You can’t control what the gauge costs to fill. You can control how ready you are when it moves.

In Part 1, we went through who feels it when diesel jumps around: the 3PL, the driver, the receiver, the end user. Short version: everybody.

So what do you do about it?

Honestly, there’s no single answer. Some people in this business want every detail signed and filed. Others still run on a phone call and a handshake. Both get freight moved. Getting through a rough fuel market usually has less to do with the paperwork than with how people think about it.

Focus on what you can control. The price at the pump isn’t on that list. Jim Horrigan, an expert partner at Bain & Company, told Sourcing Journal that the smart move is to stop waiting for prices to settle and focus on “the controllable expenses within freight.” What that looks like depends on your operation. For one shipper it’s timing. For another it’s lanes, or volume, or who they work with.

Expect the swing. Fuel that drops this month can climb again next month. The people who handle it best assume prices will move and leave themselves some room, whether that’s in a budget, a schedule, or a conversation they had early.

Talk sooner. Most fuel headaches start out as surprises. A heads-up that a load might run high, or that a pickup could move a day, goes a long way, whichever side of the deal you’re on.

Remember who’s absorbing it. Most trucking companies are small businesses. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association points out that its members work load to load and “can’t simply raise their rates when fuel spikes.” When the people hauling your freight can’t stay in business, everyone has less capacity.

Play the long game. Fuel markets settle down eventually. Business relationships outlast any price spike, and the ones that held up when diesel was ugly tend to be the ones people count on when it isn’t.

Diesel’s going to keep doing what diesel does. How ready you are when it moves is the part you get to decide.

The post Diesel’s Up, Down, and Sideways: Part 2 appeared first on NATCO Transport.

Fuel prices used to be a lot simpler. These days diesel moves every week, and everyone on the supply chain feels it.

So you’ve noticed diesel. Hard not to. Back in January the national average was around $3.46 a gallon. By late September it hit $6.53, the highest weekly number the U.S. Energy Information Administration has on record. It’s eased a little since, but it’s still sitting around $6.35, and it moves enough week to week that nobody’s getting comfortable.

Here’s how that rolls downhill.

The 3PL. If you’re the one arranging freight, your quotes now have the shelf life that’s about something less than of a carton of milk. Fuel surcharges reset every week off the DOE index, so the rate you gave a shipper Monday may not hold by Friday.

The spot market is even messier. Dean Croke, principal industry analyst at DAT Freight & Analytics, put it plainly: “Rates usually take three to four weeks to catch up with rising diesel prices.” Until they do, the carrier is the one paying for the fuel.

The driver and owner-operator. This is where it really stings. Fuel is already an owner-operator’s biggest expense, and a flatbed hauling heavy or oversize freight isn’t exactly sipping it. Surcharges help, but they’re pegged to a national average and they lag the pump. Fuel up in a high-price region and you eat the difference. Some small carriers are seriously thinking about hanging it up.

The receiver. Higher freight cost shows up on the invoice, plain and simple. It shows up in scheduling too. Fewer available trucks means fewer options and less wiggle room on delivery windows, so planning ahead matters more than usual.

The end user. Eventually it lands on everybody, because just about everything rode on a truck at some point. Steel, lumber, machinery, groceries. All of it.

Any good news? Some. The EIA’s latest outlook has retail diesel averaging around $4.49 a gallon in 2027. That’s better, not cheap, and forecasts have missed plenty this year, so don’t bet the farm on it.

So that’s who’s feeling it. The better question is what to do about it. In Part 2, coming soon, we’ll get into the practical side: how to plan around fuel surcharges, when to lock in capacity, and how to keep a fluctuating diesel market from turning every load into a guessing game.

The post Diesel’s Up, Down, and Sideways: Part 1 appeared first on NATCO Transport.

Fuel costs start at the source, long before diesel ever reaches the pump.

Every year, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) publishes one of trucking’s most closely watched benchmarks: the Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking. The 2026 update, covering 2025 data, tracks costs across driver pay, equipment, insurance, and fuel, giving carriers and shippers a clear picture of what it actually costs to move freight.

For once, fuel gave the industry a break. Diesel prices swung by just 41 cents between their highest and lowest points in 2025, the calmest year since before the pandemic. That stability held the industry’s average fuel cost to $0.482 per mile, barely a tenth of a cent higher than 2024.

Scale mattered. In the truckload sector, fleets running more than 1,000 trucks spent 8.8 cents less per mile on fuel than fleets with fewer than 5 trucks, a gap ATRI attributes to both economies of scale and newer, more efficient equipment. Specialized carriers, the category that includes flatbed and oversize freight, generally paid more at the pump than truckload fleets of comparable size, though that gap narrowed in 2025.

