Measuring the supply chain in motion

The supply chain is constantly changing between the moments captured by traditional economic and freight data. Routes shift. Utilization rises and falls. Freight moves between modes. Capacity tightens or loosens. These signals can reveal what is happening on the ground before it becomes visible in the traditional metrics businesses and policymakers have relied on for years.

Altitude by Geotab Open in new window created a comprehensive, independent view of commercial vehicle movement. With more than six million connected commercial vehicles gathering over 100 billion data points daily, Geotab can see the U.S. supply chain through the physical movements of the vehicles carrying the goods — at scale, continuously and across the country.

We believe that visibility changes what is possible. We built the Health of the U.S. Supply Chain Report to make a regular new source of supply chain intelligence available to logistics leaders, policymakers, journalists and anyone trying to understand how goods move through the U.S. economy.

What truck movements tell us

Take one example that surfaced in our first report: At San Pedro Bay, we saw container volume rise at the same time truck activity fell. This finding suggests that rail quietly absorbed the growth instead. A shift like this is important to logistics planning, and easy to miss if you're only looking at port statistics. 

That's the kind of insight our freight analysis is built to catch. Relationships between different parts of the supply chain shift constantly, sometimes quietly. Having a direct line into vehicle movement means we can see shifts before they show up in sales or invoices. That viewpoint offers a fresh way to understand complex supply chain movements.

The vantage point nobody else has 

Our unique perspective is the real "why" behind this report. Geotab captures roughly 12% of all commercial vehicle travel in the U.S. That's not a survey or a sample extrapolated from a handful of data sources — it's a direct, continuous read on how goods physically move across the country, corridor by corridor, city by city and port by port.

Our supply chain report is unlike other available data in three key ways: 

First, it is unbiased. This is not a survey asking people what they think happened, and it is not based on traffic cameras with their limited context. It is the direct, physical movement of supply chain vehicles, measured, anonymized and aggregated at scale. 

Second, it is early. Truck movements happen weeks, sometimes months, before that activity ever shows up in an invoice, and years before it appears in a government report. When freight patterns start to shift, our data surfaces first. We capture how far trucks travel, how many trips they make and how efficiently they are being used.

Third, it is comprehensive. We chose our study geographies for their comprehensiveness – for example, 74% of our long-haul trucks travel along at least one of the four corridors we studied. With the four corridors, we also analyzed six truck vocations, four cities and the nation’s two largest ports. The report openly shares our thorough methodology, documenting a months-long process driven by a team of data engineers, subject matter experts, researchers and writers.  

Fulfilling our mission

This report is a natural extension of why Altitude by Geotab exists in the first place. Altitude was built specifically to turn aggregate fleet data into decisions for logistics leaders, policymakers and planners. Our supply chain report elevates that mission to a national scale. 

At a time of real economic pressure, real-world supply chain data gives organizations a level of visibility they haven't had before. This data can help them make proactive decisions instead of reactive ones. Our data can help people act before longer-term reports arrive.

We chose to publish this for a broad audience — media, logistics leaders, government agencies and anyone trying to understand where the economy is headed by watching how goods actually move. Freight data has public-good value. Sharing it serves everyone trying to plan around an uncertain economy.

Putting truck data in context 

Trucks move 72% of the nation's total supply chain value and 65% of its tonnage, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Visibility into those movements offers a new, reliable data source to add to your dashboard. Early insights here can guide further investigation, and be cross-referenced with other sources to confirm hypotheses or drive new thinking. 

Beyond the obvious operational tactics and strategy, this commercial vehicle data can act as a catalyst for contextual discussion across industries. Fresh data can spark new dialogue and perspectives about broader freight movement, capacity trends and where the supply chain is heading next.

We offer our report as a new industry benchmark, something that policymakers and logistics leaders can rely on for understanding real-world truck behavior. 

See what people are talking about: Access the report yourself to get the new supply chain data.