Load boards · Updated September 2026
Is there a genuinely free load board for truckers?
Yes — but “free” means six different things across the six boards that advertise it. Here is what each free tier actually gives you, read off each vendor’s own site on 2 September 2026.
Quick answer
What is the best free load board?
- Best for
- Owner-operators who want to search freight without a subscription.
- Not best for
- Teams that need a full TMS, automated broker outreach, or broad multi-board workflows.
- Evidence
- Numeo pricing and product limits
- Last verified
- September 4, 2026
- Next step
- Compare the free tiers, then choose the board that fits your equipment and lanes.
What “free” actually means on each board
Free tiers differ more than the marketing suggests. Some are free forever, some are a trial wearing the word free, and one is free to search but paid to act on. Figures below were read from each vendor’s own site on 2 September 2026.
| Board | Free tier | What the free tier gives you | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Numeo app | Free to download | 100,000+ daily loads in one feed, free to search, with AI Dispatch free and unlimited on every plan. Paid tiers raise the search limit and open full Amazon load detail. | Go $19.99, Max $39.99, Platinum $69.99 / mo |
| TruckSmarter | Free | Free to download and free to search, with 100,000+ daily loads in one feed. AI Dispatch is sold separately at $49/month after a 30-day trial. | AI Dispatch $49 / mo after a 30-day trial |
| Trucker Path (TruckLoads) | Free, unlimited | "Free unlimited access to 150,000+ loads daily." The most genuinely free board on this list. | Essential $29.99 / mo, Preferred $49.99 / mo |
| DAT | Free app, heavily capped | The free DAT One app searches "a limited number of loads based exclusively on your current location", with a cap on searches. | From $59 / mo for unlimited search across ~722,500 daily loads |
| 123Loadboard | No free tier | 10-day free trial on carrier plans, then paid. The mobile app is free to install but not to use. | Standard $39, Premium $59, Premium Plus $79 / mo |
| Truckstop | No published free tier | Carrier load-board pricing is not published in a form we can read and verify. | Not published — gated |
The honest read: if all you want is to look at loads, Trucker Path is the least restricted free board and TruckSmarter is the most established. What none of the free tiers do is the work after you find the load — pulling the broker’s credit, drafting the rate email, following up. That is the part every board charges for, and it is the part that decides whether a free board saves you money or just saves you a subscription.
What the free Numeo app includes — and where it stops
We would rather you read the limit here than discover it later. The Numeo app is free to download and free to keep using:
- 100,000+ daily loads in one feed, searchable by equipment, lane, rate, mileage and deadhead
- Free to search with no card and no trial clock, up to the free plan’s search limit
- AI Dispatch and AI load ranking free and unlimited on every plan, including Free — no cap, no add-on
- Amazon loads, which are in the Numeo app and nowhere else; full detail opens on a paid plan
- Numeo Spot, the DAT and Truckstop Chrome extension, free forever on the same account
Where it stops: the Go, Max and Platinum plans raise the search limit and open full detail on Amazon loads. That is the whole difference on mobile — AI Dispatch is not one of the things you pay for. The app also never books on its own; you book, and it writes the outreach. On the desktop side, Load Hub searches 15+ boards and broker portals in one window, Load Radar sends phone and Telegram alerts the moment a matching load posts, and AI Hub handles broker email at volume. Those three are bundled into Numeo Spot Ultra — $29.99 per dispatcher per month billed annually, $49.99 monthly — and Spot Free and Pro include a 30-search preview so you can try them first. Full detail on pricing.
Free load boards by equipment type
The board matters less than the filter. What separates a good free board from a bad one is whether it can express what your truck actually hauls.
Box truck
Box-truck freight is the hardest category to find on a general board, because most boards treat it as an afterthought behind dry van. Filter by straight truck and 26ft box, and watch for loads posted as "van" that a box truck cannot legally take — no dock, no liftgate, no pallet jack.
Hotshot
Hotshot runs on Class 3–5 trucks with gooseneck or flatbed trailers, usually under 10,000 lbs. The freight moves fast and prices on urgency, so the boards that refresh quickest matter more than the boards with the most postings.
Flatbed
Flatbed rates swing harder by season and region than any other equipment type. Steel, lumber and machinery concentrate around a handful of origins, so a board that lets you search by origin radius rather than by state is worth more than raw posting volume.
Reefer
Reefer pays a premium and demands more: temperature logs, tighter appointment windows, and more detention risk. Check the broker before the rate — a good reefer rate from a slow-paying broker is not a good load.
Power only
Power only means you pull someone else’s trailer, which removes the trailer payment but ties you to that shipper’s network. Volumes are thinner on free boards because much of it moves through dedicated programs rather than open postings.
Where the freight is
Load availability is a local question before it is a board question. These guides cover the markets and lanes with the most consistent outbound volume, with current rate ranges and the brokers who post there.
Two free options are worth looking at next to it: Trucker Path TruckLoads, which advertises free unlimited access to 150,000+ daily loads, and the Numeo app, which is free to download and free to search with AI Dispatch free and unlimited on every plan — where TruckSmarter charges $49/month for its after a 30-day trial. The practical advice either way is not to be single-sourced: keep a second free board connected so a bad week on one platform is not a bad week for your truck. Competitor pricing read from each vendor's own site on 4 September 2026.
Numeo products support broker and operations workflows by email. The AI Dispatch mobile app also includes voice mode, so drivers and dispatchers can interact with the assistant hands-free while working from a phone.
Yes. Trucker Path's TruckLoads advertises free unlimited access to 150,000+ daily loads, and the Numeo app is free to download and free to search, with AI Dispatch free and unlimited on every plan including Free. TruckSmarter's app and board are free too, though its AI Dispatch is $49/month after a 30-day trial. DAT's free app is capped: it searches a limited number of loads based only on your current location. 123Loadboard has no free tier at all, only a 10-day trial. Competitor pricing read from each vendor's own site on 4 September 2026.
Usually one of three things: the free tier caps how many loads you can see (DAT), it is a trial rather than a free plan (123Loadboard), or the board is free but the tools that make it useful are not (TruckSmarter charges $49/month for AI dispatch). The Numeo app is only partly the first kind: search is free up to the free plan's limit, but AI Dispatch and AI load ranking are free and unlimited on every plan including Free — the paid plans buy a higher search limit and full Amazon load detail, not the AI.
The app is free to download and free to keep using, with 100,000+ daily loads in one feed. AI Dispatch and AI load ranking are free and unlimited on every plan, including Free — no tier, no monthly cap, no add-on. The Go, Max and Platinum plans raise the search limit and open full detail on Amazon loads, which are in the Numeo app and nowhere else. Separately, the Numeo Spot browser extension is free forever on the same account; Load Hub, Load Radar and AI Hub are bundled into Spot Ultra at $29.99 per dispatcher per month billed annually ($49.99 monthly), with a 30-search preview on Free and Pro.
Both, and the mix depends on the board's source. Boards that aggregate broker postings carry the same freight the paid boards do, because brokers post to fill trucks rather than to fill tiers. What a paid subscription usually buys is not better freight but better search: rate history on the lane, broker credit and days-to-pay, and alerts that reach you before the load is covered.
Box-truck freight is filtered rather than found — most general boards bury straight-truck and 26ft box loads behind dry van, and some loads posted as "van" cannot legally be taken by a box truck without a dock, liftgate or pallet jack. Pick a board that lets you filter by straight truck and box specifically. The Numeo app filters by equipment, lane, rate, mileage and deadhead on the free tier.
FREE TO START
A free load board that also does the dispatch
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