Freight Rate Risk Monitor - Air vs Road (EU)

Eurostat SPPI and INSEE, six member states (DE, IT, ES, NL, PL, FR). 696 quarterly observations, 2005 Q1 to 2024 Q1, index 2021 = 100. The delivered Power BI monitor runs live below.

1.62CV ratio, air to road
7.03%Air intra-year band
€703KExposure at €10M air spend
22Shock quarters, all air
Open the monitor →Ten sheets. Best viewed on a wider screen.
All ten sheets. Filter with the Mode and Market slicers at the top right; the page tabs along the bottom of the frame move between sheets.

Verdict

Air runs about 1.6x road's volatility. The monitor's CV ratio gauge reads 1.62. In a typical year air moves inside a 7.03% band, road 2.6%. Index-link or shorten air contracts, fix road long, and tender air into the Q4 to Q1 trough. Air falls 0.97% in Q1 and climbs 3.20% into Q2. The timing rule paid in 75% of 85 backtested market-years, Germany 8 of 9.
Know where it breaks. In Poland road, not air, is the volatile mode. In France the timing rule fails at a 44% hit rate on the freight-only series. Italy is the riskiest air lane at CV 0.280, the Netherlands the calmest at 0.085. Validate per lane before any price hangs on the pattern.

The ten sheets

  1. Start. The headline and the panel definition.
  2. Verdict. Air and road track together, the air band runs nearly three times wider.
  3. Markets. Italy is the riskiest air lane, the Netherlands the calmest.
  4. History. Rank order never settles.
  5. Timing. Air dips in Q1 and climbs in Q2, so lock before Q2.
  6. Cost. Exposure in euros at 10 million of air spend.
  7. Shocks. Every step above nine percent is air.
  8. Drill. Per-market interrogation.
  9. Method. Coverage is uneven, Spain 152 rows, the Netherlands 70.
  10. Actions. Four moves to take.

Limits

The air index (NACE H51) includes passenger air, so it is a broad proxy. Road has no EU aggregate, so the comparison sits at member-state level. French air is INSEE CPF 51.21, freight only, a purer but spikier series than the Eurostat H51 used for the other five. Figures are index tendencies, not one firm's realised costs. Coverage is uneven across markets, so panel means are not equally weighted.

Validation

The tender-timing rule is backtested: locking air at trough-season levels beat peak-season locks in 75% of 85 market-years, mean edge 1.83%. The air versus road volatility gap survives removing the pandemic years, CV ratio 1.35 ex-COVID and 1.41 pre-COVID. Out of sample, the Q2 climb repeated in 10 of 12 market-years across 2024 and 2025. Kruskal-Wallis quarter effect: air p about 1e-10, road p about 5e-4.

Study and code: github.com/khareparag/freight-rate-risk-monitor

Pricing edition: rfq.ch/projects/pricing-volatility

Category-manager edition: rfq.ch/projects/tender-timing

Streaming extension: rfq.ch/projects/freight-rate-stream