September's van spot rate rose 12 cents to $3.01 per mile all-in, but van spot linehaul fell 2 cents to $2.17 (DAT, Oct 13, 2026). In other words, the entire monthly increase, and then some, came from fuel. If your margin reports track only the all-in rate, September looks like a strong pricing month. If you split linehaul and fuel per load, it looks like a month where carriers passed through higher diesel costs and the underlying market for capacity barely moved.

What did DAT's September numbers actually show?

DAT's September report had four numbers worth separating (DAT, Oct 13, 2026):

• Van spot, all-in — September 2026: $3.01/mile · Change: +12¢ month over month, +96¢ year over year
• Van spot, linehaul only — September 2026: $2.17/mile · Change: −2¢ month over month
• Van contract, linehaul only — September 2026: $2.40/mile · Change: n/a
• Fuel surcharges — September 2026: Record highs · Change: Van, reefer and flatbed

Subtracting linehaul from the all-in rate gives an implied fuel component of about 84 cents per mile on the average van spot load. The month-over-month math is the clearer signal: all-in up 12 cents while linehaul fell 2 cents implies fuel added roughly 14 cents in a single month. Those are derived figures, not DAT's published fuel numbers, but they show the direction plainly.

The Cass Freight Index for September points the same way from the shipper side. Shipments rose 1.9% year over year while expenditures rose 20.4% (Cass Freight Index, via FreightWaves). Spend is growing about ten times faster than volume. Some of that is higher linehaul rates, but with fuel surcharges at record highs, a large share is fuel.

Why does the linehaul-versus-fuel split matter for brokers?

The split matters because fuel and linehaul behave differently, and a broker's margin depends on both. Fuel is usually a pass-through: the carrier bills it, the customer pays it and the broker earns little or nothing on it. Linehaul is where most brokers make their margin. If you report margin as a percentage of all-in revenue, rising fuel inflates revenue and makes margin percentage look worse even when your dollars per load haven't changed.

Three common reporting mistakes show up in months like September:

• Margin percentage falls and the team panics. Revenue rose because of fuel, gross profit dollars stayed flat, so the percentage dropped. Nothing about pricing discipline changed.
• Quotes go out with stale fuel. An all-in spot quote priced on last week's fuel number loses money when diesel moves before the load picks up. We covered this in our post on quote expiry windows during daily diesel moves.
• Contract lanes look fine on all-in and fail on linehaul. A lane can show rising revenue while the linehaul portion falls behind carrier cost. That is the upside-down lane problem from our guide to re-pricing mid-contract when rates hit a 52-week high.

How should brokers measure margin when fuel is volatile?

Measure margin in dollars per load and on linehaul only, with fuel tracked as a separate line that should net close to zero. That gives a margin number that reflects pricing and procurement, not diesel.

A practical setup:

1. Store linehaul and fuel separately on every load, on both the customer side and the carrier side. Do not accept all-in carrier rates without a breakdown when you can avoid it.
2. Report linehaul margin per load as the primary metric. Report fuel margin separately; if it drifts far from zero in either direction, something is wrong with a surcharge table or a contract.
3. Compare spot linehaul to contract linehaul. DAT's numbers put September spot van linehaul at $2.17 against $2.40 for contract (DAT, Oct 13, 2026). Different indexes measure contract rates differently, so use your own contract book as the comparison when you have it.
4. Watch fuel surcharge accuracy on carrier invoices. When surcharges are at record highs, a wrong index week or wrong table costs more per load. Our guide to automating fuel surcharge checks on carrier invoices covers the common errors.

An illustrative example: a load billed to the customer at $3.10 per mile all-in and paid to the carrier at $2.95 all-in looks like a 15-cent margin. If the customer's fuel line is 80 cents and the carrier's is 85 cents, linehaul margin is actually 20 cents and you are losing 5 cents on fuel. That 5 cents is a surcharge table problem, not a pricing problem, and you would never find it from the all-in number.

Where does automation make the split practical?

The split is easy to describe and tedious to maintain by hand. Every quote, rate confirmation and invoice has to carry the breakdown, and fuel changes weekly. That is work an agent can do reliably:

• Quotes. When a quote request arrives, the agent prices linehaul from lane history and adds fuel from the current index and the customer's surcharge table, then shows both on the quote. This is the same logic behind our post on diesel fuel surcharge automation.
• Rate confirmations. The agent records the carrier's linehaul and fuel separately when the load is booked, so the comparison exists before the invoice arrives.
• Invoices. Carrier invoices are checked against the rate con line by line. Fuel billed on the wrong week or the wrong table gets flagged with the correct number.
• Customer communication. When fuel drives a price change, customers accept it more easily if you show them it is fuel. The same approach applies to LTL general rate increases, as covered in our guide to communicating the Q4 LTL GRI to customers.

Frequently asked questions

What was the DAT van spot rate in September 2026? DAT reported $3.01 per mile all-in, up 12 cents from August and 96 cents from a year earlier, with linehaul at $2.17, down 2 cents (DAT, Oct 13, 2026).

Why did linehaul fall when the all-in rate rose? Fuel surcharges reached record highs for van, reefer and flatbed, so the fuel portion of the rate rose faster than the total. The underlying linehaul rate slipped slightly.

Should broker margin be measured on all-in or linehaul? Linehaul, in dollars per load. Fuel is mostly a pass-through, and including it in revenue distorts margin percentage when diesel moves.

What does the Cass Freight Index say about September? Shipments rose 1.9% year over year while expenditures rose 20.4% (Cass Freight Index, via FreightWaves), so freight spending is growing far faster than freight volume.

The bottom line

September's headline rate increase was mostly fuel. Split linehaul and fuel on every quote, rate confirmation and invoice, measure margin in linehaul dollars per load and audit fuel surcharges separately, so a diesel spike never gets mistaken for pricing power or a pricing problem.

Debales deploys AI agents for spot quoting with linehaul and fuel split, rate confirmation capture and carrier invoice fuel surcharge checks. Book a demo.