Spot Broker Margins Rise to 15.5% in September as Benchmark Rates Firm
Freight brokers kept more margin on spot truckload loads they won in September, even as the gap between their quotes and benchmark market rates narrowed, according to the September 2026 Tabi Pricing Pressure Index (TPPI) from Tabi Connect, a rate management and quoting platform for freight brokers.
Awarded margin rose 0.9 percentage points to 15.5% on a four-week average, up from 14.6% in August. That is 0.8 points above the index’s weekly average of 14.7% for December 2024 through September 2026. The index draws on about 1.5 million spot quotes a month from more than 1,000 shippers, including every submitted quote whether or not it was awarded. Contract freight is excluded.
The TPPI held at 41 on a scale of 0 to 100. Lower readings indicate broker advantage, and Tabi classifies 41 as mildly broker favored. The score sits at the upper end of a 2026 range that has mostly run between 20 and 41. The four-week average of 40 trails the eight-week average of 45 as an August move toward neutral unwinds.
The quote-to-market spread narrowed to 12.0% from 13.6%. Average quoted rates fell $30 to $2,557 while the market benchmark rose to $2,283, cutting the dollar gap to $274 from $309. Per mile, the benchmark climbed 4.6% to $3.46 and quoted rates rose 3.2% to $3.88. Average length of haul fell 29 miles to 660, and Tabi attributes the narrowing spread to benchmark rates firming on those shorter hauls.
Spot quote volume grew 3.0% over the prior four-week average. Tabi says the increase reflects either rising shipper demand or more contract tenders being rejected into the spot market. The share of quotes converting to awards fell 1.3% from August, following gains of 5.5% in August and 1.9% in July.
Shipper size produced the widest differences in win rates. The 48 enterprise shippers in the dataset, each sending more than 1,000 quote requests a week, accounted for 55.7% of spot quote volume but awarded just 0.31% of it, roughly one load for every 318 quotes. Brokers who won that freight earned a 16.4% awarded margin. The 377 regular shippers, sending 10 to 100 requests a week, made up 6.8% of volume, awarded 4.47% of quotes, or about one in 22, and produced the highest margin at 17.2%. High-frequency shippers in the middle tier, at 100 to 1,000 requests a week, awarded 3.38% of quotes at a 14.7% margin, the lowest of the three groups.
Among shippers that awarded any freight, margin varied little with how often they awarded it. Awarded margin ranged from 15.3% to 16.8% across win-rate groups. Shippers awarding more than 4% of quotes, who accounted for 39.2% of quotes from awarding shippers, received the tightest pricing at 7.5% over benchmark and still returned a 15.3% margin. Shippers that awarded nothing, about 63% of total quote volume, were excluded from that comparison.
By equipment type, dry van carried 64.0% of quote volume at a 14.9% awarded margin. Reefer, at 32.9% of volume, had the lowest win rate at 0.93% and the highest margin at 18.3%. Flatbed made up 3.2% of volume and had the highest win rate, 2.87%. Brokers quoted flatbed 21.1% above the benchmark yet kept the lowest margin of any equipment type, 13.4%. Tabi says that combination implies carriers are being paid about 5% above the benchmark, which suggests the flatbed benchmark is running below actual carrier pay and that brokers pricing off it may be underquoting.
Tabi CEO and co-founder Ricky Gonzalez said in the company’s announcement that “every broker is looking at roughly the same market data now, so the edge comes from knowing where your own pricing stands.” He said brokers holding margin are working from their full quote history, lost quotes included, and treating the benchmark as one input among several. September’s awarded margin ranged from 14.7% to 17.2% by shipper tier and from 13.4% to 18.3% by equipment type.
