Spot Freight Market Up 54 Percent in January

Freight availability in January rose by 54% on the North American spot market compared to January 2009, according to the TransCore North America Freight Index, a measure of truckload freight volume found on load boards supported by the DAT Network. This marked the fourth consecutive month of improvement on a year-over-year basis.

As expected, there was a month-to-month dip in spot market freight availability from December 2009 to January 2010. Although the 38% decline exceeded seasonal norms, the gap can be attributed to December’s unusually high level of spot freight availability rather than unseasonal weakness in January.