“Hurricane Laura crashed into the Gulf Coast overnight as a Category 4 storm, lashing southwestern Louisiana with 150-mph sustained winds,” reported Nick Austin, FreightWaves’ Director of Weather Analytics and Senior Meteorologist, on FreightWaves.com.
Craig Fuller, FreightWaves’ founder and CEO, stated, “Our thoughts and prayers are with all those impacted by Hurricane Laura. FreightWaves has a responsibility to provide intelligence and information about the hurricane and its impact on the freight market.”
Fuller also stated, “SONAR is the industry’s most comprehensive freight data platform, providing unparalleled insights and forecasts. Therefore, as it has done previously when other hurricanes damaged areas of the United States, FreightWaves will offer free public access to key features of SONAR until next Friday, September 4, 2020. There is no obligation or credit card required.”
FreightWaves SONAR is the industry’s most comprehensive freight data platform, providing unparalleled insights and forecasts. Therefore, SONAR can help carriers, shippers and third-party logistics providers deal with the market complications caused by Hurricane Laura and provide relief in its wake.
Key features of SONAR available include:
- Global Pages allow you to quickly retrieve a variety of information. Global Pages are created by FreightWaves employees, and cannot be edited.
- Lane Signal provides a lane-by-lane freight rate forecasting app showing past, present and future rates, pricing power scores and a visual comparison of markets that impact your business. Learn more
- Critical Events is a SONAR widget that serves as an intelligence center during severe weather, natural disasters, fires or controlled power outages. SONAR’s Critical Events allows users to react smarter to events across the globe. Learn More
By offering access to these key and easy-to-use features of SONAR, FreightWaves is helping those involved in the movement of freight make smarter decisions in the wake of Hurricane Laura. Black swan events like Hurricane Laura, 2019’s Hurricane Dorian and others disrupt markets, and SONAR information can help users react more effectively.
(Photo: FreightWaves)
Fuller: “FreightWaves has a responsibility.”
Fuller stated, “FreightWaves’ goal is to provide the fastest, most comprehensive data and insights on what is happening in the areas impacted by Laura, as well as other markets around the country. This will help ensure that carriers, 3PLs, shippers and first responders have the most up-to-date and relevant information.” He added, “SONAR can be utilized to make more informed decisions, track the storm and activity surrounding it, and ultimately provide faster relief services to the affected areas.”
In addition, up-to-date information on Hurricane Laura’s impact on transportation, logistics and supply chains is available on FreightWaves.com and FreightWaves TV.
SONAR, which is normally a subscription-based software-as-a-service product, is the industry’s first and fastest freight forecasting platform. SONAR is the only platform that combines contract tender data with spot rate data to create predictive freight rates. It creates the most current freight activity and logistics rate indices in the market. Plus, to help subscribers focus attention on the most important decisions, SONAR breaks down freight data based on geography, mode or freight market share. All usage of SONAR is governed by the SONAR user agreement.
“There will be parts of Lake Charles underwater that no living human being has ever seen before.” – Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards
Laura – the region’s strongest storm in more than a century — made landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, around 2 a.m. CDT on Thursday, August 27. By 5 a.m., the storm had weakened to Category 3 but was still producing powerful winds of 120 mph.
SONAR is the industry’s most comprehensive freight data platform
SONAR’s Critical Events widget will be important throughout this event and its aftermath. SONAR provides real-time data on Hurricane Laura’s progress and forecast, along with likely and actual impacts to transportation and energy infrastructure. The Critical Event Center offers unparalleled information to assist companies move freight out of the region and help those involved in relief operations to better manage their networks.
Disruptions to supply chains and freight markets could be severe. Infrastructure assets are threatened and trucking capacity will likely be absorbed by relief and reconstruction efforts.
As reported by FreightWaves’ J.P. Hampstead in the wake of 2019’s Hurricane Dorian, “Truckloads dispatched on relief work do not return to market at a typical rate, but instead are detained by evolving conditions, indecisive bureaucrats, and fragmentary information, often for days on end.”
Hurricanes create massive amounts of market volatility, which SONAR can help participants manage. The ripple effect from the loss of capacity could send spot rates upward in markets as far afield as Southern California, which is already having capacity issues.
SONAR’s Critical Event Center offers unparalleled views of major weather events and information to assist companies move freight out of the region and help those involved in relief operations to better manage their networks.
