FreightWaves SONAR now provides analytics down to the lane level. SONAR subscribers can see and use data on a freight lane at the granular level.
FreightWaves launched SONAR two years ago – the first platform to provide real-time market data based on tendered transactions. Tenders are electronically transmitted load requests from shippers to carriers. For the first time in history, trucking companies, freight brokers and shippers could all see activity in the contract freight market with real transactions.
By monitoring load tenders, SONAR users are able to get advanced analytics of the condition of the freight market, long before spot market data would indicate market changes. The only challenge was trying to interpret freight market activity into an actionable decision at a lane level.
Today, SONAR is releasing Lane Signal, a consolidated dashboard of any origin-destination pair in the trucking market. Lane Signal’s Pricing Power gauges utilize numerous SONAR indices along with proprietary algorithms to distill and score whether a shipper or carrier has negotiating strength on a particular lane. The Lane Signal app shows the current day’s and previous week’s negotiating strength on a lane-by-lane basis.
The Lane Signal dashboard also shows today’s rate, historical rates on a lane, and predictive trucking spot rates for as long as 12 months. The forecasted rate is based on SONAR’s proprietary algorithm, based on a combination of tender transactions and truckload carrier historical rate data. Tenders are based on an estimated 85% of the contract truckload market and rate data is based on historical rate patterns of hundreds of enterprise truckload fleets, representing more than 70,000 trucks.
A Lane Signal user simply needs to enter the origin and destination cities of the lane. The app does the rest of the work. Lane Signal allows users to see current data, week-over-week, month-over-month and year-over-year historical pricing data on trucking lanes across the U.S. This information can assist the user in pricing freight by lane (for example, Los Angeles to Chicago, or Denver to Seattle). This means they can price freight movements more accurately.
To further enhance the experience, FreightWaves added natural language analytics and monitoring to the Lane Signal platform. This view helps the user quickly and accurately interpret what is happening at the origin and destination of a given lane.
Graphically, a map on Lane Signal will show the lane, with a line representing the route and a rollover for miles. The origin and destination cities, as well as surrounding areas, will show haul strength down to the Zip 3 granularity.
In addition, when a user comes back to the Lane Signal tool, the last/preferred view will automatically be shown. This is just one of Lane Signal’s user-friendly features.
SONAR subscribers can give others in their organizations access to Lane Signal. It can be configured as a stand-alone app within SONAR, providing lane intelligence to all levels in the organization. For example, at a freight brokerage, those on the brokerage floor can use the Lane Signal app to quote rates on specific lanes based on the latest information found in SONAR.
In addition, Lane Signal is available as part of a subscriber’s API, enabling it to be used in clients’ transportation management systems or partner portals.
SONAR offers proprietary data that comes from actual load tenders, electronic logging devices and transportation management systems, along with dozens of third-party global freight and logistics-related index providers. SONAR also offers spot rate data from Truckstop.com, including all-in truckload spot rates, per mile truckload spot rates, and trucking load volume.
The FreightWaves Product and Data Science teams collaborated with existing SONAR clients to develop the Lane Signal app. This work involved numerous discovery, design and validation reviews before coding even started. Working closely with SONAR clients ensures that FreightWaves develops products that deliver the most value and impact for its clients.
The FreightWaves SONAR platform provides the world’s fastest, most accurate freight data. First introduced in 2018, SONAR includes trucking spot rate indexes, tender indexes and market balance indexes. SONAR’s freight tender indexes are created based on actual electronic load requests from shippers to carriers, meaning that the index is measuring an actual load transaction.
To learn more about Lane Signal, fill out the form below and a member of the SONAR team will reach out to you.
