DAT Week 36 Van Spot Rate Prints at $2.95 a Mile

DAT Freight & Analytics is a freight-rate data company. Brokers, carriers, and shippers use its load-board and invoice numbers to see what truckload capacity is trading for — not what your next purchase order will automatically cost.

A spot rate is the price for a truck booked now, for a near-term move, not a long-term contract rate locked months ahead. When people say “the spot market moved,” they mean those short-notice loads, not every contracted lane in the country.

Three equipment words show up in every DAT print. A van is a standard enclosed dry trailer — groceries, cartons, general freight that does not need a freezer. A reefer is a refrigerated trailer for cold or temperature-controlled freight. A flatbed is an open deck for lumber, steel, machinery, and other loads that sit on an open platform. Those are trailer types, not brand names.

Then the money words people mix up. Linehaul is the haul price before fuel. A fuel surcharge is the extra dollars tied to diesel. All-in is linehaul plus that fuel surcharge. If a quote only shows one number, ask which one it is. All-in and linehaul are not the same figure.

The news: DAT published Week 36 truckload spot figures for Aug. 30 through Sept. 5, 2026. In the company’s numbers, the seven-day average broker-to-carrier all-in spot rate — linehaul plus fuel surcharge — rose for vans, reefers, and flatbeds for a second straight week. Blue Book Services reprinted that DAT release on Sept. 8, 2026.

Here are the all-in averages DAT printed for that week: van $2.95 a mile, up 6 cents; reefer $3.54 a mile, up 9 cents; flatbed $3.54 a mile, up 4 cents. Those are marketplace averages from DAT’s invoice and board data, not a rate on your next load.

Strip out the fuel piece and DAT’s national linehaul averages were van $2.21 a mile (up 2 cents), reefer $2.74 (up 5 cents), and flatbed $2.66 (essentially flat). DAT said fuel did a lot of the all-in lift. The diesel figure it used for that week’s surcharge math was the EIA national on-highway average of $5.652 a gallon for the week ending Aug. 24 — not the later EIA print already live for the week of Sept. 7. Two different diesel weeks. Do not swap them.

Load posts on DAT One were just under 3.0 million for the week, down 3 percent from the prior week. Equipment posts — trucks offered on the board — rose 3 percent to 178,484 as trucks returned after a CVSA inspection blitz, DAT said. Even with that bounce, DAT’s analyst note said total equipment posts were still the lowest Week 36 figure in its records.

Load-to-truck ratio, in everyday words, is how many loads are posted for each truck posted. A higher ratio usually means tighter capacity (more freight chasing fewer trucks). DAT’s Week 36 ratios were 11.5 for van, 21.5 for reefer, and 36.4 for flatbed. Those loosened a bit as trucks returned, but DAT said they remained far tighter than the year-ago Week 36 figures (6.7 van, 10.2 reefer, 22.2 flatbed).

Who cares: plant and warehouse buyers who pay inbound freight. When a carrier or 3PL quotes you a “spot” number, the useful split is simple — is that all-in or linehaul, and which diesel week sits under the fuel line?

What to do with this

On the next inbound freight quote, ask whether the number is all-in or linehaul. If there is a fuel surcharge, ask which EIA diesel week it uses. Compare that answer to DAT’s Week 36 print only as a national average backdrop — not as your lane’s invoice.