After three months in its new corporate family, DAT Services seems little changed.

In February, truckstop owner Jubitz Corp. of Portland, Ore., sold DAT to TransCore, a Dallas-based technology company. DAT, the original freight-matching company that began on truckstop TV monitors, is now at home among TransCore’s intelligent transportation and mobile communications divisions.
But DAT remains headquartered near its roots in Beaverton, Ore., and the company is busy mining its traditional customer base for new business. According to Susan Little, vice president of sales and marketing, that market includes 17,000 carriers, brokers and third-party logistics companies.
"We're extending further into our customers' office environment," she said,
One example is DATconexus, DAT’s web-based freight exchange launched late last year. According to Little, DATconexus offers the online convenience of other web-based marketplaces, but with the resources of DAT Services. That includes the 100,000 loads posted on monitors, wired and faxed to DAT load-matching customers every day.
Little described DATconexus as a neutral marketplace, in which DAT does not take a percentage of the freight bill. However, subscribers do pay fees linked to the volume of business they do.
Little said DATconexus was a logical next step for DAT, which has facilitated the exchange of information among its customers for 23 years.
"Over the years that information has been automated, and that's really our history. We're just taking it to the next level as we always have," she said.
Another DAT service provides an interesting point of view on the current freight market. According to Little, DAT’s Load Trends show that the overall volume of freight is less relevant to carriers than the regional freight balances.
"I think it's really driven by microeconomics in different pockets throughout the United States, because the inbound/outbound ratio will depend on either the state or the region," she explained.
"For example, the ratios of inbound to outbound freight in California typically run 44 percent. So for every 2.27 trucks that go into the state, one leaves that's full. That's been pretty consistent from a seasonal perspective
"So the key is for the owners of trucking operations or drivers or owner-operators to understand that dynamic so they are aware that when they haul into California, typically its going to be a lot harder to haul out.
"In the East there are not as many dead zones because the hauls are shorter. A small dead zone is Maryland, for example. It has an average ratio of 67 percent. But it's a short trip to West Virginia, which has 1.5 times more outbound than inbound loads.
Load Trends reports freight balances by state for DAT subscribers. Little pointed out that some Load Trend information is available for free here on the Truckinginfo.com web site, where it is called the DAT Hot Load Index.
The index shows a map of the U.S. in which each state is one of three colors. Green indicates a "hot state" that generates more freight than it receives. White indicates an "average state" more or less in balance. Black indicates a "black hole" state where outbound loads are hard to find.
Monthly load reports from DAT also air on RoadStar Radio News.