Catalog / Shipping & Logistics / Data feed
Shipping & Logistics · weekly ban:none tA

USDA Grain Transportation Report barge rates

weekly barge freight rates ($/ton) by river segment and tow count

Feed detail
Measures
weekly barge freight rates ($/ton) by river segment and tow count
Source
USDA AMS Grain Transportation Report (ams.usda.gov/services/transportation-analysis/gtr)
Access
csv
Cadence
weeklyupdates roughly weekly
Thesis
Barge rate spikes reflect river-level/lock disruptions and directly set grain export logistics cost, a leading indicator for FOB Gulf grain spreads
Maps to
grain export basis, ag futures
Crowdedness
contested
Tier
tA
Ban-risk
ban:none
Where this stands

This is a catalogued data feed with a research idea attached, not a validated edge. Being listed here means it has a specific source and a one-sentence causal mechanism mapped to what it should move — it doesn’t mean it has cleared the five-stage validation gate (point-in-time hygiene, out-of-sample holdout, multiple-testing correction, and the portfolio-layer backstop). As of today, every score on this site is prior-only; zero signals in the catalog have been promoted to “measured” status. See the methodology page for the full validation process and current counts.

Browse the rest of Shipping & LogisticsVessel tracking, port congestion, and freight-rate signals — the physical layer underneath trade-balance and inflation prints.