SONAR Sightings for July 20: Dallas outbound volume ticks up; LA sees change in length of haul

The highlights from Wednesday’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.

Market watch

Outbound tender volumes in the Dallas truckload market boomed — like the other markets in Texas — leading into the Fourth of July but fell hard once the holiday came to a close. Between July 9 and last Saturday, outbound volumes in Dallas dropped 17.4%, but they have since begun to swing back upward, rising 1.6% since Saturday.

Dallas is a halfway point for loads going east to west or vice versa, causing the Headhaul Index for the market to remain relatively stable over the past three months until its recent drop in outbound volume, tipping the scale toward more inbound loads. Overall, due to the recent drop in outbound volume, Dallas’ Headhaul Index is down 13.8% week over week.

Given the recent upward trajectory of the Outbound Tender Volume Index, rejections have begun to rise as well. However, at the time that outbound volumes really began to drop (July 9), the rejection rate began to rise, indicating that more carriers were rejecting more contracted freight during that time, likely due to better rates in the spot market. The Outbound Tender Volume Rejection Index has climbed 160 basis points since July 9 to a current value of 5.6% overall.

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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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Lane to watch: Los Angeles to Dallas

After Independence Day, volumes out of LA took a steep incline, a 25% increase between July Fourth and July 11. However, as more long-haul loads are being shipped via rail due to cost savings, the number of traditional long-haul lanes (more than 800 miles) out of LA, such as this one, are being run less.

Short-haul lanes (those less than 250 miles) are trending upward out of the LA market while the longer hauls are on a decline. If this trend continues, it won’t be long until we see more short-haul lanes coming out of LA than long haul, which has only happened twice in the past two years.

Still, if you are a carrier able to book long hauls out of the LA market, three transit days to Dallas on the spot market can score 15 cents less than the national average at $2.65 a mile, which is not bad considering the mileage of the trip. The chances of booking a load out of Dallas are also increasing due to the increase in volume in recent days.

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