated discounts and accessorials, so its level is not comparable to truckload, only its direction. The reefer average is produce-only across whichever lanes were active that week, so the individual lanes tell you more than the mean.

The wider read, per FreightWaves, is a market shaped by capacity leaving rather than demand arriving: tender volumes have gone nowhere for two years while rejections have tripled.