Commentary

The first round of earnings reports from publicly owned truckload carriers reflects two important trends.

In no way can it be said this is a quiet summer for longshore labor in the United States.

U.S.-flag ocean carriers hit an uncharted reef in the transportation spending bill Congress approved and the president signed this month.

Q: I think you overreacted to the question from a motor carrier who was upset because his trucks were being stopped by police in Michigan and Ohio for minor speeding violations and given warnings (not

Q: We’re a motor carrier and had a fairly unusual load of refrigerated goods recently. It was partly fresh produce and partly four pallets of mixed frozen foods.

Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, the theme music from “Jaws” ramps up in your ears.

Q: We’re a manufacturer of high-end kitchen appliances and face what I think is a very unusual situation regarding a claim.

More and more companies are looking to Mexico as the preferred location for near-sourcing their operations.

After four years of (mostly) dismal financial performance, the last thing ocean carriers in the trans-Pacific eastbound trade need is to get kicked while they’re down.

The fourth round of TIGER grants announced last week is another example of economic stimulus that is too little, too late and a missed opportunity to leverage our port assets.

Q: We’re a motor carrier. Our fleet runs 40 percent of its miles in Indiana and Michigan, so-called probable cause states.

If container shipping today is a commodity, as many argue it is, then freight rate derivatives make intuitive sense.

Get ready for another boring peak season. If industry analysts are correct, imports from Asia will increase modestly. That means freight rates will remain low, at least for beneficial cargo owners.

Q: I’ve been reading about problems in negotiations between East and Gulf Coast port operators and the International Longshoremen’s Association.

Many of us read with interest the financial results of ocean carriers and wonder, “Wow, how can they keep doing that?” Losing money that is.

A surety company that’s a big player in the Customs bond market recently sent a notice reminding customs brokers that an importer with a continuous bond is a higher risk indicator if the agency

The container shipping news of the week, from the Tweet Deck of Peter Tirschwell, who follows up with commentary and analysis as he tours Asia. 13 Jun @PeterTirschwell

The late Bob Delaney, who created the annual State of Logistics report, liked to describe its comparison of business logistics spending to GDP as a batting average for supply chain performance.

The cost of logistics as a percentage of gross domestic product was once the ultimate measure of logistics efficiency. Today, not so much.

In the current season of the AMC hit series “Mad Men,” protagonist Don Draper heads to a Rolling Stones concert in an attempt to use one of their songs in a commercial.

Q: I read a few months back about your opinion regarding carriers rebrokering shippers’ freight to other carriers.

Below are a few tweets from the JOC Container Shipping Conference last week sent out via Linked In (Twitter is blocked in China), including some expanded commentary.

If supply chain managers are starting the summer in a cranky mood, it’s easy to see why.

There’s talk about a future container hub in an unlikely place – Reykjavik, Iceland.

We’re never quite sure here in the Pacific Northwest just when summer will arrive — or whether it will at all.

Q: We’re a broker, and we use another broker for one of our customers, who was an incumbent when we acquired the account.

Debt collectors on the docks are reputed to be aggressive, and there’s a hint of that in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s dunning of a longtime tenant that’s behind on

Meetings with several container lines last week in Europe yielded an unexpected takeaway.

The less-than-truckload landscape changed in the past couple of decades as mergers, acquisitions and company failures shifted market share.

Q: I have a question on our liability for a double-brokered load.

Non-vessel-operating common carriers generally have it good: Non- or light-asset based, agile in responding to customers’ needs and often consistently profitable, their presence in the market ha

JOC reporters face a delicate balancing act in covering annual contract talks between ocean shippers and carriers.

Q: Your reply to the question about the carrier’s right to pick up damaged goods in the March 19, 2012, issue is unclear to me.

We talked with Unyson Logistics’ Art Nourot, vice president of procurement, and Mick Noce, senior vice president of engineered solutions, about their best practices.

A story in a non-maritime-related publication caught my eye the other day: April 26 marked the 56th anniversary of the sailing of the Ideal X from Newark, N.J., on a trip to Houston with 58 containers

In declaring this month that “productivity is the battleground for ports in the future,” APM Terminals couldn’t have nailed the issue more precisely nor sent a clearer marketing mess

When Sotheby’s sold “The Scream” on May 2 for a record $119.9 million on behalf of Norwegian shipping heir Petter Olsen, it touched off some random musings of what Edvard Munch&rsquo

Recent comments by Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., are being compared to the rants of Sen. Joe McCarthy. President Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson was a frequent target of McCarthy.

Q: As an attorney, I have to take issue with the advice in your April 5 online column (“Salvaging a Damage Claim”) that you gave your correspondent who was having a dispute with a carrier

After watching in recent years as the number of intact containers moving to and from the Port of Tacoma by rail declined as a percentage of the port’s overall international volumes, officials sp