Chart of the Week: Outbound Average Length of Haul – USA SONAR: OALOHA.USA Despite the ongoing tightening of the domestic truckload market, the trend of shrinking load lengths that began in 2024 shows little sign of reversing. Since June 2024, the average length of haul in SONAR’s tender data set has declined from approximately 607 miles to just above 500 miles — a 21% drop, with 11% of that occurring over the past year alone, making it a fairly linear trend. Is this part of a sustained structural change, or something that could flip in the near future and exacerbate current market conditions? Perhaps the most interesting characteristic of this trend is its longevity. Most freight trends emerge sharply or follow seasonal patterns. This one looks more like a shift in how shippers utilize trucks as they adapt their supply chain management strategies — which, if true, suggests a more permanent alteration of the market. The reason this trend matters is that longer lengths of haul occupy more capacity. Longer transit times mean trucks cannot pick up other freight. A load moving from Los Angeles to Chicago covers roughly 2,000 miles and occupies three to four days of a single truck’s time. A load moving from Atlanta to Nashville covers around 250 miles and occupies roughly half a day, depending on loading and unloading times. In that sense, a shrinking length of haul should have freed up capacity over the past two years, as trucks are cycled more frequently — even despite…
