Hopper bottom load boards and what hopper loads pay

Hopper freight is its own market

Hopper bottom work doesn't look like van freight. The loads are grain, feed ingredients, fertilizer, and sometimes sand or other dry bulk. Many trips are short: field or farm bin to elevator, elevator to a river terminal, ethanol plant or feed mill. Pay can be quoted per mile, per ton, per bushel or per load, and the truck often comes back empty because the freight only flows one way.

That changes how you use a load board. A general board with a hopper filter will show you some of the freight. A board built around bulk and ag freight may show more of it, and much of the steadiest work never reaches a board at all, because it moves through local elevators, co-ops and farm customers who call the same trucks every harvest.

So the question isn't only which hopper load board to buy. It's which board fills the gaps between the work you get directly, and whether the loads on it clear your floor once the empty return is counted.

How we checked, and what we looked for

We read each company's own website on October 11, 2026 and recorded only what it says there. We didn't run test searches, time responses or rank the boards; the order below is not a ranking. Anything we couldn't confirm on the company's own pages is left out. What we'd judge any hopper board on:

• +Hopper as its own equipment type, not lumped in with all bulk trailers, so a search returns loads your trailer can take.
• +Ag and bulk shippers posting on it. Elevators, feed mills and fertilizer dealers, not just brokers with van freight.
• +Freight near you in your season. Count the hopper loads within reach of your home base during harvest and outside it.
• +Broker and shipper data. Days to pay and credit information matter more when you're new to a customer.
• +Cost against hours. What the plan costs per month next to the time it saves you on the phone.

The hopper load boards we checked

The cards below record what each board's own site said on October 11, 2026. Features and prices move, so look again before you sign up.

• PAID CHECKED OCTOBER 11, 2026

  Truckstop Hopper Load Board

  Truckstop runs a page for bulk loads on hopper bottom and pneumatic trailers, naming grain, fertilizer and animal feed ingredients. Plans were Basic $42, Advanced $135 and Pro $159 per user a month, plus a $42 application fee credited to the first month if approved. Rate Insights, with month over month lane trends, was listed in Pro. The Truckstop Go app is on iPhone and Android.

• PAID CHECKED OCTOBER 11, 2026

  DAT hopper loads

  DAT's hopper page describes bulk freight in hopper bottom trailers, such as grain, gravel, sand and corn. It lists the DAT load board from $59 a month, with broker days to pay, bond and credit information, lane rate information and alerts for matching hopper loads in the DAT One app.

• FREE SIGN-UP CHECKED OCTOBER 11, 2026

  BulkLoads

  BulkLoads is built around bulk freight, from grain and feed ingredients to fertilizer and aggregate. Its homepage showed hopper as its own category, with a count of about 17,000 hopper postings when we looked, plus end dump, walking floor and pneumatic. The page offered free sign-up and listed no plan prices. It also advertised factoring, insurance quotes and a TMS.

• NOT A BOARD

  Elevators, co-ops and plants

  Much hopper freight is booked by phone with the local elevator, co-op, ethanol plant or feed mill. These customers often keep a list of trucks they call first at harvest. Getting on that list is free and usually takes a visit, insurance paperwork and showing up when you say you will.

Board facts are as shown on each company's own site on October 11, 2026. Posting counts on any homepage change by the minute, so treat them as a snapshot. We're not affiliated with these companies and receive nothing from them.

Hopper bottom freight rates: what the public numbers say

USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service publishes a quarterly Grain Truck and Ocean Rate Advisory. Its truck rates come from a survey of grain elevators run by North Dakota State University's Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, for trucks at 80,000 lb gross vehicle weight, quoted per loaded mile per truckload at three trip lengths. The latest edition we could read covers Q2 2026 (April to June).

USDA reported East, West and Rocky Mountain rates as not available for that quarter because of low or no response, and notes that the national average doesn't include every state. Read these as elevator-reported averages, not as a quote for your load.

The pattern matters more than any single figure. Per-mile pay is far higher on short trips because loading, weighing, waiting and dumping take about the same time whether the trip is 25 miles or 200. Rate the short haul per hour, not just per mile. A 25-mile run that pays well per mile can still be a poor day if you sit three hours in an elevator line.

