Commentary

With court rulings on motor carrier liability limits a mixed bagged, shippers are advised to negotiate tariff limits of liability.

Inside the Beltway, transportation and logistics rarely appear to be priority considerations affecting Cabinet appointments or congressional committee assignments. Although supply chain issues impact foreign relations, national and homeland security and finance, they simply don’t garner the same attention.

As the container shipping market sizes up the impact of the P3 alliance among Maersk, MSC and CMA CGM, some key themes are emerging: Don’t expect a reduction in capacity, don’t expect any less competition, expect more commoditization of service.

A shipper seeks advice after receiving a bill from a vendor and one from a motor carrier. The vendor has closed down; the shipment moved prepaid but the carrier never received its money.

Unlike the good old days when there was an abundance of bank loans, investors and lenders attending Marine Money Week in June in New York were looking at all kinds of new instruments that could secure their investments against the kind of loan losses that wrecked the balance sheets of European ship finance banks over the last few years.

News of the world's three largest container carriers — Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and CMA CGM — collaborating in a significant operating alliance in the three major east-west trades brings questions of "Why? Why now?"

Russia’s insular transportation industry is belatedly opening up to the outside world as the nation’s thirst for imported goods slots it into global supply chains.

Readers weigh in on Colin Barrett’s recent commentary regarding chronic claims of missing personal items in shipments.

Oakland faces a number of challenges, but a growing sense of optimism is surfacing in the trade community about the port.

The nationwide protests that have convulsed Turkey this month couldn’t have come at a worse time for the transportation sector.

In the 17 years since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started its reconnaissance study of the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project, other countries have accomplished a tad more in terms of marine infrastructure projects.

There can be no other reason for the world’s three largest container lines for taking the dramatic step of proposing their uber-alliance than this: The industry is in dire condition no matter how you look at it.

If your company isn’t among the estimated 6,000 publicly traded companies on the Securities and Exchange Commission and it isn’t a supplier of tantalum, tin, tungsten or gold, or of products containing said minerals, then you could be excused to skip ahead to the next article. For the rest, you may want to continue reading for the next few minutes.

A customer refuses to allow a motor carrier to unload goods, but then claims shortages. Its managers brush off the idea of its own employees pilfering shipments. What can be done?

The homes of four of the first five presidents, located within a short drive of each other, encapsulate a dramatic time in our history and reflect some of today’s realities. Make sure this is on your travel agenda someday.

The U.S. may be getting closer to allowing Mexican trucks on its roads. What does that mean for U.S. carriers and drivers?

Our ports and surrounding infrastructure have been neglected to the point where it’s costing shippers and consignees significant money. Shippers, carriers and ports need to band together to create and deliver a message to national, state and city officials. It’s time to be heard. Who’s with me?

For a country notorious for its lack of environmental resolve, China is sure putting a large stamp on the movement with its aptly named Operation Green Fence program. Nowhere is that stamp felt more than on the largest segment of U.S. containerized exports to the Asian manufacturing giant: scrap paper, metals and plastics.

For the freight transportation industry to grow, we must strive relentlessly and responsibly to improve — ideally in a balanced fashion. Regardless of setting, we all must navigate political challenges to achieve a beneficial outcome. The public sector used to set the stage. Now it might fall to the private sector to demonstrate to our elected leaders the path forward.

Is air freight holding its own among global transport modes? Atlas Air's Michael Steen says yes. The numbers, however, say otherwise.

In the case of a lost or damaged shipment, is it possible for a shipper to profit twice on a claim?

When a motor carrier encounters repeated shortages on a shipper’s deliveries, it begins to wonder if there’s a calculated strategy involved.

It’s a growing phenomenon that all importers must beware: What federal agencies regulating trade once considered strictly mistakes warranting no more than a civil penalty have become criminal violations.

Fears that Europe is heading for a Japanese-style decade of snail’s pace economic growth or even stagnation are hardening into reality as the continent faces another year of recession while the rest of the world is in recovery mode.

CEO Frank Blake's discussion of Home Depot’s online strategy underscores the depth to which e-commerce is impacting the supply chains of major shippers such as those included on this week’s annual JOC ranking of Top 100 Importers and Exporters.

For every collapse, there is recovery. We’ve seen it in New Jersey and New Orleans, Tuscaloosa and Tokyo, San Francisco and Santiago. And we’ve seen it in U.S. housing markets, perhaps the single-strongest driver of today’s global containerized shipping growth.

It will be interesting to see how Wal-Mart and other companies — and today's consumers — ultimately respond to supply chain visibility issues in the wake of events such as the fire in November that leveled the Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh.

With the arrival of this year’s JOC Top 100 Importers and Exporters issue, we find some constancy in our transportation world: The vast majority of companies on both lists are the same as they were last year. For many (even most) companies on both of the lists, they are the same as they’ve been for years.

It’s that time again. Time for Washington, D.C., to work itself into a tizzy about the nation’s so-called crumbling infrastructure, following the collapse of a Washington bridge over the Skagit River on Thursday.

With the retirement of Robert Kanter as director of environmental affairs and planning, the Port of Long Beach has some big shoes to fill.

As companies pursue global business expansion, their supply chains become more complex and segmented. These companies are looking to expand their business and increase competitiveness by selling and distributing finished goods in new global markets, or may be diversifying their sourcing origins to minimize disruptions to their supply chains.

A shipper’s arrangement with a broker passing itself off as a forwarder goes horribly wrong, leading to dire consequences.

The United States needs better and more sustainable discretionary grant programs in order to fund innovative transportation investments across modes. Here are 10 possible improvements to the process.

A refrigerated shipper and motor carrier get two different readings on a temperature-controlled product. Now what?

The trans-Pacific eastbound trade is taking considerably longer than in the past to settle annual service contracts that will run through next April. Some ocean carriers walked away from large deals, while others are walking into them even at rates that appear to be below costs.

More so than at any time in the past decade, forces ranging from macroeconomic trends to technology innovations are demanding transportation procurement practitioners to be part subject matter expert, part diplomat and part visionary to accomplish value creation.

The alarm bells are ringing. Maersk Line CEO Soren Skou told Lloyd’s List late last month that the industry “is at the risk of a full-fledged rate war unless the industry comes to its senses.” “Where is the bottom for container rates?” Jeffries’ Johnson Leung asked in his most recent weekly update. So what do the carriers need to do now?

The Transportation Worker Identification Credential program is broken and the Department of Homeland Security should halt it until it fully understands if it truly enhances port security.

The two political parties, with all their arguing about taxes and budgets, are consuming Washington. The Democrats advocate investing in our future, while Republicans want to avoid a future that looks like Greece.

With a new management policy, we have signed one-year “evergreen” contracts with a few motor carriers. I was told to stop preparing bills of lading and to send shipments out just with the manifests we generate from our warehouse. Is this the right thing to do?