El Niño winter forecast for freight: warmer doesn’t mean safer for fleets. DTN’s Ben Hershey breaks down what carriers should actually watch this winter: major snow events still possible, wetter western mountain routes, and why AI-driven crash risk forecasting is becoming an operational tool instead of just another weather map. If you move freight, this is the planning window that matters. #FreightWeather #ElNino #TruckingSafety

The strongest El Niño pattern in years is underway, and fleets hauling freight across western mountain passes and the central U.S. should prepare for a wetter, more volatile winter season, according to DTN product manager of transportation and logistics Ben Hershey. DTN has also just launched WeatherHub, a weather intelligence platform that puts hyperlocal road-condition data and a patent-pending crash risk index directly in the hands of dispatchers and fleet operators.

The El Niño signal points to a warmer-than-average winter across much of the central United States, but Hershey cautioned against complacency. Significant snow events can still hit the northern, central, and southern plains, and below-freezing temperatures will still reach much of the South for at least short periods. The more acute risk for carriers is out west, where a substantially wetter winter could hammer mountain corridors — including high-volume passes in the Sierra Nevada and Rockies — with repeated waves of heavy precipitation.

“We’re looking at a potential of a much wetter winter season, which could challenge those operators trying to travel those mountain passes,” Hershey said. “It is going to put a challenge for those operators that have to travel up and over those mountain ranges moving freight from the western part of the United States into the central and eastern parts.”

“We are trying to apply it to their operations — giving them a potential risk of a crash in that situation heightens their attention to the weather conditions,” Hershey said, describing the crash risk index logic.

The crash risk index, which DTN has filed as a patent-pending solution, fuses historical crash records — including precise location, time, and concurrent weather conditions — with real-time traffic data and forecasted weather to generate a forward-looking crash probability along a given route. The tool produces hyperlocal forecasts down to a couple of miles in resolution and looks out to a 72-hour window, a range Hershey said was calibrated specifically to how fleet operators actually make route-planning decisions. Weather data from DTN extends several days further, but the 72-hour horizon covers the detailed operational window carriers told the company they rely on most.

AI is central to making the system practical. Hershey noted that processing the same combination of weather and traffic data would have taken hours to run a decade ago, making it nearly useless for real-time decisions. “Now we’re able to do this in minutes,” he said, adding that DTN continues to layer AI tools on top of its core traditional meteorological models rather than replacing proven science with AI alone.

WeatherHub, launched within the last few months, lets users scroll through road-network conditions hour by hour — including air temperature, road-surface temperature, and road conditions — across the U.S. Dispatchers can enter an origin and destination and see projected conditions along that specific route timed to when their driver is expected to be there, along with alternate routing options. For carriers and third-party logistics providers that prefer not to add another standalone application, DTN also offers the crash risk index and full weather dataset via API for integration into existing platforms. Hershey pointed to tangible financial stakes beyond safety: fleets with documented weather data can use it to contest late-delivery penalties from shippers, a meaningful lever given ongoing economic and fuel-cost pressures across the industry.

• DTN’s patent-pending crash risk index blends historical crash records, traffic, and weather forecasts to project route hazards up to 72 hours out at hyperlocal resolution of a few miles.
• El Niño points to a warmer central U.S. winter on average, but carriers face a potentially much wetter season across western mountain corridors, threatening key freight passes.
• DTN’s newly launched WeatherHub platform delivers hour-by-hour road-condition data and route-specific forecasts, with full API access for integration into third-party logistics systems.

This Summary is generated thanks to a transcription of the interview, for the full interview please enjoy the video above.

Tender rejections are still sitting around 13.5% — and that’s the key signal for where the truckload market goes next. In this SONAR update, we break down whether post-Labor Day freight is fading or holding, what tender volumes are saying about demand, and why rising diesel still matters. Also in this update: spot rates, import volumes, inventory risk and what the next few days could mean for carriers, brokers and shippers heading into Q4.

The Outbound Tender Rejection Index held at 13.45% as of Sept. 10, remaining significantly above the same period in prior years and signaling a still-tight truckload market even as rates pull back from a Labor Day-driven surge, according to Zach Strickland’s Thursday Sonar market update.

Strickland noted that the Labor Day bump in rejection rates was more pronounced than in any of the previous three years — a detail that carriers and brokers should weigh carefully. The central question now is whether rejections continue falling at a steep pace or stabilize near current levels, which will set the tone for the next month of freight activity.

“It’s still going to be tight, I think, for the rest of the year. That’s not in question. It’s just the rate of change that I think we’re really interested in at this point,” said Strickland.

On the demand side, the Sonar Tender Volume Index — a seven-day moving average of all accepted and rejected tenders — has been softer since mid-July, a trend Strickland attributed partly to modal conversion as shippers shifted long-haul moves to intermodal and rail, with East Coast rail increasingly absorbing that volume. A component of economic softness may also be a factor, though current trough levels still sit above the comparable period last year.

Lean inventory levels add urgency to the demand outlook heading into Q4. Strickland warned that tight inventories entering a period of uncertain holiday demand could force carriers into expedited trucking moves, particularly as intermodal becomes less fungible with trucking later in the year. “This is a huge risk for this index as we move into the 4th quarter,” he said, pointing to the sharp post-Labor Day spike in tender volumes as a sign that shipper urgency has returned.

