BTS freight dashboard update tracks rail, port, and trucking conditions in real time

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics released its latest supply chain and freight indicators on July 7, 2026, giving logistics, procurement, and operations teams a current read across every major freight mode. The dashboard, maintained by an interagency working group that spans the Departments of Transportation, Agriculture, Energy, Commerce, and Labor, pulls data weekly and covers four broad areas: port conditions, outside-the-gate rail and truck performance, freight movement volumes, and transportation costs and labor.

What the dashboard actually measures

On the port side, BTS tracks loaded import and export container volumes at select major gateways, empty export container moves, the number of containerships anchored offshore and awaiting berths, and total containership capacity calling at U.S. ports. The capacity series recently shifted from AIS-based vessel tracking to CBP's Vessel Management System, which counts only ships entering port for an official loading or unloading purpose. That change makes the current figures lower than historical comparisons under the prior methodology, a detail that matters when teams benchmark current port throughput against pre-2025 baselines.

Outside the gate, the dashboard covers average train speeds, terminal dwell times, and rail cars online by region and railroad. For trucking, it reports average truck speeds and Planning Time Index values at 10 interstate bottleneck locations, plus dedicated corridors around the Port of Los Angeles-Long Beach and the Port of New York-New Jersey. The PTI measures the ratio of 95th-percentile truck travel times to free-flow speeds within five miles of each port, which is a more useful reliability signal for drayage planning than average speed alone.

CPKC replaces CP and KCS in the rail series

One structural update operators should note: as of May 2025, BTS began publishing rail performance data under Canadian Pacific Kansas City, the merged entity created by the April 2023 combination of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern. The legacy CP and KCS charts are now frozen. Any team using BTS rail data for benchmarking or contract analysis needs to shift its reference series to CPKC or reconcile the historical gap between the old and new reporting entities.

CPKC's network connects Canada, the U.S. Midwest and Gulf, and Mexico, so its velocity and dwell metrics are particularly relevant for cross-border supply chains moving automotive parts, agricultural commodities, and industrial inputs through central corridors.

Costs, labor, and demand signals

The costs and labor section includes truck spot rates broken out by load type, the Producer Price Index for both generalized and specialized trucking, downbound grain barge rates, and container freight rates from the U.S. Midwest and West Coast to Shanghai as well as from Shanghai to Los Angeles. The spot rate series covers DAT load board data, which BTS notes represents roughly one-tenth of the overall common carrier market. That context is important: spot rate movement signals directional pressure on contract rates but should not be read as a direct proxy for contracted carrier costs.

On labor, the dashboard pulls Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS data for the Transportation, Warehousing, and Utilities sector, tracking job openings, hires, and separations on a seasonally adjusted basis. It also reports non-farm payroll employment specifically for truck transportation and for warehousing and storage. Both series exclude owner-operators and independent contractors, so they reflect wage and salary workers. For fleet operators and 3PLs managing driver recruitment, the quits rate within the separation figures provides a useful forward signal on driver availability and wage pressure.

What this means for your team

• Update any internal dashboards or benchmarking models that pull BTS rail data: the CP and KCS series are frozen, and CPKC is now the active reporting entity for that corridor.
• Use the PTI metric at LA-LB and NY-NJ rather than average truck speed alone when evaluating drayage reliability; it captures variability, not just central tendency.
• Cross-reference the Shanghai-to-LA container rate series against current contracted rates as a directional check on carrier pricing conversations.
• When citing BTS labor data in workforce planning, confirm whether your analysis accounts for the exclusion of owner-operators, which can materially affect how the numbers compare to industry estimates that include independent contractors.