This Week in SONAR: New year, new data and features!

Carriers can use FREEZE to determine where large regions of freezing/below freezing weather may affect their protect-from-freeze (PFF) procedures if they have reefers in their fleets. They can also use the index, in conjunction with the RAIN index, to determine if freezing rain may result in icy roads. The FREEZE index also includes historical data of actual observed daily average temperatures. It can be viewed in map form, or chart form for an individual county.

Air Cargo Volume Index, Justin Childress, Data Scientist, FreightWaves: The Air Cargo Volume Indices represent total air freight and mail volumes moved monthly, broken down by inbound and outbound traffic with additional breakdowns to isolate freight moved via belly cargo in passenger planes or via freighter aircraft. The data can be viewed by individual airports or by lanes. If a user was interested in the historic movement of cargo out of JFK airport, they would type OAIRVOL.JFK into a SONAR chart. For further breakdowns into passenger or freighter movements they could also compare that with OAIRVOLP.JFK and OAIRVOLF.JFK.

A user could also examine freight movement by lane by adding another airport to the ticker, for example OAIRVOL.JFKATL would represent the total freight movement from JFK airport to ATL airport. These data only refer to USA based freight movement. While OAIRVOL.JFK and IAIRVOL.JFK reflect all freight movements from or to JFK, those same tickers for LHR will only reflect traffic that’s originating or terminating in the United States. 

Users competing with air freight for specific goods will be interested to know which airports move the most freight and where there may be opportunities to offer alternatives to shippers. Similarly, users who handle a great deal of last mile shipments will be interested to know which airports historically received the most freight.

A comprehensive list of new Air Cargo Volume tickers is listed below:

• OAIRVOL – Monthly Outbound Air Freight and Mail Volume in (Metric) Tons
• OAIRVOLF- Monthly Outbound Air Freight and Mail Volume by Freighters in (Metric) Tons
• OAIRVOLP – Monthly Outbound Air Freight and Mail Volume by Passenger Planes in (Metric) Tons
• IAIRVOL – Monthly Inbound Air Freight and Mail Volume in (Metric) Tons
• IAIRVOLF – Monthly Inbound Air Freight and Mail Volume by Freighters in (Metric) Tons
• IAIRVOLP – Monthly Inbound Air Freight and Mail Volume by Passenger Planes in (Metric) Tons

Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel Rack Price (ULSDR), Daniel Pickett, Chief Data Scientist, FreightWaves: We have been reporting ULSDR with the prior day’s effective date. The rate we have been reporting is actually the rate that is in effect for the current day. While no data points are truly changing, API customers may notice that it will look like historical records have changed. In truth, they’ve simply had their “effective date” moved one day forward. 

It is important for diesel buyers to note that various payment processors have different practices on when they update the rate they are charging carriers who have negotiated rack+ based pricing. Carriers using SONAR’s diesel price data should work with their fuelcard processor to determine what time Diesel Rates are repriced.

Features: There are 3 new features in SONAR this weekend:

• The ability to enter a custom fuel surcharge in the Rate Predictor Tool in 3D Maps
• Market Volatility is now available on the 3D Maps Beta
• We’ve added a way to search for Airplanes and Vessels. The planes are searchable by flight number, tail number, and origin/destination Airport Codes. The vessels are searchable by ship name, IMO, and MMSI.  

All previous SONAR release notes are available HERE. Learn more by using Sue Says in SONAR and clicking on the orca! If you have any questions, please reach out to your Customer Success rep or email sonarsupport@www.freightwaves.com.

SONAR is the fastest and most comprehensive freight market data and analytics platform in the world. These are just a few of the hundreds of unique data sets available to SONAR subscribers. Not a SONAR user yet? Sign up for a free test drive here.