FreightWaves
From AltData.wiki, The Alternative Data Encyclopedia
FreightWaves is a price reporting agency (PRA) focused on the global freight market and a provider of high-frequency supply chain data. Based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, it was founded in 2016 by CEO Craig Fuller.[2]
The company combines two businesses: a SaaS analytics platform, SONAR, which offers billions of data points on the global logistics industry updated daily, and an advertising-supported media operation covering freight and supply chains that includes more than 20 full-time journalists and analysts.[2]
What It Does
FreightWaves provides price, demand, and capacity data that customers use to benchmark, analyze, monitor, and forecast activity in the global freight market. The company describes logistics-dependent industries as representing roughly forty percent of the global economy and positions near real-time freight intelligence as a tool for managing cost and volatility across truckload, less-than-truckload, parcel, rail, maritime, and air cargo modes.[2]
Products
The flagship product is SONAR, a subscription platform delivering daily-updated freight market data, forward-looking indicators, and charting tools for capacity providers and the organizations that contract with them. SONAR also exposes its datasets through an API.[2]
On the media side, FreightWaves operates its news website, a streaming TV product, and podcasts, alongside the owned brands American Shipper, serving maritime and ocean trade audiences, Modern Shipper, aimed at direct-to-consumer retail supply chain executives, Trains.com news coverage, and the FreightWaves Forum.[1][2]
Buyers and Use Cases
According to the company, more than one million professionals and over 500 global enterprises use FreightWaves intelligence for decisions about current and future supply chain operations, including routing, management, pricing, and forecasting. Media properties report more than one million unique visitors per month.[2]
Freight market data from FreightWaves has also been integrated into adjacent risk products: Everstream Analytics partnered with FreightWaves to embed advanced supply chain risk intelligence into the SONAR platform.[3]
History
FreightWaves was founded in 2016 by Craig Fuller, whose background spans U.S. Xpress, the trucking company his father co-built, Xpress Direct, an on-demand trucking brokerage he founded, and TransCard, a fleet payments company sold to U.S. Bank. Fuller is also founder and CEO of Firecrown Media, a multi-platform enthusiast media company. The company operates work-from-home first from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and is sometimes described as the "Bloomberg of Freight".[2]
Landscape
As a price reporting agency for freight, FreightWaves competes with established freight indices and rate benchmarking providers while differentiating through high-frequency, forward-looking spot market data rather than survey-based indexes. It also runs industry events such as the F3: Future of Freight Festival and FreightTech Awards.[2]