Power only dispatch
Power only trades trailer ownership for someone else's terms. Whether that is a good trade is arithmetic, and it is worth actually doing.
National spot average, week ending 14 August 2026
No reliable national spot average is published for power only. We are not going to invent one to fill this box. No public source publishes a national power only spot average, and rates vary too much by program for a single number to mean anything. We compare each offer against your all-in cost per mile instead.
Power only, honestly
What this market is actually like to run.
The appeal is obvious: no trailer payment, no trailer maintenance, no tires on a second set of axles, no trailer insurance. You bring the tractor and pull whatever the shipper or broker provides. For a carrier who is capital-constrained or just starting, that is a real advantage.
The cost is that the rate per mile is lower, and you are operating inside someone else's network. Drop-and-hook programs are built around trailer pools at specific yards, so your lane options narrow to wherever the pool is. When a program changes its rates or its footprint, your business changes with it, and you had no vote.
Trailer interchange is the part carriers underestimate. When you hook someone else's equipment you take on responsibility for it, and your policy needs to cover that. A tire blowout on a borrowed trailer is a conversation about interchange agreements, not a roadside inconvenience.
What we do on this equipment
Specific to this trailer, not a generic dispatch checklist.
- Run the actual comparison for you: power only rate against your rate with a trailer, minus the trailer's real weekly cost. Sometimes the answer is that you should keep the trailer.
- Check trailer interchange terms and confirm your insurance covers what you are about to hook to.
- Book across more than one program where possible so a single network's decisions do not set your whole week.
- Watch drop yard positioning, because a great rate to a yard with nothing outbound is not a great rate.
- Document trailer condition at hook, because you will be asked about it later.
Where the money leaks
The charges and disputes specific to this trailer type.
- Interchange gaps
- Non-owned trailer coverage is not automatic. Verify it in writing before the first hook, not after damage.
- Yard-dependency
- Rates look fine until the return leg only exists if you deadhead sixty miles to the right yard. Count those miles when you evaluate the offer.
- Detention in trailer pools
- Pool programs often have weaker detention terms than a standard broker load. Read them, because sitting is still sitting.
On rates for this equipment
No public source publishes a national power only spot average, and rates vary too much by program for a single number to mean anything. We compare each offer against your all-in cost per mile instead.
Related
Where to read more.
Truck dispatching
We work your lanes, plan the week as a whole, and put loads under you that make sense together.
Invoicing and collections
The load is not finished when it delivers. It is finished when the money arrives, and someone has to chase it.
Cutting deadhead without taking bad loads
Empty miles cost fuel and hours and earn nothing. But chasing zero deadhead makes carriers accept cheap freight. Here is how to think about the trade properly.
Load boards or direct shippers: an honest comparison
Direct freight is the goal everyone talks about and few carriers reach. What each channel gives you, what it costs, and how to move between them.