FLOW Initiative Builds Real-Time View of U.S. Supply Chain Conditions Through Public-Private Data Sharing
The Department of Transportation’s Freight Logistics Optimization Works program, known as FLOW, represents one of the more operationally significant efforts undertaken by the Multimodal Freight Office since the office’s establishment in September 2023. The initiative operates as a public-private data partnership, collecting purchase order information from importers alongside logistics supply, demand, and throughput data from participating companies, then returning to participants an aggregated daily view of overall logistics network conditions that exceeds what any individual firm could observe from its own operations alone.
The objective is systemic visibility. Supply chains are composed of thousands of actors who each hold partial information about the state of the broader network, a structural opacity that reduces efficiency and slows response when conditions deteriorate. FLOW addresses this by creating a shared data layer — voluntary, anonymized at the aggregate level, and updated daily — that allows participants to calibrate their own logistics decisions against a broader picture of congestion, throughput, and demand signals across the containerized supply chain.
The program’s relevance was demonstrated during the supply chain disruptions of the early 2020s, when a surge in consumer spending drove imports to record levels, created unprecedented port backlogs, and revealed the brittleness of lean, efficiency-optimized logistics networks under stress. A Bureau of Transportation Statistics assessment concluded that the U.S. freight system’s capacity to absorb volatile demand shifts is limited precisely because years of focus on efficient logistics left little redundancy in the system. FLOW is a structural response to that finding.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2026 allocated $5 million to the Multimodal Freight Office, with $3 million of that amount designated specifically for FLOW — a funding structure that reflects Congress’s view of the program as a distinct and priority activity within the office’s portfolio. DOT has indicated plans to expand FLOW’s capabilities and add new features, extending a program that began as a pandemic-era emergency tool into a permanent feature of federal freight intelligence infrastructure.