FreightWaves

About FreightWaves

FreightWaves operates as a price reporting agency (PRA) and a premier source of high-frequency data and market intelligence for the global freight and logistics industry. Founded in 2017 by Craig Fuller, the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based company provides critical information to help professionals navigate the complexities of the supply chain.

Fuller's background is deeply rooted in the transportation sector; he grew up in the family that started U.S. Xpress, a major trucking company. Before establishing FreightWaves, he founded and led Xpress Direct, an on-demand trucking division within U.S. Xpress, and also founded TransCard, a fleet payment processing company. This firsthand experience with the inefficiencies and data scarcity in logistics spurred the creation of FreightWaves to bring greater transparency and data-driven decision-making to the market.

The company's business model is twofold, combining a media arm with a subscription-based data-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. The media division functions as a major news outlet for the logistics sector, with a team of journalists producing articles, podcasts, and a streaming TV network. This content serves to engage the freight community and acts as a lead generation tool for its core data product. The primary revenue driver is its SaaS platform, SONAR, which provides subscribers with near real-time data, analytics, and forecasting tools for the global freight market. This platform helps customers across the supply chain—including shippers, carriers, and third-party logistics providers (3PLs)—to benchmark performance, analyze market conditions, and manage risk. In late 2024, the data platform was officially rebranded from "FreightWaves SONAR" to simply "SONAR" to emphasize its status as a separate company focused on unbiased data, distinct from the FreightWaves media business.

SONAR offers a comprehensive suite of features, including billions of data points on pricing, demand, and capacity across all freight modes—trucking, rail, ocean, and air. Key tools include a rate predictor, tender rejection indices that signal capacity tightness, and various market dashboards that allow users to monitor and forecast freight activity. By leveraging this high-frequency data, logistics professionals can make more informed decisions to optimize routing, improve asset utilization, and control costs. The company serves a wide range of businesses, from startups to large enterprises, with a client base exceeding 500 global companies and over a million professionals engaging with its intelligence platforms.