OVN LLC has reached a major milestone in its history, completing its 100,000th expedited load since the company was founded in 2015. Beyond the symbolic significance of the figure, the achievement provides something rarely available in the expedited freight industry: ten years of consistent, single-source data revealing what urgent freight transportation across North America actually looks like.
The picture that emerges is perhaps less spectacular than the reputation often associated with expedited logistics—but considerably more revealing.
A typical OVN shipment consists of approximately one standard pallet travelling around 550 miles, most commonly carrying automotive parts. In other words, urgent freight is not necessarily an extraordinary shipment racing thousands of miles across the continent. More often, it is an ordinary pallet that has suddenly become the most important piece of someone’s supply chain.
A decade of data behind 100,000 loads
The company’s 100,000-load dataset offers a detailed view of its operations over the past decade.
The average shipment consists of approximately one standard pallet travelling roughly 550 miles. At the other end of the spectrum, OVN’s longest run covered around 5,000 miles, including a shipment travelling from Florida to Alaska.
Its shortest deliveries, meanwhile, were effectively zero miles. OVN has handled jobs where pickup and delivery took place at neighbouring gates within the same facility, or where a driver was already on-site and the assignment simply involved loading and unloading the freight.
The fastest completed shipment took approximately 20 minutes from pickup to delivery—and was carried out inside a single building.
Automotive parts remain the company’s most frequently transported commodity.
The data also highlights the importance of emergency recovery shipments. Approximately 2% of OVN’s loads involved line-down situations and critical recovery events, while around 5% were linked to aircraft-on-ground (AOG) shipments, where an aircraft remains grounded until a required component arrives.
One of the most striking findings from the decade-long dataset is that the average shipment size has remained largely unchanged since 2015. What has changed significantly is the frequency of urgent shipments.
Over ten years, expedited freight did not become larger. It became more frequent.
That growth reflects the increasing number of situations in which supply chains require an immediate, same-day solution.
“One hundred thousand loads is more than a number to us,” said Oleh Holovatiuk, founder and chief executive officer of OVN LLC. “It is the part that reached a repair shop before a family’s road trip, and the component that put a grounded aircraft back in the air. One hundred thousand times, our team got it there.”
Nearly 7,000 shipments linked to stopped operations
Across the decade, approximately 7% of OVN’s loads—or close to 7,000 shipments—were moved because an operation had already come to a complete stop.
Around 2% were associated with line-down and critical recovery events, a category that extends well beyond traditional manufacturing environments. In one case, OVN transported replacement hardware for a train that had been disabled in the field.
Another 5% of shipments involved AOG events.
The financial consequences behind these urgent movements can be substantial.
According to third-party research, the Siemens True Cost of Downtime report estimates that unplanned downtime costs the world’s 500 largest companies approximately $1.4 trillion annually.
Within the automotive sector alone, an idle hour can cost a single company around $2.3 million.
Aberdeen Research places the broader manufacturing average at approximately $260,000 per hour, while Boeing’s widely cited estimate suggests that a grounded aircraft can cost between $10,000 and $150,000 per hour. U.S. operators experience an average of roughly 14 AOG events per aircraft each year.
Against such figures, the cost of moving a pallet approximately 550 miles in a dedicated cargo van is rarely the most expensive element of the situation.
The vehicles used for these operations follow the same practical logic. A cargo van can cover around 1,000 miles in 17 to 24 hours while reaching locations that may be inaccessible to a conventional tractor-trailer, including residential addresses, maritime terminals, regional airports and aircraft tail-side at maintenance facilities.
A tightening market for freight that cannot wait
The broader freight market surrounding these urgent shipments has changed significantly in 2026.
ACT Research reported in July that aggregate spot rates, excluding fuel, were 43% higher year-over-year in June. Contract rates had also increased by 13%, driven primarily by shrinking capacity and driver shortages rather than by a surge in freight demand.
The U.S. Bank Freight Payment Index painted a similar picture, showing that shippers moved less freight during the second quarter while paying significantly more to transport it.
“One hundred thousand loads is ten years of evidence about which industries cannot absorb a delay,” said Constantine Alimov, vice president of business development at OVN. “Capacity has left this market and rates have climbed, but the customer whose line is down does not get to wait for a better rate. That is why expedite holds up in a soft freight market. This kind of freight is not optional.”
OVN currently commands capacity of more than 1,300 OVN-qualified cargo vans and box trucks.
The company also operates as the carrier of record on every shipment it moves, holding the contract, issuing the invoice and assuming liability, rather than reposting freight through third-party load boards.
The company was recently named to the 2026 Inc. 5000, ranking at No. 4198.
After ten years and 100,000 completed shipments, OVN’s data illustrates a fundamental reality of modern supply chains: while the size of urgent freight may not have changed dramatically, the number of situations in which companies cannot afford to wait has continued to grow.
