Chainomics tracks 12 cited freight market indices spanning every major mode: surface, ocean, air, rail, and produce. Rather than checking DAT, the Baltic Exchange, and Drewry separately, you monitor all indices in one workspace—and a Composite Freight Pressure score fuses them into a single actionable number that AI agents use to time tenders, bids, and capacity moves.
This page covers the indices Chainomics tracks, the tools in the Freight Indices Hub, the four proprietary indices computed in-house, and the free public resources available without sign-up.
Indices Chainomics tracks
| Category | Indices |
|---|
| Container / Ocean | Drewry World Container Index (WCI), Baltic Dry Index (BDI) |
| Trucking (North America) | US Truckload Spot Index (TSI), Loadlink Canadian Index (LCI) |
| Mexico Surface | Mexican Freight Index (IMAI) |
| Air | TAC Air Freight Index |
| Rail | AAR Rail Carloads |
| Macro | Cass Freight Index, Logistics Managers Index (LMI) |
| Produce | Produce Freight Pressure Index (PFPI), Cross-Border Produce Surge Index (CBPSI) |
| Maritime Port Activity | Maritime Port Activity Index (MPAI) |
Freight Indices Hub
The Freight Indices Hub at /freight-indices-hub is Chainomics’ analytical workspace for understanding how signals relate to each other over time. It has five tabs:
Explore Signals
Decomposition
Correlation Matrix
Network Graph
Engine Status
The Explore Signals tab is an interactive cross-signal explorer. Select any two registered indices as a pair and render a lagged correlation chart showing how one signal leads or lags the other. Ms. Z generates an AI narrative summary alongside the chart, explaining the relationship in plain English.Use this tab to answer questions like: “Does a rising WCI predict TSI movement 2–3 weeks later?” or “Is CBPSI leading or lagging border wait times at Laredo?”
The Decomposition tab runs STL (Seasonal-Trend decomposition using Loess) on any registered freight index. Configure the decomposition period and detrending options to separate a signal into its seasonal, trend, and residual components.This is useful for distinguishing true market shifts from seasonal noise—for example, identifying whether a PFPI spike is a genuine capacity crunch or a predictable spring produce surge.
The Correlation Matrix tab renders a full pairwise heatmap of all registered indices. Three configuration options refine the analysis:
- Lag: shift one signal forward or backward in time (in weeks) before computing correlation
- Sign filter: show only positive correlations, only negative, or both
- Significance threshold: hide cells that don’t meet a minimum statistical significance level
Click any cell in the matrix to jump to the Explore Signals tab pre-loaded with that pair. The Network Graph tab renders a force-directed signal network where each node is a registered index and each edge represents a statistically significant lagged correlation. Edge thickness and color reflect correlation strength and sign.Drag nodes to rearrange the layout manually. Filter the displayed edges by minimum correlation strength, sign (positive/negative), and stability window to reduce visual clutter. Use this view to spot clusters of co-moving signals at a glance—for example, seeing that WCI, CBPSI, and border wait times all move together during produce season.
The Engine Status tab shows the real-time health of the Freight Indices Hub data pipeline: registry counts, last-update timestamps for each registered index, and any signals that have not refreshed within their expected cadence. Use this tab to verify data freshness before acting on a correlation or decomposition result.
Proprietary indices
Chainomics computes four indices in-house from public data sources. These are not available from any third-party provider.
| Index | What it measures |
|---|
| MPAI — Maritime Port Activity Index | Composite 0–100 score for US port activity, derived from 9 BTS indicators (vessel calls, container throughput, dwell time, berth utilization, rail-dray volumes). Score >70 signals congestion risk. Updated weekly. |
| PFPI — Produce Freight Pressure Index | 0–100 score predicting capacity tightening in produce-heavy corridors, computed from USDA AMS data. PFPI rising above 65 typically precedes truckload spot-rate spikes by 5–10 days. |
| CBPSI — Cross-Border Produce Surge Index | 0–100 score for US-Mexico produce gateway intensity across Nogales (AZ), Pharr (TX), and Otay Mesa (CA). High CBPSI correlates with longer commercial border wait times. |
| SSI — Social Sentiment Index | Twice-daily Reddit sentiment aggregation from r/logistics, r/Truckers, r/freight, and r/supplychain. Returns Bullish / Bearish / Neutral breakdowns per tracked company. |
Free public resources
The Freight Market Dashboard at /freight-market-dashboard requires no sign-up and no credit card. It displays the Chainomics Maritime Health Index (CMHI), diesel price deviation, OTRI, border wait time summary, Global Freight Sentiment Index (GFSI), and a weekly intelligence brief from Ms. Z. Bookmark it for a free daily market pulse.
- Freight Market Dashboard (
/freight-market-dashboard) — CMHI, diesel deviation, OTRI, border waits, GFSI, and Ms. Z weekly brief. No sign-up required.
- Multi-Agent Risk Prediction (
/multi-agent-risk-prediction, public alpha) — A configurable 3-round multi-agent simulation that synthesizes signals into a structured risk prediction. Each agent focuses on a different signal domain; their outputs are fused into a final structured synthesis.
