With hundreds of roads underwater and hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks stranded in Hurricane Harvey's floodwaters, Houston-area highway traffic has ground to a near halt.
Nearly 10 percent of U.S. truck shipments will be affected by the storm this week, according to freight analyst firm FTR Transportation Intelligence. That will likely produce a spike in shipping rates, especially in Texas and the surrounding area, according to FTR.
"Spot pricing was already up strong, in double-digit territory," FTR partner Noel Perry said in a blog post. "Market participants could easily add 5 percentage points to those numbers."
To try to quantify the shipping slowdown, Geotab, a Toronto company that makes tracking devices, gathered data from more than 50,000 commercial vehicles, before and after the storm slammed in to the Texas coast earlier this week.
The results, displayed in before and after animations, show an 88 percent drop in commercial vehicle traffic.
Before Harvey (Mon., Aug. 21, 2017)