Also notice that the survey is per loaded mile. Grain trucks often return empty. Work the round trip before you compare any hopper rate with your cost per mile.

Pricing a hopper load against your floor

Hopper loads get quoted in more ways than most freight, so convert every offer to the same basis: dollars for the whole trip, then dollars per mile including the empty return, then dollars per hour. Here's an EXAMPLE with round numbers, not a real load or a market quote.

• EXAMPLE

  EXAMPLE THE OFFER

  Corn, elevator to plant

  An elevator offers $16 a ton to move corn 90 miles to an ethanol plant. You'll haul 25 tons, so the load pays $400. The truck comes back empty, 90 miles.

• EXAMPLE

  EXAMPLE PER MILE

  Loaded rate against all-in

  $400 over 90 loaded miles is $4.44 a mile, which looks strong. Over the 180-mile round trip it's $2.22 a mile all-in. That second number is the one to put next to your cost per mile.

• EXAMPLE

  EXAMPLE PER HOUR

  The clock decides it

  If the round trip takes 4.5 hours with loading, scale and dump, $400 is about $89 an hour. If the plant line adds two hours, it drops to about $62. Ask about wait times before you take a harvest run.

• EXAMPLE

  EXAMPLE PER BUSHEL

  Converting bushels

  Corn is usually figured at 56 lb a bushel, so 25 tons (50,000 lb) is about 893 bushels. An offer of 45 cents a bushel on the same load is about $402, close to the $16 a ton offer.

Do this every time, on every basis, and the offers sort themselves. If you haven't worked out your own number yet, the trucking cost per mile calculator gets you there with your fuel, payments and insurance.

Seasons, backhauls and the empty return

Harvest is when hopper trucks are busiest and when elevators are most willing to call outside trucks. Outside harvest, the work shifts toward grain coming out of storage, feed ingredients and fertilizer, and it often gets thinner. A load board earns its keep in those quieter months, when your regular customers don't have enough to keep you moving.

Backhauls are the hard part. Many grain lanes run one way, toward terminals, processors and feed mills. Some carriers find fertilizer, feed or other dry bulk going back the other way, which turns an empty return into a paid one. When you search a hopper board, search the return lane first and work out whether a backhaul changes the trip. For more on planning those, see how load boards and search filters work.

Free hopper load boards and when to pay

On October 11, 2026, BulkLoads offered free sign-up, while Truckstop and DAT listed paid plans. Our list of free load boards, checked the same day, covers general boards with free tiers; most of them carry some hopper freight but don't specialize in it.

A paid plan makes sense when it shows meaningfully more hopper freight near you than the free option, or when its rate and payment data change what you book. Run the free board and a paid trial side by side during a normal month, count the loads that fit your trailer and clear your floor, and write down the cancellation terms before you start. The load board vs dispatcher cost comparison puts the subscription and your search hours next to each other.

Using hopper load board apps from the cab

Grain work happens away from an office, so a phone is often where you'll find the next load. All three boards above link to phone apps. Set alerts for the areas around your delivery points so matching loads come to you, and only search, call or type when you're parked. Our guide to load board apps covers what to look for in a mobile board in more depth.

New to hauling grain

If your authority is new, expect the same hurdles as any new carrier on a load board: some brokers won't set up a very new MC, and you'll want your carrier packet and insurance certificate ready to send fast. Local elevators and co-ops can be more willing to try a new truck at harvest, when they need capacity, especially if you've shown up in person. Our guide to load boards for new authority covers the first months in detail.

Ask every new customer how they weigh and pay. Scale tickets at both ends settle disputes over net weight, and payment terms vary widely between elevators, brokers and farm customers.

Cite or share this page

If you quote this page, please cite it as: LoadHoller, "Hopper bottom load boards and what hopper loads pay," checked October 11, 2026. For the grain truck rates, cite USDA AMS directly, with the quarter. We recheck the boards yearly and update the USDA figures when a new quarter is published.