If you've been hauling bulk this month and felt like rates finally started moving in the right direction, you weren't imagining it.
April closed out with the median rate across all bulk freight at $4.73 per mile, up 11% from March. That's the biggest single-month jump we've seen in the last year, and it pushed us $0.42 above our trailing 12-month median. After a stretch of mostly flat months, the market moved.
I want to walk through what's happening underneath that number because the headline doesn't tell the whole story.
Volume Pulled Back, But Not in a Bad Way
Total verified loads came in at 34,727 for April, about 3.6% lower than March. That sounds like a soft month on the surface, but here's the context that I’d care about if I’m a provider or shipper in the bulk space: weekly volume is still running roughly 15% above our trailing 12-month average. So, loads dipped from a strong March, but we're still well ahead of where this market normally sits this time of year – and we anticipate volumes to trend upward as demand rises.
That combination of lower volume month-over-month with rates climbing usually means one thing. Capacity is getting tighter across multiple pockets within the market.
Aggregates and Industrial Are Carrying the Market
If you're hauling rock, sand, asphalt, cement, or anything in that family, you already know April was a strong month. Aggregates and Industrial rates jumped 13.3% to a median of $5.19 per mile and now make up 32% of all bulk loads in our network. That's the largest share of any commodity group. What is the primary contributing factor? Good question. Data centers.Roughly 30,000 truckloads make up one data center – that certainly ramps up demand for specific bulk equipment (like side, bottom, and end dumps, and pneumatics), not just general freight equipment.
Grain held its own too at $4.63 per mile (up 7.9%), and Feed Ingredients ticked up 4.5% to $3.75. Every major commodity group moved up in April. That's rare.
Corn Is Quietly Having a Year
Corn was the single highest-volume product on the network with 3,149 loads, and the rate sits at $4.89 per mile. That's up 6.1% from March, but the bigger story is the 12-month picture. Corn rates are up 17.5% year-over-year. If you're running grain lanes, that compounding matters more than any single month.
Where the Map Is Heating Up
Two regional moves jumped out:
South Central origins (TX, OK, NM) posted a 20.7% month-over-month rate increase. That's the strongest regional move on the board, and it's been building. Rates in that region are up 16.8% over the last six months. The Midwest also moved, climbing 9.5% in April.
Northeast origins went the other direction, slipping 2.7%. If your lanes are concentrated up there, you've probably already felt it.
A few specific commodities worth flagging:
- Fertilizer rates accelerated 33.3% in April, the biggest single-product move
- Soybeans climbed 11.9%
- DDG moved up 12.4%
- Cement dropped 23.8%, the only major product decline
The Diesel Question Nobody Loves
I'm not going to dance around it. The U.S. average is sitting at $5.35 per gallon. That's down 0.9% from last month, but it's up 47.7% over the last three months and 53% over the last twelve.
Fuel that high puts a floor under rates whether shippers like it or not. Carriers can't run profitably below cost, and brokers who try to pretend diesel didn't move are going to keep losing capacity. Part of why we're seeing rates firm up in April is the market finally catching up to where fuel has been for a while – on top of capacity exiting.
The Lane Concentration Story
One thing that hasn't changed: bulk freight is still a short-haul, intrastate game. The median haul in April was 149 miles, and the top three corridors (Kansas to Kansas, Oklahoma to Oklahoma, and Indiana to Indiana) accounted for 17% of the entire month's flow.
That's not a coincidence. Bulk commodities don't travel like dry van freight. They move in dense regional patterns tied to where things get grown, mined, processed, and consumed. If you're trying to position trucks based on national averages, you're going to miss. The work is in the lane-level detail.
What I'd Be Watching in May
A few things on my radar:
- Whether South Central holds the move. A 20% jump in one month is significant, but I want to see if it sticks before I'd call it a new floor
- Fertilizer follow-through. That 33% spike usually means a planting-season pull. Watch whether the volume sustains or fades
- Diesel direction. A small dip is welcome but doesn't change the bigger picture. If fuel keeps climbing, expect rates to keep firming
- The Feed Ingredients gap. They're lagging the rally. Either they catch up, or it tells us something about protein and dairy demand
- Roadcheck Week starts Tuesday (May 12-14). What changes could it bring to load rejections and rates?
A Quick Note on How We Get These Numbers
Everything in this update is built from verified bulk freight loads moved through the BulkLoads network. 34,727 of them in April across 46 origin states. We exclude outliers and very short hauls, so the medians reflect what's actually happening, not noise. The same data feeds the rate-quoting and lane analysis tools inside Bulk Insights.
Either way, keep moving freight, watch the regional shifts, and let's see what May brings.