Commentary

Over the past five years, there’s been no maritime cargo industry topic more obsessed over than the impact of the Panama Canal expansion.

The freight transportation industry in California continues to develop technology that cuts diesel emissions and greenhouse gases, and harbor trucking is considering zero-emission vehicle usage.

Big-box retailers looking to keep a lid on inventory and related costs will increasingly turn to transloading near major seaports.

Not many people are fooled by the announcements that corporate executives, football managers and others are leaving jobs paying big salaries to, as the line goes, “spend more time with my family

Over the past several years, my wife and I have taken our main vacation time during a two- to three-week period in January, after the holiday season is past, but during the depth of winter in most of

An alteration in trade throughout North and South America over the past few years suggests a growing trend toward “near-sourcing” that will affect supply chains on a global scale.

It’s impossible to read through The Journal of Commerce Annual Review and Outlook issue published this month and not conclude the container lines and their shipper customers are in for another r

By now it’s accepted wisdom bordering on cliché that the global trading economy lacks clear direction, and that the sputtering recovery and broad uncertainties in the United States and Eu

Q: My wife is thinking of starting a brokerage company, and I have a few questions. 1. Is there a Department of Transportation or other federal audit for freight brokers?

For Gibson Guitars, it’s becoming a familiar tune: federal investigators storming its manufacturing plants. That’s what happened for the second time in three years last August, when U.S.

Increasing home sales is without a doubt a positive for the economy.

Q: I’d forgotten about my letter regarding carriers brokering out freight until I saw it printed in the Dec. 12, 2011, issue.

For many companies, the big imperative in doing business through the 2008-2009 downturn was little more than survival.

Using a combination of sea and air cargo in trying balance the competing interests of cost and transit time for higher-value goods is an established, if niche, segment of international freight movemen

Demand for auto parts is remarkable.

I’ve got good news and bad news. Okay, here’s the good news first. If you’re a trucker, you should have a pretty good year in 2012, with steady if slow freight demand from U.S.

Mergers and acquisitions in the transportation world are likely to pick up speed in 2012, as financing falls into place and “organic growth” hits a ceiling.

There were no reports of dancing in the streets of Detroit or Windsor, Ontario.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood frequently voices the Obama administration’s opposition to raising fuel taxes, and instead indicates a preference for tolls or public-private-partnerships

We will all look back at 2011 as the most tepid rebound from a recession this country has ever experienced. The U.S.

Spring training is tantalizingly close, a good thing for baseball fans.

Q: We, as a motor carrier, handled a load of imported goods from a port to the final destination in the U.S. upper Midwest, for which we’ve been unable to collect our freight charges.

Remember the digital National Debt Clock?

A sudden sharp upward turn in ocean container shipping freight rates that started late in 2011 is catching the industry’s attention as the new year gets under way.

The Federal Maritime Commission calls its investigation into the movement of U.S.

Ocean carriers are at a turning point.

U.S. Xpress wants to hire me as a truck driver.

When will the pain get so bad it’s no longer tolerable? The fate of container shipping in 2012 is tied to this answer.

Anyone interested in the direction of business in 2012 should spend some time walking the aisles of Home Depot’s financial reports.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is preparing to protest the hiring of non-ILWU labor at the soon-to-be-opened EGT export grain terminal in Longview, Wash., although its response will most likely be more measured than the job actions it took last year.

As I prepared to write my last monthly column for 2011, I couldn’t help but think that I had just “recently” written my December 2010 article, which looked back over the first decade

Maritime transportation has steadily evolved in sophistication, with state-of-the-art equipment, global weather information gathering, GPS tracking and once-inconceivable capacity for container transp

It was a major breakthrough for container ship safety when ports this month joined with carriers in endorsing a global requirement that boxes be weighed before they are loaded.

Alfred Kahn, the late economist and noted transportation deregulator, once famously claimed that if we simply used the word “banana” in place of inflation we would find some sort of happy

Q: I’ve read your article in the Nov. 14 issue on the spoiled load of imported shrimp.

There is nothing on the books that President Obama can’t keep Alan Bersin at the head of Customs and Border Protection by makin

Two Japanese semiconductor makers, Elpida Memory and Renesas Electronics, were created through mergers of divisions spun off by other Japanese entities.

Anyone working for U.S. ports, or even generally associated with moving goods in and out of the United States, owes a very large thank you to the Occupy movement.

Q: Our Canadian division in Ontario shipped five machines to its customer pickup account in California. The shipment was freight collect via the customer’s Broker X.