MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics

We are convening this session because the freight transportation market, especially truckload, has been in a sustained inverted market (where average spot rates are below average contract rates) for almost a full year now. While we traditionally see the use of the spot market drop following a tight period of the business cycle, it is not the case this time. In analyses conducted here at MIT’s Freightlab as well as with DAT iQ, we have found that the use of the spot market has been sustained throughout this soft period. Interestingly, we are discovering that there are two general paths to the spot market. The first is as a “stop gap” after failure of the routing guide while the second is “direct to spot” where the routing guide is totally bypassed. The use of spot as a “stop gap” has dropped significantly, as expected, but the “direct to spot” path has remained elevated at pandemic levels. In this highly interactive roundtable, we will discuss and debate the use of the spot market strategically and tactically. Additionally, we will explore the different methods and mechanisms that shippers use to access the spot market.