Why are the rates so low coming out of Florida?

Jon Osburn, the skipper of OOIDA’s touring tractor-trailer, said he received many questions about the low rates coming out of Florida when he was parked this week at the Vero Beach TA Travel Center.

Land Line Now’s Mary McKenna recently relayed the question to Mark Montague, market analyst for DAT.

“There are a lot of people who live in South Florida, and there’s not a lot of freight generated down there,” Montague said. “Because there are a lot of people, they receive a lot of freight, and that creates an imbalance.

“This isn’t a recent occurrence. It has been this way throughout my trucking career. One of the first things we learned is that you better get a good rate going in to Florida. If your cost averages $2 a mile and freight is paying $1 a mile out of Florida, then you better get $3 a mile going into Florida.”

Montague said the good news is that reefer trends out of the Miami market have increased 34 cents per mile.