Chart of the Week: National Truckload Index – USA SONAR: NTI.USA
The National Truckload Index (NTI), which measures dry van spot rate movement across the U.S., jumped to its highest level since July in early November. The NTI rarely climbs this early ahead of the holidays. What’s driving the increase, and what does it mean for this year’s holiday shipping season?
Many may point to fuel as the reason for this unseasonal rise. However, while elevated fuel costs may help explain some of the year-over-year growth and the longer-term divergence between spot and rejection rates this fall, it is difficult to tie fuel cleanly to this recent spot market jump. The NTI includes fuel, yet diesel costs have fallen roughly 3.5% since late October while the NTI has risen more than 4% over the same period.
Fuel does influence rates with a lag, but diesel hasn’t seen a sharp increase since early September, which is well beyond the typical lag of a few weeks.
As mentioned in earlier articles, carriers can’t always pass along fuel costs unless the market will bear it. The same is true for any input cost, as many businesses know from trying to pass upstream inflation on to their customers. This latest jump appears to be driven by market conditions, though the picture is nuanced because there has been no corresponding rise in tender rejection rates.
National dry van rejection rates have been trending lower since July, though still elevated. Rejection rates above 10% is still a sign of insufficient capacity. Rejection rates and spot rates don’t move in a one-to-one relationship for several reasons, even if they tend to track each other over time. Perhaps the most important distinction is that tender data represents the much larger contracted freight market, while the spot market is a fringe environment that accounts for roughly 10% to 25% of truckload freight, depending on the market.
The recent disconnect between the contract and spot markets may be tied to a surge of freight moving outside of contracted agreements. On last week’s episode of Freightonomics, Dr. Zac Rogers, co-author of the Logistics Managers’ Index (LMI), said that many retailers appear to have waited until the last minute to bring inventory into the country.
This is reflected in the sharp jump in inventory level growth in the October LMI. The reading of 66.9 was the highest for this component of the index since 2022. The last-minute surge was the product of demand uncertainty, rising inventory holding costs, and more streamlined supply chains.
Demand uncertainty has been the story of 2026, as many retailers expected consumers to pull back on spending due to ongoing inflation. That has happened in some areas more than others, but in aggregate it has largely washed out.
Shippers have also been dealing with their own inflation, as the cost of holding inventory has increased significantly. This has pushed them toward just-in-time (JIT) ordering, which they have used with great success. With holding costs this high, the extra expense of shipping later is easier to justify. Intermodal has benefited greatly from elevated trucking and warehousing costs, growing by double digits over 2025 levels.
Dr. Rogers also noted that supply chains have evolved since COVID, becoming more streamlined and flexible. This lets shippers move freight through their networks more precisely, cutting transit time and allowing them to delay orders.
With the holidays approaching and the truckload market still not fully recovered, shippers likely know that waiting until the week before Thanksgiving will be expensive, so some are trying to get ahead of the curve.
Some of this freight may also be rail volume shifting back to truck after disruptions hit BNSF and CSX in recent weeks. Domestic container volumes still have not fully recovered and appear to be hitting a ceiling, unlike the previous two years, when domestic container volumes grew into December.
About the Chart of the Week
The FreightWaves Chart of the Week is a chart selection from SONAR that provides an interesting data point to describe the state of the freight markets. A chart is chosen from thousands of potential charts on SONAR to help participants visualize the freight market in real time. Each week a Market Expert will post a chart, along with commentary, live on the front page. After that, the Chart of the Week will be archived on FreightWaves.com for future reference.
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