Fuel economy also nudged upward, averaging 7.43 miles per gallon industry-wide, up slightly from 7.41 in 2024. Weight matters more than almost anything else here: trucks running between 60,000 and 70,000 pounds hit the sweet spot at 7.56 MPG, while loads above 70,000 pounds saw efficiency drop off, a detail worth knowing for anyone specing out heavy or oversize hauls.

None of these numbers exist in a vacuum. ATRI corroborates its fuel data against EIA figures and builds it into a report that also tracks driver pay, equipment costs, insurance, and more, freely available at truckingresearch.org.

And as we all know too well, prices change, sometimes dramatically. We’ll need to wait another year for ATRI’s next report, but we can already see, and with confidence, that those fuel prices spiked in 2026.

At NATCO, we read these reports closely because line-haul economics change how we route, spec, and price freight. Whether it’s a flatbed load headed cross-country or an oversize haul that needs special permitting, we’re always looking for the most economical way to get yourr freight from Point A to Point B.

The post The Calm Before the Spike appeared first on NATCO Transport.

Big freight, long relationships, volatile markets: that’s the territory NATCO navigates every day.

A third-party logistics provider, or 3PL, sits between shippers and carriers. You have freight that needs to move. There are thousands of carriers who can move it. The 3PL finds the right fit, negotiates the rate, manages the relationship, and handles the paperwork you don’t have time for.

Think of it as outsourcing your transportation department to people who live and breathe freight.

NATCO fits squarely into that ecosystem, with a specialty in flatbed, oversize, and heavy haul. We handle it all, and we specialize in loads that don’t fit in a standard dry van.

The carriers who can handle these are a select group. We’ve spent three decades building and maintaining those relationships, which means when you need to move something big, unusual, or time-sensitive, we already know who to call.

When the Market Tightens, Relationships Hold
That network matters most when markets get volatile, and right now they are.

A recent FreightWaves analysis put a sharp point on the challenge: when spot rates rise quickly relative to contract rates, carriers who were comfortable at one rate per mile suddenly have multiple calls offering considerably more for the same lane. Brokers scramble. Some cover loads at a loss just to keep the freight moving.

We won’t pretend that environment is easy. It isn’t, for anyone. But volatility is also where experience pays off.

When you’ve seen cycles come and go, you’re less likely to be caught flat-footed. Our carrier relationships aren’t transactional; they’re built on history. That means when capacity tightens, we’re not starting from scratch.

Markets shift. Spreads compress and expand. What doesn’t change is the freight that needs to move and the relationships that move it. That’s been our steadying principle for thirty-plus years, and it still is.

The post The Go-Betweens Who Make It Move appeared first on NATCO Transport.

When the season turns, the loads stack up. NATCO keeps pace.

Across the country, construction crews that spent the winter in holding patterns are mobilizing now. Heavy equipment is coming off storage lots and heading to job sites. Steel, lumber, and prefab components are moving up supply chains. Infrastructure projects that were green-lit in the fall are finally breaking ground.

Commercial builds that stalled through the cold months are back on schedule, and the contractors running them are already behind. Project managers are locking in delivery windows, coordinating with subs, and trying to compress six months of work into four.

Every piece of freight in that picture has a deadline attached to it, and the margin for error is thin.

At the same time, the broader economic picture is keeping a lot of shippers on their toes. Rates are shifting. Capacity moves in ways that aren’t always easy to predict. Supply chain planners who thought they had a clear runway heading into the year are finding that the variables keep changing. That kind of uncertainty doesn’t stop freight from moving, but it does raise the stakes on who you trust to move it.

That’s where NATCO comes in.

We’ve spent more than 30 years building the kind of flatbed and oversized freight operation that performs when the calendar gets crowded. Deep carrier relationships, fast and accurate quotes, and a team that actually picks up the phone. When the loads start stacking up and the pressure is on, you want a partner who’s already in motion, not one you’re still trying to get up to speed.

Spring is a proving ground for freight carriers. The shippers who come out of Q2 in good shape are the ones who got ahead of it, locked in their logistics, and worked with partners they could count on.

If your freight is part of the spring push, let’s talk. NATCO is ready.

The post Spring Season Is Here. Is Your Freight Ready? appeared first on NATCO Transport.

Finding a legal parking spot at the end of a long shift shouldn’t be a gamble. ATA wants Congress to make sure it isn’t.

Congress is preparing to write the next long-term surface transportation bill, and the American Trucking Associations has a clear message for lawmakers: focus federal dollars where freight actually moves.

