SONAR Sightings for July 1: Volume out of Charlotte falls but surges out of Atlanta

The highlights from Friday’s SONAR reports are below. For more information on SONAR — the fastest freight-forecasting platform in the industry — or to request a demo, click here. Also, be sure to check out the latest SONAR update, TRAC — the freshest spot rate data in the industry.

There will be a slight alteration in the data presentation in SONAR Sightings. It will begin with a market to watch and then branch off to lanes to watch in regard to that market. The goal is to place carriers, brokers and shippers in the markets that will benefit them most or inform them on which ones to avoid.

Market watch

In Charlotte, North Carolina, outbound volumes are roughly where they were six months ago but are trending downward at a rate of 8.1% on a week-over-week (w/w) basis. Following the trend, Charlotte’s Outbound Tender Rejection Index decreased 115 basis points (bps) in the last 10 days of June alone, bringing overall rejections for the market to 8.9% with a continued downward trajectory.

In a relatively small market like Charlotte, shippers haven’t needed to push lead times out very far in order to secure capacity. However, outbound tender lead times within Charlotte have risen in the last couple of days to 2.5 days. This indicates shippers are worried about the softening capacity and pushing tenders out in an effort to lock in carriers to deliver their freight in time.

Even with the start of the holiday weekend, the decrease in volume and rejections puts pricing power in the hands of the shippers, which will attempt to push down rates.

Carriers will need to take what they can get in order to leave the Charlotte market for greener pastures like Atlanta.

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NTI as a point of reference

The National Truckload Index is a daily look at how spot rates in specific lanes hold up in comparison to the national average, giving carriers and brokers an idea of which lanes to gravitate toward or avoid.

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Watch: Carrier update

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Lane to watch: Charlotte to Atlanta

With the decrease in volume out of Charlotte placing pricing power into the hands of shippers, spot market rates to Atlanta have decreased 44 cents in only three days.

As carriers are looking to work their way into a booming market, they will need to bite the bullet on this one in order to do so.

In less than one full transit day, carriers can move from Charlotte into Atlanta, a market where they will have not only the cream of the crop within the Southeast but across the nation as of now.

Outbound tender volumes for Atlanta are on a steady rise of 6.8% w/w, with rejection levels climbing 500 bps since June 20 to reach 13% overall. This tightening of capacity will place pricing power into the carrier’s hands to push spot market rates out of Atlanta up even further.