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The Load Letter

Freight market news for freight brokers · by a freight broker

The Load Letter · Issue of August 23, 2026

Diesel is tightening the market freight demand won't

Plus the Canada tariff that just landed and the reefer premium that refuses to break

By Andrew Sarris, a working freight broker · · 1,006 words

Week of August 17–August 22, 2026

Diesel closed the week at $5.26 a gallon and it is outrunning the whole barrel, which means the thing tightening this market isn't freight demand, it's fuel. Your carriers are getting squeezed from both ends while linehaul cooled a second straight week, and the fuel surcharge table you built last spring is quietly under-recovering on every long lane you cover. Fix that before Monday or watch your best owner-operators go direct.

01Diesel Is Doing The Tightening Freight Demand Won't

The US-Iran peace deal expired Monday with the Strait of Hormuz still contested, and Brent held in the low 90s all week against a pre-war baseline near $72. But diesel is behaving like its own commodity, ripping past crude on thin distillate inventories and tight refining, so the $5.26 pump price is structurally underwater against surcharge tables pegged when diesel had a four in front of it. The carriers running your 800-plus mile dry van lanes feel it first, on cash flow, not revenue per mile.

02Canada Tariff Landed Saturday, Cross-Border Whipsaws

The White House delayed the 50 percent tariffs on Canadian imports three days, and they hit Saturday the 22nd while both sides kept negotiating. Brokers touching Ontario, Quebec, and the Michigan and New York gateways got a narrow pull-forward window that firmed northbound and southbound rates through Friday, and now importers digest the new cost heading into a thin Monday. This is a whipsaw, not a trend, and the same policy pressure is quietly accelerating nearshoring at Laredo as Mexico weighs its own duties on Chinese goods.

03Reefer Premium Refuses To Give Back Gains

National reefer spot linehaul held at $2.63 a mile minus fuel, down just a penny, and the West cooled while the East stayed firm and the gap to last year never closed. On top of that, Tyson is shuttering or selling three more beef plants and cutting 2,500 jobs on a cattle shortage that reshapes protein reefer lane by lane out of the Plains and Midwest. The softening everybody predicted for August turned out shallow and regional, and reefer carriers are now burning fuel twice at $5.26, on the tractor and the unit.

This week's numbers

Dry Van$2.28/mi
Reefer$2.64/mi
Flatbed$2.79/mi
Diesel$5.26/gal

Source: DAT and EIA  ·  Week of August 18, 2026

This week's cold email line

With the Canadian tariffs live as of this weekend and diesel sitting at $5.26, your cross-border lanes just got more expensive two different ways, and I doubt your fuel surcharge caught either one.

Aim this at shippers moving freight across the northern gateways or running long-haul contracts on stale surcharge tables. It lands now because the tariff date is fresh and the diesel-outrunning-crude gap is a this-week problem they haven't priced yet.

Outbound  ·  Done-for-you prospecting

The market gives you the angle.
Outbound puts it in the inbox.

Every angle above only earns money when it lands in front of a shipper. Outbound is the done-for-you version: I research your target shippers, write the sequences in your voice, and keep the follow-ups going while you cover freight.

This week's sources

That is the read for this week.

Andrew
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