That means the National Highway System. That means congested freight corridors. And that means, finally, a reliable funding stream for truck parking. Here’s why all three of those priorities matter to everyone in the supply chain.

For Drivers: A Safe Place to Stop
ATRI’s 2025 industry survey put truck parking at number four on its list of pressing concerns, and the problem is real. When a driver’s hours-of-service clock runs out and the nearest legal parking spot is miles away, the choice becomes dangerous: park illegally or push on. Neither option is acceptable.

ATA is backing the Truck Parking Safety Improvement Act, which would authorize $755 million over five years and fold truck parking investment into the larger highway bill.

Combined with the roughly $200 million Congress has already approved, a sustained funding commitment would mean more spaces, fewer risks, and drivers who arrive at their destinations rested rather than rattled.

For 3PLs: Reliability You Can Plan Around
Parking shortages don’t just affect drivers. They create ripple effects throughout the logistics chain. Delays cascade into missed delivery windows, rescheduled pickups, and the kind of uncertainty that makes freight planning harder than it needs to be.

When drivers can park safely and legally, they run their Hours of Service more predictably. That predictability is something every 3PL, including NATCO, can build better schedules around.

For Customers: Freight That Arrives on Time
ATA is also pushing Congress to target investment at the freight bottlenecks that cost the industry (and ultimately shippers) the most. Chicago, New York, and Atlanta top ATRI’s bottleneck list for good reason. Infrastructure investment in those corridors means faster throughput, lower dwell times, and shipments that reach their destinations on schedule.

The highway bill won’t pass overnight. But the priorities ATA is putting on the table would seem to help move the situation in the right directions. We’re watching closely.

The post The Highway Bill That Could Change Everything appeared first on NATCO Transport.

Magical thinking to solve the traffic jams.

ATRI’s 2026 Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks report is, as always, a useful document for anyone who moves freight for a living and a depressing one for everyone else.

Chicago reclaimed the top spot. Houston placed eight interchanges in the top 100. Atlanta showed up so many times, it’s starting to feel personal.

The conventional prescription is familiar: widen lanes, rebuild interchanges, add capacity. That’s expensive, slow, and politically complicated. So what else might actually work?

The most practical alternative is probably the least glamorous: aggressive off-peak incentives for freight. Several of the worst bottlenecks are peak-hour problems, not all-day problems. If shippers and receivers received meaningful cost reductions for accepting deliveries between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., a measurable share of truck traffic would simply migrate out of rush hour. No new concrete required. The barrier is coordination, not engineering.

A close second is dynamic routing powered by real-time GPS data of exactly the kind ATRI has been collecting for 25 years. The data already exists. The question is whether carriers, fleet management platforms, and state DOTs can get talking to each other fast enough to matter. Platooning technology, where trucks run in close convoy to reduce drag and increase lane efficiency, could amplify this if the regulatory framework ever catches up to the hardware.

Now, to let our imagination off the leash a little:

Someone will eventually propose dedicated freight tunnels under the worst urban corridors, particularly in Houston, where you could practically route a separate underground highway system beneath the existing one and still have room for a food court. The boring (pun intended) part is the $40 billion price tag.

And then there is the full science fiction option: autonomous electric freight drones handling last-mile and short-haul loads currently moved by truck. Eliminate enough of the smaller delivery trucks from those interchanges, and the math changes. The skies above I-45 at I-69 doing 20.2 mph at rush hour suddenly seem more appealing than the pavement below.

None of these solutions are fast. But neither, apparently, is Houston at 5 p.m.

The post Thinking Outside the Interchange appeared first on NATCO Transport.

If only all bottlenecks were this clean.

Every year, the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) releases its Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks report, converting a massive database of freight GPS data into a ranked list of the worst chokepoints in the country.

We covered one of the worst offenders last October, New Jersey’s notorious Fort Lee interchange on I-95, which held the number-one spot for years before Chicago reclaimed it in 2026. The bigger picture, though, is what the list reveals about where freight congestion is getting worse, and where it’s getting worse fastest.

As a flatbed and oversize carrier 3PL headquartered in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, we read this year’s report with a personal interest. We’d rather know where the trouble is so we can route around it whenever possible.

Source: ATRI

Texas claimed 12 of the 100 worst bottlenecks in the country, more than any other state. Eight of them are in Houston alone, which tells you something about what explosive population growth combined with aging freeway infrastructure looks like at rush hour.

Houston’s worst, I-45 at I-69/US 59, ranks fourth nationally, with peak speeds averaging just 20.2 mph. The I-10/I-69 interchange jumped a staggering 77 positions to land at number eight, a signal that conditions there deteriorated sharply year over year.

