Dive Brief:
- Volume jumped in some key trucking lanes last week following a cargo ship collision with the Francis Scott Key Bridge that took lives and collapsed the span, per DAT Freight & Analytics.
- Following the March 26 incident, flatbed loads surged 57% week over week from Baltimore, DAT iQ Principal Analyst Dean Croke said on a market update. For Baltimore to Chicago, loads increased by 117%.
- "We saw some early chaos in the market last week after the tragic bridge collapse," Croke said. "Things tended to stabilize by the week's end. There was sufficient available truckload capacity to meet surging load volumes."
Dive Insight:
Like the volume surge, some lanes saw some jumps in pricing.
“There was a surge in linehaul rates early last week on crucial lanes as the market processed the impact of the bridge collapse,” Croke said.
From Baltimore to Chicago, the average flatbed spot rate jumped 25 cents to $2.03 a mile, according to DAT. For the steel lane to Gary, Indiana, spot rates surged 23 cents a mile to $2.02 a mile.
But other routes were mixed and even saw the opposite of a surge in pricing. Linehaul rates to South Bend, Indiana, were flat at $1.98, and rates dropped by 13 cents to $2.14 for Detroit, even though volumes were up substantially, Croke said.
With sufficient trucking capacity to meet the surge in Baltimore, linehaul rates in flatbed dropped on average 5 cents a mile across the market.
Baltimore is a big flatbed market, and port imports of farming machinery and construction equipment typically peak in March, per DAT.
Farming equipment and machinery exports and imports dominate the Baltimore trade district compared to anywhere else in the country, processing over $5.03 billion worth of goods in 2023, per U.S. Census Bureau data.
It was also one of the top ports last year for construction equipment, just behind the Houston-Galveston and Savannah, Georgia, districts.
“While rerouting containerized imports should generally be possible given Baltimore is not a major container port compared to, say, New York-New Jersey, we will see challenges with rerouting this volume” involving roll-on, roll-off equipment, wrote Jason Miller, a Michigan State University professor of supply chain management.
In contrast, the city’s dry van market is not as big as other areas in the country.
Outbound dry van spot rates from Baltimore were down 2 cents per mile to $1.33, excluding fuel, while loads moved were 12% higher week over week, DAT’s Croke said.
