SONAR Adds Flatbed and LTL Tabs to National Insights Dashboard

SONAR has pushed its National Insights dashboard beyond dry van. The update adds two new tabs — Flatbed and LTL — and moves all dashboard metrics onto SONAR's new blended datasets, giving subscribers a pre-built national view across four modes with no tickers to enter.

The change is live today for SONAR subscribers inside the platform. Truckload National Insights remains the entry point, but it now summarizes national freight conditions across truckload, flatbed and LTL rather than van markets alone.

What does the new Flatbed tab show?

The Flatbed tab bundles the capacity and pricing signals flatbed watchers rely on:

• Tender rejections and volumes
• Fuel
• Spot rates
• Weekly Top Moving Markets
• The TRAC Spot Market Conditions Map

That package gives brokers a fast read on spot flatbed capacity tightening, according to SONAR's own use-case guidance, and lets them price loads with current context rather than stale benchmarks.

What does the LTL tab add?

The LTL tab goes deeper on rate structure than the truckload view. It breaks down LTL rates by three dimensions:

• Region
• Length of haul
• Freight class

It also adds regional comparisons, a top rate movers list and historical trends. For shippers, that's a benchmarking tool ahead of bids and budget conversations. For carriers, it signals where to deploy flatbed equipment and when to push rates.

Both tabs feed into Actionable Insights, the plain-language summary feature that translates the underlying data into readable takeaways. No coding, no chart-building — the analysis layer comes pre-built.

Why does the mode expansion matter?

The core argument is cycle divergence. Flatbed and LTL often move on different rhythms than dry van, and SONAR says seeing all four modes together helps teams spot those divergences early.

Flatbed tracks industrial output and construction, so its demand curve follows construction spending and manufacturing activity rather than consumer goods. LTL pricing, meanwhile, tends to lag truckload — meaning truckload rate turns can foreshadow LTL moves, but only if you're watching both.

The practical payoffs differ by audience:

• Shippers — benchmark flatbed and LTL costs before bids and budget talks
• Brokers — spot tightening in flatbed capacity and price loads with current context
• Carriers — decide where to deploy flatbed equipment and when to push rates

What is National Insights, exactly?

For the uninitiated: National Insights is a pre-built SONAR page that summarizes national freight conditions — capacity, demand, rates and fuel — with plain-language analysis and no tickers required. It targets shippers, freight brokers and carriers who need a fast market read before making pricing, procurement or capacity decisions.

The dashboard's metrics now draw on SONAR's blended datasets rather than single-source series. The tabs cover truckload, flatbed and LTL in one view.

Access requires a SONAR subscription. The company is also offering demos of the updated dashboard through its platform for prospective users.

The rollout signals where freight market data is heading: fewer manual chart builds, more pre-assembled cross-mode views. As flatbed's industrial cycle and LTL's lagging price cycle continue to diverge from van markets, expect demand for exactly this kind of side-by-side mode comparison to grow.