Why is Texas so congested? The state added roughly 1.6 million residents between 2020 and 2023 alone, making it the fastest-growing state in the nation. Its major metros, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio, are all in the top ten for urban population growth, and the highway network was never designed to absorb this pace of expansion. Texas also sits at the center of NAFTA-era freight corridors, meaning the truck traffic was already heavy before the population boom intensified commuter congestion on top of it.

We navigate this every day. When the routing allows it, we avoid these corridors. When it doesn’t, we plan around peak hours and build the delay time into the schedule. That’s not a workaround; that’s just operating professionally in the state we call home.

You can see ATRI’s bottleneck map at truckingresearch.org.

The post The Texas Truck Bottlenecks appeared first on NATCO Transport.

From Distribution Center to Delivery

Whatever It Takes

When your online order arrives at your door, that package has completed what logistics professionals call the “final mile” — the last leg of its journey from warehouse or factor or field to the customer. And what many don’t realize is that the final mile only happens because the first 500 miles went smoothly.

NATCO Transport’s 3PL expertise informs the handling of the heavy lifting, and literally so: moving the components that become the products that eventually arrive at your door. Those pallets of compressor motors, circuit boards, and steel panels we move on flatbeds and specialized carriers? They’re heading to appliance manufacturers.

The lumber loads? They go into the houses where USPS delivers packages. In this house that Jack built: NATCO moves the parts that make the refrigerators that stock the kitchens in the homes where final-mile delivery happens.

Think about it this way: before USPS delivered a new dishwasher to your kitchen, someone needed to deliver the stainless steel sheets to the appliance factory. Before a drone can drop off a package at your suburban home, someone built that house with lumber that arrived on a flatbed. Before final-mile carriers navigate to your address, the entire infrastructure exists because of the large-scale freight movements. NATCO coordinates such movements daily.

The final mile is where manufactured goods reach consumers. But those manufactured goods started as components on NATCO-arranged shipments months earlier. A single truckload of refrigerator compressors becomes hundreds of appliances that become hundreds of final-mile deliveries. When those component shipments arrive late (or damaged, or not at all) production lines stop, inventory dries up, and suddenly there’s nothing for final-mile carriers to deliver. The whole system depends on getting the pieces there first.

The relationship is entirely dependent. Final-mile providers like UPS, FedEx, and USPS have perfected getting packages to your door in hours or days. But their success starts months earlier, with reliable 3PL partners who understand that timely, damage-free delivery of manufacturing components isn’t just part of the supply chain; it’s what makes the supply chain possible in the first place.

Since 1992, NATCO has understood that our role in moving large-scale freight creates the possibility for those final-mile innovations. We may not deliver to your doorstep. Our role in arranging large-scale freight? We deliver the future that makes doorstep delivery possible.

The post Final Mile: From Big Freight to Your Doorstep appeared first on NATCO Transport.

The I-95 approach to the George Washington Bridge: a major bottleneck

The numbers tell a story that every carrier knows too well. For the seventh straight year, the interchange where I-95 meets SR 4 in Fort Lee, New Jersey, holds the distinction nobody wants — America’s most congested freight bottleneck.

But here’s what those rankings really mean: drivers watching rush hour speeds drop to 19 miles per hour. Shippers facing $109 billion in annual delays. And 6.4 billion gallons of diesel burned while trucks sit idling in traffic instead of making progress toward their destinations.

The American Transportation Research Institute’s latest analysis reveals that congestion is getting worse at many key locations, with average rush hour truck speeds falling to 34 miles per hour nationwide. Among the top ten bottlenecks, it’s even slower — just under 30 miles per hour during peak times. These aren’t just statistics. They’re missed delivery windows, frustrated drivers, and supply chain costs that eventually reach every consumer.

Here’s the encouraging part: when infrastructure investment targets the right places, it works. Chicago’s Jane Byrne Interchange was once the nation’s worst bottleneck for three years running. After recent construction improvements, rush hour truck speeds jumped by nearly 25 percent. That’s the proof of concept we need.

With Congress preparing to reauthorize federal highway programs, ATRI’s research provides a clear roadmap for where funding can make the biggest difference. Smart infrastructure investment at these critical choke points doesn’t just move trucks faster — it reduces fuel consumption, cuts emissions, and strengthens the reliability of the entire supply chain.

At NATCO, we work every day to route freight efficiently around known delays. But the long-term solution requires targeted investment in the infrastructure that connects all of us. Because when freight moves smoothly, everyone benefits.

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