LTL Rates Fell 4.6% in July. Truckload Fell 1.3%

Both LTL and truckload peaked in May. They have fallen two months straight and still sit above last year.

LTL Rates Fell 4.6% in July. Truckload Fell 1.3%

Less-than-truckload rates fell 4.6% in a single month. Truckload fell 1.3% in the same month. Both are still above where they were a year ago.

Those numbers come from the federal Producer Price Index, which tracks what carriers actually get paid. The July reading is the most recent one published.

The two series, side by side

  • Long-distance truckload: 195.575 in July, down from 198.057 in June. That is −1.3% in a month.
  • Long-distance LTL: 293.695 in July, down from 307.961 in June. That is −4.6% in a month.

Same freight economy, same month, and one segment moved more than three times as much as the other.

Both peaked in May

July was not a one-month wobble. Both series topped out in May 2026 and have come down for two consecutive months since:

  • Truckload is 4.1% below its May level.
  • LTL is 5.9% below its May level.

And both are still up on the year

This is the part that gets left out of the headline version. Measured against July of last year:

  • Truckload is up 8.1%.
  • LTL is up 10.7%.

So the honest summary of 2026 so far is not "rates are falling." It is that rates climbed hard into May, have given back part of that climb over two months, and are still well above the same point in 2025.

What this index actually measures — and what it does not

This matters more than the number itself, because the figure gets quoted as if it were a load board average, and it is not.

The Producer Price Index measures the price the carrier receives for the service, collected from carriers, across contract and non-contract freight together. It is monthly, and it publishes in the middle of the following month. There is no weekly version of it.

That has two consequences for anybody using it to make a decision. First, it will never tell you what happened last week — by the time you read it, the month it describes is already over. Second, because it blends contract freight in, it moves less violently than a spot board does, which is exactly why a 4.6% single-month drop in LTL is a large number and not a rounding error.

Why LTL swings harder

LTL pricing is built out of many small shipments, and it reprices faster than a contract truckload lane does. When volume softens, an LTL network feels it in the mix immediately: lighter shipments, more empty space in the same trailer, and a lower average price per bill without a single customer renegotiating anything.

A truckload lane under contract does not do that. It holds its number until the contract comes up. That difference in mechanics is the reason the two lines on the same chart do not move together, and it is worth knowing which one describes your revenue.

When the next number lands

The August reading publishes in the middle of September, and it is the one that answers whether two down months were a give-back or the start of something. Until then, anybody telling you the market turned in August is telling you an opinion, because the measurement does not exist yet.

It is also worth being precise about what a falling index does not mean. An index that drops 4.6% is not saying every carrier took 4.6% less. It is an average across an entire segment, and averages hide the spread: some lanes held, some gave back far more than the average, and the number you personally saw depends on which customers renewed and when.

What to do with it

  • Know which series describes your freight. If your revenue is LTL-heavy, the truckload number is not your number.
  • Do not extrapolate two months into a trend. Two down months after a strong run is a give-back. Four would be a direction.
  • Price against last year, not against May. May was the peak. Comparing anything to a peak makes every month afterward look like a collapse.
  • Watch the cost side while the revenue side wobbles. When the rate line softens, the money is made on what leaves the truck, not on what comes in.

On that last point: an alignment that is out or a suspension part with play burns fuel and tires every single mile, in a good rate month and a bad one. The inspection that finds it is free and takes no appointment at The Truck Savers.

Original source

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Producer Price Index, long-distance trucking series