Fresh produce is a demanding, volatile and highly seasonal industry, and its timelines can have massive effects on other industries.
“Produce season is one of those events that impacts the entire freight market,” Dean Croke, principal analyst for DAT iQ, told The Packer.
DAT Freight & Analytics, which operates the DAT One freight marketplace and DAT iQ data analytics service, released its monthly recap report on the trucking markets May 9. It showed truckload freight volumes down month-to-month in April:
- Van DAT Truckload Volume Index: — 287, down 0.3%.
- Refrigerated (reefer) TVI — 222, down 3.1%.
- Flatbed TVI — 332, up 2.5%.
Year-over-year volume comparisons, on the other hand, were positive, with the Van TVI up 1%, Reefer TVI up 4% and Flatbed TVI up 5% compared to April 2024.
“We had a good season last year, and a slow start this year,” said Croke. That slow start in the shipping season was due, in large part, to the slow start in the big players in U.S. produce like California. Croke explained that the produce season for the trucking world generally kicks off in mid-April as crops in low-latitude states come ready.
“There are very few events that move the national rate needle as much as produce season,” he said. “When you get to this part of May, you normally start to get into serious produce volumes as temperatures warm and it starts to push more volume into the spot market.”
But things are different this year. Croke said the season is about four weeks behind where it usually is with “not a lot of produce moving nationally.”
“The year-over-year comps really reflect a slow start out of California, which produces anywhere between a third and a half of our truckload produce volumes each year in the spot market,” he said. “Some markets are hot, but the overall market is still fairly flat and is maybe down compared to last year because of some weather-related factors and, I expect, a little bit of consumer demand has been softening.”
What shipping season 2025 looks like
The monthly DAT report also noted that there was little movement in national average spot van and reefer truckload rates. Since most produce is moved on the spot market, especially in vans and reefers, spot market rates in those areas are the most relevant to produce. Those rates and the month-to-month changes for April were:
- Spot Van — $1.96 per mile, down 3 cents from March.
- Spot Reefer — $2.27 per mile, unchanged.
- Spot Flatbed — $2.57 per mile, up 4 cents.
The relatively flat rates in vans and reefers were called typical for March and April. The flatbed rate increased for the fifth straight month.
Croke explained that, historically, spot rates steadily ramp up from the middle of April to July 4, the seasonal peak, all because of produce shipping. Spot rate tends to gain 20-25 cents per mile over that time for reefers.
“The produce season — in this short two-and-a-half months — lifts the entire freight market out of the winter doldrums from spring and into Independence Day,” he said.
What this year’s spot rate peak will look like is in question, however.
“Because of the late start in produce season and softer consumer demand because we’ve all been worried about a trade war and a recession, we’re not sure that this season will deliver the same peak in spot rates that we’ve always seen,” Croke said.
Ken Adamo, chief of analytics at DAT Freight & Analytics, said in DAT’s April report that the shipping market felt frozen due in large part to these wider economic concerns.
“April brought the usual seasonal opportunities in produce and construction materials,” he said. “But broader economic factors — including uncertainty over tariffs and the pull-forward of inventory this year — put a damper on growth in overall freight volumes, especially compared to previous years.”
The report also noted that, while the month-to-month spot rates were mixed, the contract truckload rates in April were flat to higher across the different categories. The report pointed out that, when spot rates fall relative to contract rates, “it can signal a soft or oversupplied market.”
“Carriers were hoping April rates would be a springboard into a stronger Q2,” Adamo said. “Instead, the optimistic case is that they’ve reached a pricing floor heading into the traditional summer peak shipping season in May and June. How ‘traditional’ the season looks has yet to be determined.”
Dean summarized the potential peak saying, “It may be a speed bump.”
“There will be a produce season, I just don’t think it’s going to be what we normally see because of the impact of what’s happened in the first half of this year.”
