FreightWaves SONAR Outbound Tender Rejection Index (OTRI) is an anonymized measurement of mid-sized to large truckload carriers’ willingness to accept the loads that are offered (or “tendered”) by shippers. OTRI is an indicator of capacity availability in contracted surface freight markets. It is expressed as a percentage of loads rejected to total loads tendered. This index provides data at a national, regional, state, or market level. Motor carriers reject load requests for two reasons: 1) As demand for freight hauling services exceeds supply, load requests are rejected; 2) If the price of a tendered load is considered too low it is rejected.
Shippers, freight brokers, fleet managers, transportation executives, owner-operators, economists, financial analysts, investors and bankers rely on this data. The OTRI dashboards allow supply chain teams to visualize freight movement patterns, volatility, and price movement.
OTRI denotes supply and demand dynamics in freight and logistics.
Fluctuations in OTRI correspond to payment rates paid by shippers to carriers. When OTRI is high due to insufficient truckload capacity to meet demand, outbound rates tend to increase.
OTRI measures the relative balance of demand (freight volumes) and supply (trucking capacity). This index symbolizes a strong correlation with macroeconomic factors like goods spending, retail sales, U.S. imports, and industrial production.