Short reefer hauls paid $14 a mile last week, long ones $2 -- why per-mile misleads

Refrigerated produce out of the Delmarva peninsula paid $14.00 a mile to Baltimore in the week to 25 August, a 100-mile run worth $1,400. Out of the same region, the 700-mile haul to Atlanta paid $5.71 a mile -- $4,000 for the load. The longer trip paid less per mile and nearly three times as much in total. That is not a quirk of one week; it is how rate per mile works, and mistaking one number for the other is the commonest way a rate table gets misread.

Rate per mile falls as distance rises because the costs that do not depend on distance -- loading and unloading, waiting for a door, the deadhead to reach the shipper, the paperwork -- land on every load whether it runs 100 miles or 2,000. Spread that overhead across 100 miles and each mile has to carry a big share of it, so the per-mile number is high. Spread it across 1,600 miles and each mile carries almost none, so the per-mile number is low. The short haul is not better paid; it is charging for the same fixed work over fewer miles.

Last week's USDA produce lanes show it cleanly. Out of the Yakima Valley in Washington, the 140-mile run to Seattle paid $8.21 a mile, or $1,150; the 1,250-mile run to Los Angeles paid $2.16, or $2,700. Out of the Vidalia district in Georgia, 180 miles to Atlanta paid $7.78 ($1,400), while 2,350 miles to Los Angeles paid $2.21 ($5,200). The lowest per-mile lane on the board -- Mexican crossings through south Texas to Los Angeles at $2.00 a mile -- was also one of the fattest single checks, $3,200 for 1,600 miles.

So what do you do with it? Do not rank loads by rate per mile unless they run about the same distance. A $14-a-mile short haul and a $2-a-mile long haul are answering different questions. Compare the total on the load, and better still the pay per day: a $1,400 run you can turn and reload the same day can beat a $5,200 run that ties the truck up for a week, if the short lanes keep coming. Per-mile is for pricing one lane against itself over time, not for choosing between a 100-mile load and a 1,000-mile one.

The national produce reefer average was $4.21 a mile in the week to 25 August, up 1.8% on the week and 14.7% on the year. Read that average with care: it covers refrigerated produce only, and it is 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 the average -- which is why the lane-by-lane spread above, not the $4.21 headline, is where the decision lives.