“Data centers driving the need for flatbed trailers. Right now, I mean, it's not even about price when it comes to a flatbed trailer. It's just can we get them the equipment where they need it when they need it?”
FreightWaves Today · October 2026
Context
Asked whether trailer demand comes from for-hire carriers, private fleets or brokers, Barth says it is across every segment, and singles out flatbeds, where data-center construction means customers care about availability rather than price.
Transcript
…a lot of the customers realize that they are now been running trailers seven, eight, nine years when they prefer to run them, you know, no more than five years. They're seeing the uptick in maintenance and they're really looking for an alternative. And today we're able to provide that for them.
Now, is most of your demand from the for hire truckload asset providers? Are you seeing it from private? What about the brokers? Are they a participant in any of this?
Yeah, again, you know, we're seeing this run the entire gamut of the industry. Like I said, there's no one segment over another. With the utilization that we're running today, every trailer that we have that has tires on it and brakes on it is out in the puck, is out running today. So again, there's not one specific segment. We are obviously seeing some focus around the fourth quarter and the holiday rush. But again, data centers driving the need for flatbed trailers. Right now, I mean, it's not even about price when it comes to a flatbed trailer. It's just can we get them the equipment where they need it when they need it? And even on the dry-an side of things, we are seeing the consumer stay relatively strong. The consumer continues to spend. They're continuing to buy into the holiday season. And it's just exacerbating the need for additional dry-an trailers.
Yeah, it makes sense that you're seeing, particularly with fleets, you know, owner operators. We've seen the regulatory challenging for, you know, the registrations. We've seen a lot of capacity turn. It feels like the cycle, you talked about being surprised earlier this year. When did things sort…
So we really started to have some conversations in the May, June time period with a lot of our customers about what they were going to need in late third quarter and fourth quarter as they got ready for the holiday surge. And it was, I'll call it surprisingly optimistic. You know, we had used the…
Now, we reported on this show a couple of months ago or fraud or a new form of freight fraud. And it feels like every day we learn something new. But these, I don't know what they're really fly-by-night operators or sort of people taking advantage saying they have excess trailers. You guys, I…
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