Market Conditions uses a scrubbed load count and truck count ratio, to remove incorrect, incomplete or duplicate data sets so that the data is cleaned up and accurate. This data is scrubbed to remove high over posting/searching behaviors.

Note:  Over posting/searching is defined as being over 2 standard deviations over your companies prior 90 day behavior. For example, customers who do scripted searches on our load board, bulk deletes & reposts of loads

For each geography, this ratio is  normalized by its percentage of the national load count volume to calculate a metric of demand.

This resulting scrubbed and normalized ratio is then mapped to a scale of -100 to +100 for display. For each individual equipment type, there are 7 range labels defined to indicate the following:

  • Very Tight Capacity
  • Moderately Tight Capacity
  • Slightly Tight Capacity
  • Neutral Market
  • Slightly Loose Capacity
  • Moderately Loose Capacity
  • Very Loose Capacity

For example, currently, Very Tight Capacity starts at:

  • Van +45
  • Flatbed +93
  • Reefer +84

These values for each range are determined by examining 2 years of historical values and dividing them into 7 equally sized groups. In other words, each group will contain approximately the same number of occurrences over time of each of the 7 values (“Very Tight Capacity”, “Moderately Tight Capacity”, etc.)


Range Label Definitions
Volume of Loads/Trucks

  Very Tight Capacity

  A lot More Loads Than Trucks

  And/or the imbalance is heightened by a high volume of loads

  Neutral Market

  Relatively equal Loads & Trucks 

  And/or the imbalance is negated by a low volume of loads

  Very Loose Capacity

  A lot Less Loads Than Trucks

  And/or the imbalance is lessened by a low volume of loads


When analyzing market data, consider the following:

  • Inbound
    • Inbound volume may not be reflected in outbound volume because inbound trucks might not truly be available as they could have a contract already for a return load that isn’t posted on our board. Every inbound load represents a truck that has to go out. But whether that happens depends on if they have a contract to go out or if they are willing to deadhead. They could either be deadheading here because they know there’s a good location nearby they can get a load or they are headed home. They could also have a contract taking them there that’s not on our board which could explain discrepancies between inbound and outbound volumes.

  • Trucks Posted to "Anywhere"
    • Trucks are posted from a location, so we know where they are headed outbound, and they can post their destination as "anywhere". We count these as part of the Outbound totals, but we drop them entirely from Inbound as we can't truly ascribe them to any particular location. They almost certainly have places that they won't seriously consider going, and we can't say with any confidence where they are headed.