Dive Brief:
- Flatbed spot rates are soaring due to AI data center construction, DAT iQ Principal Analyst Dean Croke told Trucking Dive.
- The demand particularly lends itself to specialized freight for one-off jobs in remote areas that can have long deadhead mile components on return routes and accessorials, he said.
- “The spot market ... has been on fire for 18 months, driven by incredible demand for anything to do with data centers, nuclear power, diesel generation, natural gas power generation,” Croke said.
Flatbed spot rates steadily rising in 2026
Dive Insight:
Large-scale projects by tech companies, such as Meta Platforms, are helping drive specialized transportation needs for items like servers and cooling systems, Ryan Transportation noted last year. Currently, new multibillion-dollar projects are spread across multiple states, including Louisiana, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Data centers are seeing explosive growth, but projects may not always materialize, according to a February report by market intelligence platform Sightline Climate. Spending on projects may also be masked based on the value of the technology, as opposed to the actual costs of construction and transportation needs.
Nevertheless, recent data point to a tightening flatbed market, with load-to-truck ratios exceeding 60-to-1 in late February, the highest since mid-2022, C.H. Robinson Worldwide said in a monthly report for March.
Those levels even rose higher in recent weeks, increasing to 71 for the first week of March. That indicates more loads are needed than trucks available. During points in the pandemic, that ratio was above 100-to-1, per DAT data.
Meanwhile, other elements of the economy are showing inconsistencies, such as soft housing and unstable manufacturing momentum, ACT Research said Feb. 26 in a monthly report.
Flatbed contract rates are down year over year and tied to the broader economy, which is soft, Croke noted.
