Read top to bottom. The share price leads; the spread and Robinson's profit per load follow it by two to three quarters; demand and capacity explain why the spread moves. Background bands are the cycle phases (grey A bottom, amber B squeeze, green C catch-up, red D top). The hatched zone on the right is a projection: what the average of the 2017-18 and 2020-21 squeezes did next, applied from 1Q26, plus the Bloomberg forward P/E bands for the stock. It is a reference path, not a forecast.
Two rule sets, tested on every quarter-end since 4Q17 (35 readings). Rule A (entry) is contrarian: it fires when the stock has already fallen hard, Robinson's price-minus-cost gap is at or below zero, and truck rates are not collapsing. That combination has fired 6 times (the sixth is 1Q26, still open); the 5 with a known outcome were all positive over the next 12 months, averaging +26%. Rule B (confirmation) is what most people wait for. On this stock it is late: when 2 of 3 confirmation tests passed, the next 12 months averaged +4%; when 1 or fewer passed, +14%. Use A to decide whether to be in at all, B to decide when to add, and the trim rule to know when the easy part is over.
Every indicator that moves Robinson's spread, on one page, each one voting for a cycle phase. Public series (Cass, truckload PPI, diesel, trucking jobs, share price) refresh automatically each day via GitHub Actions. Market series that live behind paywalls (DAT spot and contract, tender rejections, Class 8 orders, FMCSA exits) and Robinson's own quarterly disclosures are entered by hand in data/manual.json.
Status is set by hand after each data release. Rule of thumb from the research: start a position at three greens including margin or revisions, full size at four.
Everything on this page feeds one number: the gap between what a shipper pays Robinson and what Robinson pays the trucker. These are the rules of that game, from expert calls with former Robinson staff, brokers, shippers and carriers (AlphaSense, 2025-26) and Robinson's own 2026 calls.
Large shippers run a truckload RFP once a year, mostly September to December for a March start. Brokers and carriers quote a rate per lane (say Chicago to Los Angeles, dry van). The shipper ranks them into a route guide: primary, secondary, tertiary. About 75-80% of large-shipper freight is still bid annually; roughly 20% of the market has moved to quarterly bids, and multi-year deals with mini-bids are growing.
The rate is "live" until expiry, but there is no binding volume and no linehaul escalator. The shipper is not obliged to tender loads; the broker is not obliged to accept them. When spot runs 20-30% above contract, carriers and brokers simply reject tenders, the route guide "falls apart", and the load goes to spot at a premium. That is what the tender rejection index (OTRI) measures.
Contract freight is high-volume, low-margin: mid-to-high single-digit gross margins to keep Fortune-100 relationships. Spot is the hedge: 15-20% margins, "double or triple" contract. Robinson's mix is ~70% contract (up from 65% a year ago), which is why its blended NAST gross margin (13.1% in 2Q26) sits between the two.
When costs jump 30%, brokers go back to shippers to "meet halfway" or push most of the increase through; shippers run mini-bids on the lanes that broke. Historically that takes two to three quarters. In September 2026 Robinson said its AI tooling has cut the average time to reprice the contract book to three weeks, applied lane by lane, with a 93% acceptance rate.
Nearly all freight is priced as linehaul + fuel surcharge. The surcharge is indexed to the DOE weekly diesel average and resets automatically, on both contract and spot, from shipper to Robinson to carrier. Diesel went from ~$4 to ~$6.50 in 2026.
About 850 carrier reps still call carriers daily alongside the digital load board (Navisphere Carrier). Carriers are graded on on-time and reliability. Scale and network density let Robinson buy an estimated 4-5% cheaper than a digital-only broker. Insurance and carrier vetting are now part of procurement: post-Montgomery, the eligible small-carrier pool is smaller and the cost of "quality" capacity higher.
DAT dry van national averages. Spot above contract squeezes Robinson's 70% contract book; spot rolling back below contract after a bid season is the broker's sweet spot. The truckload producer price index from the BLS is the free, long-history proxy for contract pricing.
The 2026 rally is supply-driven. The bull case needs the demand leg to arrive while capacity is still capped. Cass Freight Index, auto-refreshed from FRED.
Capacity leaving pushes spot up (squeeze now). Capacity returning caps spot (broker sweet spot later). Orders lead deliveries by 6 to 18 months.
Robinson discloses truckload price per mile and cost per mile changes every quarter. The difference is the squeeze; the NAST gross margin is its result. The company also gives three monthly AGP-per-day readings on each call, the only intra-quarter signal it provides.
data/manual.json → chrw_q.Quarter 0 is the first quarter in which Robinson's truckload cost per mile rose faster than its price per mile by more than 3 points. Lines show what happened over the following two years. If 2026 follows the pattern, the margin trough is one to two quarters away and the share price bottoms before it.
valuation in manual.json when consensus moves. Bands: 5-year mean 20.8x, ±1 SD 16.8x / 24.9x (24 Sep 2026).