Let’s keep this simple: lumber and steel are two of the biggest drivers of flatbed freight in this country. If people are building houses, warehouses, retail centers, data centers, transmission lines, and factories, you’re hauling the stuff — framing lumber, coils, plate, beams, structural steel, rebar. When that demand is hot, you feel it right away in your load board. When it cools off, you feel that too.
So where are we right now, closing out 2025? Lumber futures are sliding off their highs and steel demand is soft with some pockets still running hot. That combination is sending a pretty clear message to flatbed haulers: expect mixed demand instead of broad “every lane is on fire” demand. Some regions will stay busy. Some will get quiet. And the guys who survive are going to be the ones who understand where the money still is — and where it isn’t.
Lumber: housing is cooling off, and the market is telling on itself
Lumber futures ran up hard earlier this year and even hit around $695 per thousand board feet in August — a three-year high, driven mostly by traders betting on tighter supply and higher tariffs on Canadian wood. That wasn’t because America was suddenly building houses like crazy. It was mostly front end tariff buying: “Tariffs are going up, better load up before it gets expensive.” Mills, wholesalers, builders — everybody grabbed inventory early.
Then additional reality hit.
Mortgage rates stayed high. Builders started seeing buyers slow down. Single-family starts and permits dropped. Builders shifted from “how fast can we frame it” to “how fast can we move what we’ve already built.” Lumber demand didn’t follow the price up. Now, as we sit in late October 2025, lumber futures have fallen back into the $590–$610/mbf range, down double digits from that August spike, and recently touched the lowest levels in weeks.
Here’s what that means in plain English: the lumber market is heavy. They’ve got plenty of product. They don’t have buyers lined up like they hoped. Builders overbought expecting a strong fall build cycle, and that build cycle didn’t fully show up. Again, you heard it before, it is all supply versus demand.
There are two main reasons for that weakness:
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Housing affordability is still brutal. Buyers are backing off because monthly payments are ugly, even if sticker prices come down a little. That stalls new single-family construction, which is a core driver of flatbed loads like studs, trusses, sheathing and roofing materials into subdivisions.
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Inventory is sitting. Builders in a lot of markets are now cutting prices or offering incentives just to move finished homes. You don’t order framing packages for the next phase if the last phase hasn’t sold yet.
So instead of steady flatbed freight — lumber from mill to yard, yard to jobsite, jobsite to next jobsite — you get pauses. Slow downs. Gaps in the week.
If you’re a flatbed carrier that leans heavy on housing freight (think Southeast and Sun Belt bedroom communities, roofing materials, truss packages, drywall), you’re going to feel that softness first. You’ve probably already felt it: more deadhead to get something decent, brokers holding the line on rate because “it’s slow this week,” and more back-and-forth just to keep the truck moving.
The price slide in lumber is basically the market saying: “Housing isn’t absorbing material fast enough.”
That is your early warning signal. When lumber drops, housing obviously cools. When housing cools, flatbed softens.
Now, does that mean lumber freight dies everywhere? No. It means you stop assuming “house build = easy money” in every county. The good lumber lanes going into high-growth pockets (parts of Texas, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama) will still exist. But they’ll be more competitive. You’re going to see more trucks chasing the same pool of deliveries because demand isn’t broad and guaranteed anymore; it’s targeted and uneven.
Translation: If you’re purely living off new residential construction materials, you’re in a risk lane. You’ll need to either widen your service radius or start playing in non-residential work (commercial buildouts, distribution centers, solar fields, infrastructure jobs) to keep your week full.
Steel: weak overall, but not dead — and not equal in every lane
Now let’s talk steel.
Steel is the backbone of flatbed freight — coils, plate, beams, fabricated components. When steel moves, flatbeds eat. When steel slows down, you feel trucks stacking up in places like Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Texas.
Here’s where steel sits as we close 2025:
Global steel demand in 2025 has been weak. Prices have been under pressure most of the year because buyers — construction, manufacturing, export markets — haven’t been pulling hard enough to soak up supply. We’ve got too much capacity chasing not enough end use in a lot of regions, especially Asia, where prices are at or near historic lows.
