When a shipper calls and wants to know if you can arrange to move a load tomorrow, you need to have reliable pricing information at your fingertips. If you run the same lanes every day, that’s no problem. But if you’re quoting something new, or market conditions are volatile, you need to know what trucks got paid in that lane this week.
To help our customers make rate decisions faster and easier, DAT Solutions just launched a new, improved version of DAT RateView™. Here are some of the improvements:
- Faster – Auto Complete helps fill in the origin and destination as you type.
- More options – Rates can be displayed per mile or total per trip.
- More visual – Shows maps of geographies used to calculate rates.
- Customized tools – The rate calculator is customized for brokers, carriers, and shippers, and now it can be moved anywhere on your screen.
- Key information on a single screen – Lane rate graphs show either total spot rates or contract rates, with options to overlay the two together or display without the current fuel surcharge. Also, data contributors can see their own rates overlaid on the graph to compare with market data.
- Works seamlessly with DAT Power Load Board – The new version of RateView, looks similar to and works seamlessly with the new version of DAT Power.
What is RateView?
Learn More About DAT RateView
If you’re not familiar with DAT RateView, it is an online tool that shows you current freight rates. Spot market rates are based on $24 billion of actual transactions—what brokers and shippers are actually paying to carriers. It’s integrated into most DAT load boards and is also available as a standalone software service.
Depending on the subscription you choose, DAT RateView enables you to see:
- Real-time truckload rates on 65,000 lane pairs.
- Broker-to-carrier spot market AND shipper-to-carrier contract rates.
- Rail intermodal rates.
- Rates averages as recent as the past 7 days.
- Origin/destination geographies as precise as a 3-digit ZIP code.
- The number of reports and number of companies used to calculate each rate.
- Multi-lane lookup to help with bids and RFPs.
- 13-month lane rate histories.
- Rates from your own company, to compare side-by-side with market rates.
DAT RateView displays 13-month history alongside the most recent 7-day average rate and your company’s own pricing, for 65,000 lane pairs across North America.
Why some rates are more precise than others
Most DAT Load Boards display some rate information when an origin/destination search is conducted. Carriers using our lower-priced load board package will see the “Broker Spot” rate, which is averaged from the past 90 days for the Expanded Market Area. While that rate provides valuable trend and directional price information, wouldn’t it be better to know the going rate on a lane for the past week or two?
For example, say you want to check the spot market rate for a reefer going from Fresno to Chicago. Let’s compare the 90-day rate with the 7-day rate.
Fresno to Chicago
90-day average rate – $4,107 (total charge, including fuel, at $1.91/mile)
7-day average rate – $4,623 (total charge, including fuel, at $2.15/mile)
Difference: $516
That’s more than a $500 difference between the 90-day rate average and the 7-day rate average.
Geography matters too
Likewise, zeroing in on a more precise geography will give you a better idea of how much you’re likely to pay to get a truck. With RateView, you can narrow down the geography of the origin/destination.
For example, the rate average from the Phoenix Extended Market to the Los Angeles Extended Market is $1.38 per mile (including fuel), as seen below.
In comparison, the rate average from the 850 ZIP code in Phoenix to the 900 ZIP code in Los Angeles is $1.12 per mile (including fuel), as seen below.
That’s a difference of 26 cents per mile, just by narrowing the geography from the Extended Market Area to a 3-digit ZIP code area.
In upcoming blog posts, I’ll write more about what RateView can do to help you when quoting prices to your shippers. For more information on DAT RateView, or to see a demo of the product, send us an email, call your DAT account representative, or call DAT customer support at 800-547-5417.
