Commentary

Asked recently to explain an ocean container market in which freight rates and liner profits have collapsed this year after soaring in 2010, the Asia-based CEO of a Top 20 container line channeled bes

The Teamsters union played no active role in organizing the Occupy movements that attempted to shut down West Coast

Northern California motor carrier Devine Intermodal couldn’t send any truckers to the Port of Oakland Monday because the

While attending the TOC Americas 2011 Conference in Panama last month, I heard four ocean carrier executives say very similar things about the future of vessels and services.

The space-sharing pact APL and MOL announced last week on their intra-Asia services was hardly the largest slot agreement in the shipping world.

With this month’s United Nations climate change conference wrapping up in Durban, South Africa, the fissures around the world over the efforts to extend limits on greenhouse gas emissions after

Q: You’ve written lately about several truckers who have, as you’ve put it, “subcontracted” loads to other carriers.

I have speculated in recent weeks about the possibility the container industry will see consolidation in 2012.

The Containerization and Intermodal Institute chose well in selecting recipients of awards at CII’s annual New York-New Jersey luncheon.

YRC Worldwide eliminated another legacy of its former Roadway and Yellow subsidiaries — their tariffs.

It’s a reporter’s worst nightmare, or close to it. You file a story, it gets published in print and events overtake it that makes you as the writer look like an ignoramus.

An annoyance. A sideshow. A spectacle? All that, for sure. A serious threat to the West Coast as a port gateway? Not a chance.

For four of the most tumultuous years many of us have seen in the past half-century in terms of economic activity, consolidation in the transportation world has been like the weather, to borrow a phra

Q: I read something recently about a lawsuit by truck drivers who are complaining carriers underpay them based on something to do with how many miles they drive.

Importers and exporters are getting nervous as momentum builds for a Dec. 12 shutdown of West Coast ports by the Occupy movement. West Coast ports handle more than 50 percent of the U.S.

Proving again that shareholders no longer are willing to tolerate systemic shortcomings from those in charge of public companies, the Louisiana Municipal Police Employees Retirement System has filed a

Sea Star Line’s guilty plea to price-fixing and the indictment of its former president add to questions swirling around the future of the Puerto Rico trade and the U.S.-flag carriers that serve it.

At an economic moment when cost pressures on shippers are particularly intense, it’s tempting for many to shrug aside much thought about environmental issues.

Here’s one thing shipping customers and transportation operators certainly should agree on: Shipping goods from one point to another should be far simpler than it is today.

Q: Help settle an internal debate.

About 10 days after returning from last month’s TPM Asia Conference in Shenzhen, I turned around and headed back to Asia, this time to join two trade missions with Oregon companies to Hong Kong,

The nation’s truckers are not only movers of freight, they’re consumers, and they’re buying more goods on the road, according to the McLane-NATSO Index.

This just in from the “Closing the Barn Door after the Horse Escaped” department, Congress is saying “never again” to the U.S. flag cargo preference fiasco last summer.

The disconnect between carriers’ unwillingness to withdraw Asia-Europe capacity and the need to do so to put a floor

Perspectives, I’ve learned, are very much based on where you sit, so I was more than interested in what two of my favorite industry people had to say recently.

For the first time in a number of years we’re hearing serious talk about major container line mergers.

Are shippers staring at the possibility of significant capacity being laid up by container lines and non-operating shipowners next year?

Barely a month into retirement, Ron Widdows looks like a relaxed man.

Q: We’re involved in a claim for $117,000 on a load of imported frozen raw breaded shrimp.

A quick digest of my Journal of Commerce column this week: Capacity is being pulled from the trans-Pacific but not Asia Europe.

I spoke yesterday with Rolf Habben-Jansen, the CEO of Damco, the

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to attend the National Association of Corporate Directors Annual Meeting in Washington, finish reading the Felix Rohayton book “Bold Endea

We’re not sure what the hot toy for the holiday season will be this year, but retailers have their favorite: the supply chain manager action figure, an iconic hero who slashes inventory and leav

It’s often suggested that the post-recession world is a lot different from the world before the near-collapse of major world economies. That’s certainly true at China’s ports.

Q: I had a woman ask me if she’s liable if she paid a truckload broker and they didn’t forward payment onto the carrier. Apparently, the carrier is seeking collection on this.

You don’t often see close looks at how corporate culture influences a company’s supply chain, and you see insightful, perceptive pieces even less often.

It’s not a problem of too much vessel capacity, but rather good old-fashioned rate wars that have destroyed pricing on the Asia-Europe and

Last month, while speaking at the Washington Post Fixing America’s Foundation: Rebuilding Transportation Infrastructure conference, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood cemented his legacy.

The Hong Kong Development Council’s annual Asian Logistics and Maritime Conference is coming up in a couple of weeks, and it comes at what looks to be a critical time of change in one of the wor

Wal-Mart is renowned for its supply chain forecasting but we never realized it extended to baseball.