Commentary

United Airlines' new "Basic Economy" fares, with four classes of service on the same plane, offer a lesson for steamship lines.

After a year of plenty of ups and downs, motor carriers and freight brokers are bracing for 2017 and wondering what to expect.

When it comes to operating heavy trucks, there are no shortcuts to getting government approval.

Technology is catching up with the transportation world, as ideas considered far-fetched or futuristic a few years ago move off the drawing board and toward the mainstream.

Delays and mounting frustration lead to a dispute over claims in excess of $25,000.

Shippers must embrace the opportunity to go green because there is a direct relationship between environmental sustainability and financial success.

Hints that capacity might tighten at the top global operators, but not at those that want to be among them, come as other industry analysts warn that the gap between supply and demand will widen.

What options are there for a transporter when their client goes bankrupt?

The media tends to view every piece of shipping news as “unprecedented” or “unexpected,” but either is rarely the case.

It’s important for the future of the largest North American port complex — Southern California’s Los Angeles-Long Beach — and the shippers that depend on it that the accomplishments of the PierPass extended gates program aren’t undermined by hasty or ill-considered alterations.

Central Pennsylvania is a US distribution crossroads, and as elsewhere throughout the United States, truck parking has become a problem in the region.

Shippers need to rapidly adjust to getting billed for the correct weight, density, and other characteristics of their shipments. Similarly, the LTL carriers must ensure that the corrections for weight and density are legitimate.

More than 75 percent of all carriers that I have seen in my 44-plus-year career are gone, failed mostly when their governments decided to remove the life support system — money.

A 2016 federal appellate court case illustrates the problems employers face when their job classifications do not map onto the statutory definition of “supervisor,” which can open those employees up to unionization.

One of the basic exceptions to the rule of absolute carrier liability for freight in a carrier’s custody is when loss or damage results from some fault of the shipper beyond the carrier’s control, and it fairly clearly seems to be the case here.

This coming season is unlike any other, in as much as never before have we seen so many alliance changes, such high levels of ocean carrier financial uncertainty, and —so many unanswered questions about how the new US president will affect trade.

The election of Donald Trump may have rattled global markets, at least temporarily, but shippers at the JOC Inland Distribution Conference the day after the election were cautiously optimistic. They were certainly cheered by the president-elect’s promise of $1 trillion in infrastructure spending.

Recent industry comments suggest carriers are being cautious in ordering new capacity — new ship orders are down substantially versus 2015 — and also will be cautious on capacity as alliances roll out their service networks. This is leading a number of observers to suggest that the container market gradually may be returning to equilibrium.

Anyone paying attention to rail carload data would conclude from the year-over-year losses that it’s a difficult market, but hidden in the figures is a story of improvement.

Without meaning to make light of the outcome of the presidential election, we all need to take a breath and pause.

It will be interesting to see what concepts come out of the McMillon Family Retail Innovation and Technology Lab, as well as what impact this growing segment of technology — combined with its influence on the shopping behavior of millennials — could have on future logistics and distribution models.

Contract extension talks between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association must address productivity issues in a serious way so US West Coast ports get somewhere remotely close to the efficiency at other major ports in the world.

Section 7 of a bill of lading protects the shipper. A shipper’s execution of it is basically meaningless on a prepaid shipment.

An educated guess on value of imported produce, without reconciliation later being filed to reflect actual sales values, could land fruit and vegetable importers in Customs’ hot seat.

There are many things needed to be successful in the trucking business, and finding good flatbed loads is one.

For shippers, adjusting to the new wave of ocean carrier consolidation comes in degrees, all related to the level of disruption it causes.

Global container shipping will never be the same after this year. The industry many of us have spent a career toiling away within, is gone. Or at least aspects of it are — the names, the companies, the cultures, but, of course, not the tonnage.

There’s no legal obligation — under either common law or commerce law — on anyone to draw a payer’s attention to an overpayment. So long as the carrier is refunding them on demand, it’s well within the law.

Shipping companies ought to venture into unchartered waters and make the market happen.

What do shippers and container lines really want, true collaboration that helps to solve problems, or to pay lip service that sounds good but has no bite?

No one disputes no-show containers are a major industry challenge. The question is, how can it get resolved?

The shipping and steel industries never quite seem able to match supply and demand well enough to ensure steady profitability.

The government of the destination country may get pretty inquisitive about exactly where the fruit you’re shipping was grown, and who did the growing, and may even require — as does the United States — that the origin be reflected at any time that the fruit is offered for sale within its borders.

An early contract extension at West Coast ports would present an opportunity to restore shipper trust and regain cargo they have diverted to the East and Gulf coasts.

Both presidential candidates have excoriated international trade almost to the point of saying it is the source of everything wrong in this country.

It seems there are two federal transportation departments, the one regulating new highway technology and the one regulating railroads, and they don’t seem to be on the same page.

Shippers want assurance from ocean carrier alliances that there are emergency plans in place if one of their container lines can’t deliver its own cargo and that of its member partners.

Technology will influence the 2016 retail holiday season in more ways than ever before, and with heightened consumer demand starting to put pressure upon home delivery operations, retail success is increasingly dependent upon advanced home delivery solutions.

After a fully crated shipment was delivered with no visible damage, a customer submits a claim for one piece of the shipment. The carrier agrees to pay one-third of the claim, saying the shipper, receiver, and carrier all had hands on the product. Is there recourse for the customer?

The Hanjin Shipping situation again illustrates the fragility of today’s supply chains. Shippers would be mistaken if they think they only need to be on guard for such issues on the seas.