FTR’s COVID-19 Impact Heatmap has been updated to show truck load data in the spot market, providing state-level impacts on truck load volumes for four equipment types: dry van, refrigerated, flatbed, and specialized. With the use of Truckstop.com spot market data, each combination of states and equipment type reflects rate and load trends both as origins and destinations using the most recent seven days from the date selected.

The new feature highlights how quickly market conditions have reversed, especially in dry van and refrigerated, which initially saw sharply higher volumes due to restocking and disruption, according to FTR. Currently, load volumes in all segments nationwide are significantly below what would have been expected before the COVID-19 crisis. Spot rates are also generally weaker, although not as uniformly.

“The health and operational challenges facing truck drivers, carriers, shippers, and brokers have not gone away, but market conditions have changed sharply over the past several weeks,” said Avery Vise, FTR's vice president of trucking. “Volume and rate weakness will continue during the current period of national containment, but the heatmap will help identify changing freight market conditions as we emerge from social distancing. The economic restart probably will not be uniform nationwide, so the heatmap will help freight transportation professionals assess when and where the freight market begins to recover.”

The heatmap does not indicate anything about the relative level of actual spot rates or loads among states. It reflects the status of a given state’s rates and loads compared to its own normal range.