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Easter Is Coming, But Is Freight? Let's break down how the holiday impacts freight volumes with exclusive pre-Easter insights and charts.
Happy Tuesday.
This analysis takes a look at how the Easter holiday (taking place this year on April 20th) interacts with freight markets, especially the reefer segment.
While national trends barely flinch, regional markets (like Miami) show interesting patterns when you zoom in across three years.
With seasonality, holiday timing, and produce trends all colliding, this data-driven piece shows where Easter might still move the needle.
Written By Luke Prothero of Greenscreens.ai.
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Easter is a particularly interesting event to observe in the freight market. Similar to Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day, it drives demand for perishable goods such as flowers and candies.
However, unlike those events, Easter occurs at different dates each year, varying by up to a month. This means that interactions with local seasonality in produce and other commodities change year-over-year. Drivers may also try to get off the road during the holiday, tightening capacity.
Nationally, the impact of Easter on freight markets is virtually imperceptible. This is not unique, besides the holiday season, few events have a noticeable impact on the overall freight market.
The refrigerated market would be the most likely candidate for an “Easter bump,” given the demand for refrigerated goods and the relatively smaller, and therefore more volatile, market.
But even the reefer market nationally sees little change in the week or two leading up to Easter.
The green boxes below identify Easter 2023 and Easter 2024.
Regionally, however, Easter’s impact on reefer markets becomes more apparent. We looked at the top 10 reefer markets on Easter Sunday for the past three years. Miami, unsurprisingly, is the only market to appear in the top 10 all three years—likely due to its role as a floral gateway from Latin America.”
Green indicates markets that appear in the top 10 all three years, yellow for those that appear in 2 of 3 years. All of these markets are located in the Sun Belt and coincide with the start of produce season in that region.
Miami, FL, is the only market that shows up on all three lists, which is not surprising since many flowers are either grown in South Florida or are grown in Latin America and enter the U.S. via Miami.
However, unlike Valentine’s Day, some other domestic markets such as California (which shows up in the 2022 list) do supplement the Easter flower supply given the warmer weather.
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One way to isolate the impact of Easter is to compare the cost trend for the same week in other years.
For example, Easter took place on the 13th week of the year in 2024, and that year was the only of 2022-2024 to have an upward cost trend in week 13.
Similarly, Easter in 2023 is associated with the highest price impact of the three years for week 14. However, the strongest upward price trend for week 15 occurred in 2023, not in 2022, when Easter took place in week 15.
These results are particularly interesting when you consider that in 2022, Miami was the hottest reefer market in the nation during the week leading up to Easter, whereas in 2023, Easter week was only the 9th hottest reefer market.
If we zoom out, it looks like produce season may have begun earlier in 2023 than in 2022 or 2024, explaining why it outpaced the other two years in weeks 14 and 15 by such a substantial margin.
Miami outperformed in pricing due to early produce trends—not just Easter demand.
A nationwide increase in freight rates during the week prior to and including Easter Sunday is not evident. However, some markets, especially in the Sun Belt, do experience a bump at this time of year.
In short, seasonality—not the Easter holiday itself—is what drives reefer market heat this time of year. Miami remains the exception, but even there, produce timing has a stronger influence than Easter weekend.
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