Texas Market Intelligence | June 2026

Field Report

Ground truth

The scores above come from public data. This is what our rep is seeing on job sites in the territory — the color the numbers can't capture.

Brett Hutter

Texas

The number that matches what I'm seeing is hauler capacity. Since late spring, contractors have been calling me about trucks weeks ahead of mobilization instead of a few days out. That's the tell. When guys start booking early, it's because they got burned sourcing late on the last job.

The earthwork share tracks too. A lot of what I'm walking right now is real dirt work — widening jobs where they're moving material, not mill-and-overlay where a couple of trucks cover the whole day. Those jobs eat capacity differently, and it catches contractors who staffed to contract count instead of to the actual work.

Diesel coming down helped everybody's month, but I'll tell you what my haulers tell me: one good month doesn't change what they quote. Most of the owner-operators I talk to are still pricing off what they paid this spring, and they're not dropping rates because one report looked better

What the score can't show you is how uneven it is. Statewide looks healthy, but the Metroplex and the Permian don't feel the same right now. I've got areas where I can put trucks on a job tomorrow, and areas where I'm calling four brokers to cover one order.

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Field observations are one rep's read from active job sites. They add context to the Iron Index — they are not scored inputs.

DEEP DIVE

The full market analysis

For readers who want the detail behind the score, signals, regional outlook, and operating recommendations.

Executive read: Texas ran above its own baseline in June. TxDOT let $696.9 million across 167 contracts, about 13% above the state's trailing-12-month monthly average, and two-thirds of that value was earthwork-intensive work rather than surface treatment. Diesel closed the month well below its recent average. Construction employment kept climbing, which means hauling capacity was tighter than normal.

Market at a glance

Let value: $696,912,209 across 167 contracts
Versus baseline: ~13% above the trailing-12-month monthly average
Work mix: 66.4% of value in earthwork-intensive categories
Letting cadence: 15 separate letting dates in June
Fuel cost: Gulf Coast diesel closed June 14% below its 12-week average
Hauling capacity: Tighter than normal; construction employment up 2.8% year over year

Where the work was

Widen Freeway

29.5% of June's let value across 2 contracts. The single largest classification by value, and heavily earthwork-intensive.

Bridge Widening or Rehabilitation

13.5% of let value in a single contract. Bridge widening requires new foundations and approach earthwork, so it is classified as earthwork-intensive.

Interchange (New or Reconstructed)

10.0% of let value in a single contract. Interchange construction is among the most material-intensive work TxDOT lets.

Widen Non-Freeway

8.7% of let value across 2 contracts, on non-freeway corridors.

Routine Maintenance Project (Sealed)

8.7% of let value but spread across 40 contracts — the clearest example of contract count and contract value diverging. Not earthwork-intensive.

Regional outlook

Abilene

19.7% of June's let value, the highest of any TxDOT district. Taylor County alone accounted for 19.7% of statewide value.

Dallas

18.2% of let value. Dallas County carried 16.6% of the statewide total, making the metro the second-largest concentration of June work.

Laredo

10.7% of let value, concentrated in Webb County on the border corridor.

El Paso

10.3% of let value, entirely within El Paso County at the far western end of the state.

San Antonio

8.5% of let value. Beyond these five districts, the remainder was distributed across 25 districts and 88 counties in total.

Operating environment

Fuel and margin pressure

On-highway diesel for the Gulf Coast region (PADD 3) closed June at $4.28 per gallon, about 14% below its trailing 12-week average — a favorable cost position during the month. EIA publishes diesel by PADD region, so this is a regional figure and not a Texas pump price.

Hauling capacity

Texas construction employment reached 927,300 in June, up 2.8% from June 2025. Rising construction employment implies hauling capacity is tightening rather than loosening, since it draws on the same regional labor pool.

Opportunity map

Widening and interchange work concentrated in Abilene, Dallas, Laredo, and El Paso
Five widening and interchange contracts carrying more than 48% of June's total let value
An unusually earthwork-heavy month, where hauling demand tracks the work mix rather than the headline dollar figure
Diesel below its recent average, easing operating cost during the month
Work distributed across 25 districts and 88 counties, spreading opportunity beyond the major metros

Risk map

Hauling capacity below normal, making trucks harder to source than in a looser market
Value concentrated in a handful of very large contracts, so a single cancellation moves the monthly picture
Construction employment still rising, which continues to tighten the labor pool
Low-bid values are not final awarded values; contracts can be rescinded or adjusted after letting
Diesel is a regional PADD figure and does not track every Texas pump equally

Metrics not included

Project Pipeline

Requires forward-looking letting values for the next 90 days. No source meeting that requirement is currently registered for Texas, so the metric is omitted rather than approximated. The Iron Index is computed from the four available metrics.

Broker Opportunity

Derived from Project Pipeline, so it is unavailable for the same reason. It is left blank rather than substituted with a partial calculation.

