Freight Technologies, Inc.

He added that some of the items most vulnerable to price hikes are grocery essentials like produce, dairy, and meat that require fuel-intensive refrigerated trucking.

Rates to move apples and pears via refrigerated trailers out of Washington State's Yakima Valley have hit a four-year high, with the harvest season only halfway over, and Dean Croke, principal analyst at DAT Freight Analytics.

The cost to transport produce out of California is up 40% to 120% from a year ago.

In some California cities, diesel prices have topped $8 per gallon, Croke said.

I just like to see the industry succeed.

So it's funny here at DAT, we work with shippers, carriers, and brokers.

So when, you know, one man's down market is another person's up market.

So the shippers were loving the last three years.

Yeah.

And one of the things that I think Ken, uh, Adamo would argue, formerly with DAT, is that the government, because of pressure on shippers, is going to loosen.

That's his case, is like there's too much pressure in the market.

Something has to give.

You know, every broker is still going to call you every, you know, find out where you're at and they're, and they have to negotiate every load, even though there's a price on a load, you're always going to call on that, that price.

So if you go to DAT or truck stop and you see all these prices of trucking, all the brokers put their prices on loads and, Oh, even if there's a price, the carrier knows if I, that's just a starting point.

I have to call and get, you know, get extra 50 to a hundred dollars on that.

Cause I can.

It's basically like a jerry-rigged platform, right? It's like, you're basically like jerry-rigging an API just using AI's talking to each other, basically.

Which is kind of like, you can definitely make some memes about how... ridiculous that is, like on the surface.

Because if somebody was designing the system deliberately, they'd be like, why are we going to use two agents talking to each other to exchange simple information that could exist on a platform? But the point is, the point is, is that because there's so many and it's because it's such a fragmented market, it's almost impossible to really, I mean, well, I guess DAT has, in a sense, you know, built that market, right? But they're not...

It's not plugged into the point where you don't need...

What kinds of freight are we talking about and why does that scale matter for the trucking market?

Just to be clear, that number, I sourced that from DAT Freight and Analytics, which is a load board operator and one of the major suppliers of trucking industry data for North America.

And the reason I wanted to get a number is because it's just very hard.

When you look at data center construction, Kristen, you know the amount of money being pumped into this is astronomical.

Well, I don't think there's anyone who disagrees on that.

Yesterday, we had a really interesting conversation with Ken Adamo, formerly with DAT, now at East Logistics, and Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain at Michigan State.

And they were making the case that they believe the cycle is going to be short-lived, or at least is going to roll over sometime in the next year, largely due to capacity expansion, I think.

Dr. Miller is making the case that drivers, fleet's always overcorrect.

It's an interesting debate.

Julie,

anything? Yeah, I think the thing that I would say is I've been pretty consistent with this even back to when I was at DAT, when this all started.

It's like I could see a world where they accidentally re-regulate the trucking industry.

Hello and welcome to the Freight Find podcast, your source for all things freight transportation.

I'm Chris Kaplis, chief scientist here at DAT Freight and Analytics, and today I'm joined once again by Dr. Alex Leslie, who's the senior research associate at the American Transportation Research Institute, or ATRI.

And ATRI, for those who don't know, is a not-for-profit research arm for the trucking industry.

Now I invited Alex to the Freight Vine to discuss the latest, 2026 edition, of Atri's Operational Costs of Trucking report.

And you...

How did you think about sourcing carriers? Did you just buy a DAT subscription or something? I

bought a DAT subscription and then posting and calling.

That was what I was doing all day, just posting, calling.

It was mostly me calling out because they could see I had no credit.