An inbound state, worked with an outbound plan.
Nearly 23 million residents and over a hundred million annual visitors make Florida a consumption machine: groceries, building materials, retail and hospitality freight pour down I-95 and I-75 every day. That's the good news if you're hauling into the state — inbound rates from the Southeast and Northeast stay healthy most of the year. The catch is the exit: manufactured outbound freight is thin, and undispatched trucks routinely leave Miami at rates that don't cover fuel.
The seasonal answer is produce. From roughly November through June — peaking hard in April–June — South Florida and the Homestead area, plus Central Florida citrus and Plant City strawberries, load reefers north at rates that can double the van market. It's demanding freight: pre-cools, pulp temps, multi-pick schedules and receivers who reject casually. We run the temp-protocol discipline (and the paperwork trail) that keeps claims off your record, and we book the produce calendar deliberately rather than luckily.
Year-round, the structural answer is the ports and the drayage-adjacent belt around them: JAXPORT in Jacksonville, Port Everglades, PortMiami and Tampa feed transload warehouses that generate real outbound van work, and Lakeland–Orlando's distribution cluster along I-4 reloads trucks that know when to be there. When outbound is simply soft, we price the round trip honestly — a strong inbound plus a modest outbound to Atlanta or Savannah beats sitting three days in Medley waiting for a miracle.
// Typical 2026 spot ranges: inbound FL van $2.20–$2.70/mi, outbound van $1.60–$2.00 off-season, produce-season reefer out of South FL $2.80–$3.60 at peak. Estimates, not promises — the produce calendar moves and so do we.