What to do next

Broker playbook

Demand ran above baseline while hauling capacity was tight — that gap is where brokered coverage earns its keep.
Two-thirds of June's let value was earthwork-intensive, so material-hauling demand tracked the work mix rather than the headline dollar figure.
Five widening and interchange contracts carried more than 48% of June's value; plan coverage around value, not contract count.
Abilene, Dallas, and Laredo together accounted for roughly half of June's let value — concentrate network depth there.
Diesel closed June below its recent average, easing margin pressure during the month. That is an observation about June, not a forecast.

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Contractor playbook

Hauler Capacity at 46 means trucks were harder to source than normal; secure capacity earlier than you would in a looser market.
June's work mix was unusually earthwork-heavy, so material movement requirements ran high relative to contract count.
Routine sealed maintenance was 40 of 167 contracts but under 9% of value — staffing to contract count would misjudge the actual work.
Texas construction employment rose 2.8% year over year, tightening the same regional labor pool that trucking draws from.
Work spread across 25 districts and 88 counties; a strong statewide total does not mean local capacity is available at the production rate you need.

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Hauler playbook

Heavy Civil at 90 means June's work genuinely moved material rather than resurfacing over it.
Hauler Capacity at 46 means availability was below normal — the condition in which truck owners hold the most pricing leverage.
The haul-heavy widening and interchange contracts concentrated in Abilene, Dallas, Laredo, and El Paso.
Gulf Coast diesel closed June at $4.28, about 14% below its 12-week average. It is a regional PADD figure, not a Texas pump price.
Low-bid values are not final awarded values; scope and schedule can shift after letting.

Explore Hauler Intelligence

Sources & methodology

Data as of

June 29, 2026

Verified

August 20, 2026

Extraction and scoring run August 20, 2026, against public data. All figures in this report derive from the three sources below, each retrieved programmatically and retained as a hashed raw artifact for audit.

TxDOT Bid Tabulations — Texas Open Data Portal (dataset de7b-7dna)
Data date: June 1–30, 2026 letting dates. Verified August 20, 2026.
U.S. Energy Information Administration — On-Highway Diesel Prices, Gulf Coast (PADD 3)
Data date: week of June 29, 2026. Verified August 20, 2026. EIA publishes diesel by PADD region, not by state; figures are cited as Gulf Coast (PADD 3) and are not Texas pump prices.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — State and Area Employment, Texas construction
Data date: June 2026 (preliminary, subject to revision). Verified August 20, 2026.

Method

TxDOT publishes bid-item-level rows — one per project, per bidder, per line item — with the contract total repeated on every row. Rows were deduplicated to one per project-and-letting-date, then filtered to the low bidder. Any contract showing more than one distinct low-bid total for the same letting would have halted the run as unresolvable; none occurred.

Earthwork classification uses TxDOT's project classification field, which carried 21 distinct values in this period. The coarser project type field, which publishes only "Construction" and "Maintenance", cannot distinguish grading from striping and was not used. Widening, interchange construction, and bridge replacement are classified as earthwork-intensive; resurfacing, seal coats, safety improvements, sidewalks, and bridge preservation are not.

Two classifications are judgment calls worth stating plainly. "Bridge Widening or Rehabilitation" is a single combined TxDOT category representing 13.5% of June let value in one contract, classified as earthwork-intensive on the basis that bridge widening requires new foundations and approach earthwork; classifying it otherwise would reduce the reported earthwork share from 66.4% to 52.9%. "Intersection & Operational Improvements" (2.7% of let value, 3 contracts) is classified as earthwork-intensive on the basis that intersection work typically requires turn-lane grading and paving; classifying it otherwise would reduce the reported share to 63.7%.

Every metric is anchored to the June 2026 reporting period. Diesel is scored against the last full week of June and the twelve weeks preceding it, not against the most recent week available at the time of the run.

About the Iron Index

The Iron Index is Iron Sheepdog's proprietary market assessment, built from public DOT, EIA, BLS, and Census data. It considers DOT letting activity, work mix, forward pipeline, fuel cost movement, and hauling capacity. Scores run 0–100 on a scale where 60 represents normal conditions for that state measured against its own history — never against other states. The derivation behind the scores is proprietary and is not published. The underlying facts in this report — letting values, contract counts, diesel prices, employment figures — are fully sourced above and can be checked against the cited sources.

Disclosures

The Hauler Capacity score is an employment-based proxy. No public dataset reports dump truck availability by state, so total state construction employment is used as an indicator of capacity conditions. It is not a measurement of truck supply.

Scores describe observed conditions during the reporting period. They are not forecasts or guarantees of future market conditions. Low-bid values are not final awarded values; contracts may be rescinded or adjusted after letting. This report covers state highway lettings only and does not measure private, municipal, or county construction activity. No Iron Sheepdog platform or customer data was used.

Texas | June 2026

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