Watch Now


Freight activity out of the North Carolina coast drops by more than 60%

(SONAR: OTMS.ILM) Outbound Tender Market Share, Wilmington, NC

FREIGHTWAVES’ SONAR CHART OF THE WEEK (Sept 23-Sept 29, 2018) 

Chart of the Week: Inbound Tender Market Share- Wilmington, NC (SONAR: ITMS.ILM)

Florence has soaked the North Carolina coast in what the National Weather Service described as a “1000 year flood.” The level of rain dumped on the coastal cities has destroyed the local economy and infrastructure. Damage estimates from the storm have changed from $20B to as high as $50B according to Moody’s. There have been an estimated 8 trillion gallons of water dumped on the area, which Vox describes as enough water to fill 12 million olympic swimming pools.

All of this is impacting freight flow throughout the region and country. Carriers are rejecting loads into the market and outbound freight has all but dried up. To quanitify this, we looked at SONAR’s OTMS index in the Wlimington, NC area. The Wilmington, NC market generates about .16% of all trucking freight in the U.S. This equates to $1.25B on an annual basis. On a weekly basis, it is around $24M.

At the end of August, the Wilmington, NC market peaked at .18% of all truckload freight in the US, before dropping to .06% this past week. That is a loss of 67% off the peak number. Even taking an the moving average in marketshare of .16%, volumes out of the Wilmington, NC market dropped by nearly 63%. This turns out to be a loss of nearly $15M from the trucking market out of Wilmington, NC. For truckers that operate in the area, it will have a sizeable impact. What isn’t factored in this number, of course, is the increase of activity into the market due to relief efforts and additional volumes of truckloads that are expected in future months as the area dries out and reconstruction consumates.






About Indices presented in this article

(SONAR: OTMS) Outbound tender market share. Outbound tender market share measures the percent of loads that originate out of a specific market vs. the entire U.S. market. The advantage of using this dataset over a volume indicator is that marketshare normalizes every market for seasonality, day of week, and economic cylces.

About Chart of the Week


The FreightWaves Chart of the Week is a chart selection from SONAR that provides an interesting data point to describe the state of the freight markets. A chart is chosen from thousands of potential charts on SONAR to help participants visualize the freight market in real-time. Each week the Sultan of SONAR will post a chart, along with commentary live on the front-page. After that, the Chart of the Week will be archived on FreightWaves.com for future reference.

SONAR aggregates data from hundreds of sources, presenting the data in charts and maps and providing commentary on what freight market experts want to know about the industry- in real time.

The FreightWaves data-science and product teams are releasing new data-sets each week and enhancing the client experience.

To find out more about SONAR go here or to setup a demo click here.

Zach Strickland, FW Market Expert & Market Analyst

Zach Strickland, the “Sultan of SONAR,” curates the weekly market update. Zach is also one of FreightWaves’ Market Experts. With a degree in Finance, Strickland spent the early part of his career in banking before transitioning to transportation in various roles and segments, such as truckload and LTL. He has over 13 years of transportation experience, specializing in data, pricing, and analytics.