Every dealer knows the feeling. You had a good Tuesday at Manheim. Eight units bought right, all back of book, all cars your market actually wants. Then Wednesday morning you post them for transport, and the lane that cost you $520 last month is quoting $700. And even at $700, nobody's calling.
It's a predictable spike, and it happens because auction demand for trucks is lumpy while carrier capacity is not.
The details: Manheim alone runs roughly 8 million wholesale transactions a year across more than 100 locations, and the buying concentrates around sale days.
When a big sale wraps, thousands of dealers post loads to Central Dispatch and the other boards inside the same 48-hour window.
The issue is that FreightWaves pegs short hauls under 500 miles at roughly $1.55 to $2.50 per mile, with 1,500-plus-mile moves falling to $0.50 to $0.95.
Those are annual averages. Post-sale surges push loads toward the top of each range, and the cars that move last are the ones posted at yesterday's rate from a crowded origin.
Worth noting: At Auto Transport Professionals, we watch this play out in our dealer lane data every sale week, but this year is amplifying the pattern.
The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index hit 215.3 in March, up 6.2% year over year and the highest reading since summer 2023.
Meanwhile, sales conversion rates ran ahead of 2025 in nearly every week of the first quarter. And more cars trading hands means more cars needing trucks, in the same tight windows, from the same auction gates.
Why this matters: Auctions give you a free storage window, then daily fees start stacking. And every day a purchased unit spends on the sale lot is a day of holding cost with zero chance of retailing it.
NCM Associates benchmarks holding cost around $40 per day per unit; Dale Pollak's math in Like I See It runs closer to $85.
A unit stuck five extra days waiting on a cheaper truck burned $200 to $425 before it ever reached your recon bay. With that, the cheap truck wasn't cheap.
So what do the operators who never seem to get caught in the spike actually do differently?
Four things, none of them complicated.
Book before the hammer: If you know you're buying at a sale, line up capacity on the lane before you bid.
You can compare going rates on Central Dispatch without posting a single vehicle, which means you can walk into the lanes already knowing what the trip home costs and whether a truck is committed.
Dealers paying surge pricing are typically the ones who start shopping after they already own the car.
Lock your repeat lanes: If you pull cars from the same two or three auctions every month, spot pricing is a choice, but not a necessity.
A committed carrier at a fixed lane rate gives up a few dollars in the soft weeks but saves money in every hot one. Plus, it means your cars load first when capacity gets scarce, which is worth more than the rate.
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Batch everything you can: Three units, same origin, same destination, is a fundamentally better load than one, and it gets quoted like one.
Consider coordinating buys so units leave a sale together, or even pairing loads with a friendly store down the road.
Post smart: Everyone posts Wednesday afternoon after the Tuesday sale.
If titles and gate passes are ready, posting the moment the sale clears puts any operator ahead of the wave. If they're not, holding a day or two past the pile-up often beats fighting through the middle of it.
In other words, what you don't want is to be one of four hundred identical listings competing for the same trucks at the same hour.
What this looks like in practice: A group buying 20 units a month out of regional sales that trims $150 per unit off transport saves about $36,000. Faster cars also hit the lot fresher, which is where the front-end gross lives.
Bottom line: Transport is one of the few costs in wholesale sourcing you can genuinely manage. MMR is going to be MMR. The buy fee is the buy fee. The truck is negotiable, but only if you stop shopping for it after the hammer falls.
About the author: Alexander Bethanis is the owner of Auto Transport Professionals, a Naples, Florida-based auto transport company serving dealers, fleets, and consumers nationwide. He grew up riding transport runs with his father, drove car haulers himself, and has spent more than two decades on the brokerage side of the industry.
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