In Europe, demand is also soft, and the only thing keeping prices from totally dumping is production cuts and trade protection. In other words: they’re shutting furnaces off just to stop the bleeding. According to a September 2025 report, this scenario will drive overall utilization rates down to approximately 70% from the current 78-79%, creating what steel industry observers describe as a “structural oversupply crisis.”
In the U.S., you’ve got another layer: tariffs. That sounds like a policy headline, but let’s talk about what that actually means at the dock door.
When imported steel is priced out of the market, domestic mills get to hold onto more volume by nature. That keeps U.S. production running, even if global demand is soft. It doesn’t mean price explodes upward — because demand is still not booming — but it does mean U.S. mills get the work that might’ve gone offshore.
Add to that a couple bright spots: infrastructure, energy, grid upgrades, pipeline components, utility and heavy industrial work are still consuming steel in certain pockets like Texas, Alabama, and along Gulf and Mid-South corridors. Flatbed demand in those areas is still described as “hot” thanks to coil and industrial freight, even while residential construction is cooling.
So yes, the overall mood in steel for late 2025 is: weak now, slow recovery maybe into 2026. But that’s not the full story. It’s not equally weak everywhere, and it’s not equally weak in every product type.
Some steelmakers in the U.S. are still posting strong earnings outlooks tied to non-residential demand — things like energy, automotive, and infrastructure build — and metals recycling. That right there should grab your attention if you’re hauling flatbed.
So what does all of this say about Q4 2025 for flatbedders?
Let’s break it down:
- Lumber is telling you housing is slowing, not surging.
Lumber futures fell from their August high down toward the $590–$610 range by late October. The spike was mainly fear and tariffs. The drop is reality: builders aren’t pulling as hard. That means fewer constant, easy, short-haul building-material loads feeding new subdivisions. Expect more empty miles in purely residential markets unless you diversify.
- Steel is telling you “soft now, slow, hopeful grind later.”
Analysts expect steel to stay weak through the rest of 2025 and only start to find better footing into 2026. That means don’t expect broad, across-the-country, “flatbed is booming” behavior. You’re going to work for your loads. You’re going to negotiate. You’re going to see brokers testing you on rate.
- But steel is not dead — it’s just shifting.
Even with sluggish global demand, U.S. mills are still feeding sectors like energy, infrastructure, automotive, grid upgrades, and industrial expansion. Those projects need plate, beams, poles, coils, and fabricated assemblies. That’s all flatbed freight.
- Your best-paying freight heading into 2026 probably won’t be starter homes in a new subdivision for sure.
It’ll be steel going into power grid work, utility infrastructure, industrial sites, heavy equipment builds, and even data center construction for example. Those jobs are less interest-rate sensitive than housing. Cities can slow housing starts. Utilities can’t slow the grid upgrade. Manufacturers can’t delay retooling forever. That’s where the need is.
- The “lumber hustle” model is going to tighten.
For the one-truck or three-truck carrier that built their money on regional hauls of lumber, trusses, roofing bundles, fencing panels to new build sites? You’re going to start seeing more competition. They’ll do it now — because their steel work got soft that week. So be ready to defend your relationships, offer reliability, and maybe stretch your service area a little.
Bottom line
Lumber and steel tell the truth before the broader market does.
Lumber falling back from that August spike is the market quietly admitting: housing isn’t strong enough to keep every flatbed busy on residential construction going into winter.
Steel staying soft through late 2025, with talk of only a slow recovery into 2026, is the market saying: don’t expect a miracle, expect to hustle — but pay attention, because certain regions tied to infrastructure, grid work, energy, and manufacturing are still moving steel every single day.
If you’re a flatbedder, things will be a little slower for a little longer on your side.
In other words: 2025 is ending with a sorting-out. If you’re smart about where you point that trailer, you’ll still eat.