Spot rates continue to face upward fuel pressure, with the national van rate on the NTI sitting at $3.43 — a figure that includes fuel surcharges. Retail diesel prices are approaching $6 per gallon, a level Strickland flagged as a direct and immediate cost for shippers: fuel surcharge bills are expected to rise again this week and next. The Reefer Tender Index showed continued pressure, while the Flatbed Tender Index was flatlining — consistent with Q4 seasonality that traditionally softens flatbed demand.

Import volumes tracked by the IOTI remain elevated relative to both earlier this year and historical norms for this time of year, supporting the view that inventory levels across the supply chain are still lean. Dry van spot rate maps showed significant geographic dispersion, with many lanes still running in negative territory — a sign, Strickland said, that capacity has not yet fully returned to the market following the holiday period, though he expects that to change in the coming weeks.

• Tender rejection rates held at 13.45% on Sept. 10, with the Labor Day spike larger than any of the prior three years.
• Diesel approaching $6 per gallon is pushing fuel surcharges higher for shippers this week and next, with van spot rates at $3.43 on the NTI including fuel.
• Lean inventories heading into Q4 could force expedited trucking moves as intermodal becomes less substitutable later in the year.

This Summary is generated thanks to a transcription of the interview, for the full interview please enjoy the video above.

Margin collapse hit fulfillment operators fast: cushions fell from 9.7 points to 0.6 in one quarter. This breakdown digs into the live network data behind rising parcel costs, slower GMV growth and what it means before peak season. Eric Lemus of Deposco explains why shipping costs are rising faster than revenue, how order growth is diverging from dollar growth, and why lean inventory could backfire in Q4. If you run parcel, fulfillment or e-commerce ops, this is the number to watch. #ParcelShipping #Fulfillment #SupplyChainData

Operator margin cushions nearly vanished in the second quarter, shrinking from 9.7 percentage points in April to just 0.6 points by the end of June, according to Commerce Signal, a new quarterly report from supply chain software firm DePASCO built on live fulfillment transaction data. The collapse was driven primarily by accelerating parcel shipping costs outpacing gross merchandise value growth — and peak season surcharges have yet to hit.

Eric Lemus, Vice President of Strategy and Analytics at Deposco, said the divergence between GMV growth and order volume growth tells the core story. GMV growth decelerated from 15.4% to 13.4% during the quarter, while order volume growth nearly doubled, climbing from roughly 4% to 8.8%. “Demand is slowing in dollars, but not necessarily in units,” Lemus said. “Consumers are still buying, but operators are moving more units through their platform or through their networks without seeing the reciprocal revenue growth as they anticipated.”

Parcel shipping costs rose approximately 13% year over year by the end of Q2, more than three times the pace of broader consumer inflation. Lemus identified carrier mix, dimensional weights, and contracted rates as the primary internal drivers pushing costs higher within individual operator networks, on top of structural factors like energy costs. Deposco’s forward forecast calls for parcel inflation to remain elevated at a minimum of 12% year over year through Q4 — before peak season surcharges are applied.

“There’s been reports, and what we’re seeing is surcharges are likely to range anywhere from 6+% on average. So if you compound that with a pretty heightened environment of year-over-year inflation with parcels, this Q4 peak season will certainly show some pressure on the margins due to that carrier spend,” Lemus said.

Inventory levels add another layer of risk heading into peak. Days on hand closed Q2 at 89.3 — the leanest level in several months — and brands and third-party logistics providers ended the quarter just 3.3 days apart in inventory coverage, an unusually narrow gap. Lemus noted that inventory has begun ticking up since July, but said the pickup may be arriving too late to fully buffer peak season demand. Operators running in the leanest inventory quartile face the most acute exposure to stockouts and unfulfilled orders.

Deposco’s Commerce Signal report is drawn from more than $80 billion in fulfilled GMV across over 4,000 brands and operators, and hundreds of millions of orders per year on its warehouse and order management platform. Lemus, a former Wall Street analyst, said the real-time transactional foundation distinguishes it from survey-based or forecast-reliant reports, which he argued carry inherent bias and lag. The Q2 report’s four forward calls — continued parcel inflation, sustained GMV growth, lean inventory levels, and low days-on-hand turns — have largely played out as projected, with parcel inflation the one area that moderated slightly before an expected re-acceleration in Q4.

For operators looking to protect margins before peak, Lemus pointed to carrier diversification as the highest-impact lever available. “If you’re able to generate a more diversified carrier strategy, what we’ve seen and what we believe to continue throughout the peak season, you’ll likely reduce your parcel spend by 21%,” he said. He also cautioned operators against anchoring forecasts to last year’s peak season data, given the significant volatility in parcel costs this year, and urged SKU-level inventory analysis to identify replenishment gaps before demand accelerates.

• Operator margin cushions collapsed from 9.7 percentage points to 0.6 in Q2 as parcel costs rose ~13% year over year while GMV growth slowed from 15.4% to 13.4%.
• Deposco forecasts parcel inflation will remain at least 12% year over year through Q4, with peak season surcharges expected to average 6% or more on top of that baseline.
• Operators using diversified carrier strategies reduced parcel spend by 21%, according to DePASCO’s live transaction data across 4,000-plus brands and 3PLs.

This Summary is generated thanks to a transcription of the interview, for the full interview please enjoy the video above.