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The expansion is a bet on the continuing strength of the US economy — and Old Dominion has a record of success when it comes to matching demand and capacity with price and avoiding inefficiencies.

A survey conducted by global shipping consultancy Drewry found considerable unease among global shippers and forwarders ahead of the low-sulfur fuel implementation. Concern was expressed by respondents about ocean carriers’ methods of fuel cost recovery with more than half, 56 percent, stating that they did not consider their service providers’ existing approaches as either fair or transparent.

XPO Logistics just answered Amazon’s delivery/fulfillment serve with a volley — the deployment of thousands of robotic “cobots.”

Free time periods have been reduced and tariffs for demurrage and detention have increased considerably. Marine terminals and ocean carriers counter that detention and demurrage encourages shippers to pick up and return containers in order to boost cargo fluidity that’s challenged by the larger discharges of mega-ships.

Tuesday’s job actions prompted an exchange of charges among the parties. The current round of picketing that began on Monday is expected to continue at least through Wednesday.

The Port of New York and New Jersey is looking for ways to increase the storage space for empty rail cars to prevent shortages as discretionary cargo volumes rise.

By setting its internal minimum wage at $15 an hour, Amazon increases competitive pressure for blue-collar workers, especially younger workers, across industries, including trucking.

One month after the global transportation management system provider MercuryGate sold to Summit Partners, a private equity group, the smaller Cloud Logistics was snapped up by E2open, a supply chain software provider best known for its planning, demand forecasting, and supplier management functions.

The port and government officials have created an advisory committee, called the North Atlantic Marine Highway Alliance, to stimulate barge use and reduce truck traffic and the pollution and congestion it creates.

Justice for Port Drivers, a Teamsters-sponsored group that has promoted picketing and other job actions over the past five years, will participate in job actions at the ports, two motor carrier facilities, warehouses, and rail yards beginning Monday morning.

Further, two key decision-makers, one each from the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, agreed that the early building of peak-season inventory this summer will be followed by slower growth in the fourth quarter of the year.

Digitizing the bedrock shipping document would help less-than-truckload carriers cut costs and optimize freight flows while returning some of those gains to shippers.

The addition of Milestone Equipment Holdings to the OPEN Choice Equipment Agreement-North East pool would take the pool a step closer to a pool of chassis from several providers that would be “interoperable,” meaning that truckers could pick up or drop off chassis from more than one provider at one or more locations.

Set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2019, the bill will discourage retailers and other shippers from contracting with the companies that misclassify drivers by making the beneficial cargo owners jointly liable for any fines assessed on those operators.

The ocean carrier found that existing rules regarding the stowage of dangerous goods cargoes, which create their own oxygen and can’t be extinguished using standard carbon dioxide-based on-board firefighting equipment, to be inadequate and has implemented new procedures across its fleet.

The new bunker fuel adjustment factors will provide more insight concerning whether ocean carriers can recoup what they argue are increased operational costs for bunker fuel and for meeting the Jan. 1, 2020, low-sulfur mandate.

“Integrators are moving up the chain — they used to focus on last mile, but more and more are focusing on long-haul legs. Customers [such as Amazon and Alibaba] are becoming competitors,” Ulrik Sanders, senior partner and managing director of Boston Consulting Group, told attendees at JOC’s Container Trade Europe conference in Hamburg last week.

The peak season on the US East Coast in the weeks ahead could provide a test regarding whether the Port of New York and New Jersey can handle the increased volume and surges in activity generated by mega-ships.

Vancouver, Canada’s largest container port, until now has been limited in its capacity to grow by a lack of surge capacity at its rail operations, which serve eastern Canada and the US Midwest.

Three of the largest companies in the less-than-containerload (LCL) market said at JOC.com's Container Trade Europe Conference in Hamburg last week that while there are opportunities to keep momentum for LCL going, they are ultimately subject to underlying full containerload rate levels.

It is one of the ironies of container shipping. While the container may be one of the world’s greatest universal standards, creating untold benefits to trade and prosperity, the process of standardization around the movement of the container remains woefully incomplete.

However, analysts and stakeholders say shippers should not focus on the rate drop, but rather, they should prepare for unprecedented turmoil in the eastbound Pacific that is affecting cargo loading at Asian ports and delivery and storage in the United States.

The future looks bright in Savannah for beneficial cargo owners. Volume is increasing, market share is growing, and Georgia Ports Authority officials have a strong vision — including a bold TEU goal — to continue the upward momentum by expanding services and fixing its shortcomings to keep its place as the top port in the US Southeast.

The pace of technological change is set to increase exponentially. “This is the slowest rate of change you’ll experience the rest of your life,” Peter Sheahan, CEO of the Karrikins Group, said.

Marine terminals, rail ramps, and distribution facilities provide ideal opportunities for the use of autonomous vehicles.

However, forecasters warn shippers that they are merely making an educated guess regarding rates, given the factors that could change; so, a sound strategy would include paying close attention to spot markets in the next six months.

The focus now turns to how dramatic the post-peak season decline will be, and if it will take place earlier than normal after shippers front-loaded their supply chains to avoid US tariffs.

Tech startup Flexport’s rockstar status in the international logistics sector means it's under the microscope concerning volume, whether it can produce a profitable business model or achieve a profitable exit for its investors, and what it actually does that represents a fundamental break in the forwarding industry.

Estimates on the cost of the container shipping industry meeting the mandate range from $5 billion to tens of billions of dollars, but ocean carriers are uniform regarding one aspect of this substantially higher cost.

“We sit in between the producers and our customers,” said Dirk Martin, senior director of transportation planning at Univar, a global distributor of industrial and specialty chemicals. “Downtime for [a customer’s] processing facility is hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions per hour. That’s our motivation for visibility: customer service.”

The move by TraPac provides additional evidence regarding the North American port trend to extend terminal gate hours to accommodate rising volume.

Extra-loaders have made their presence felt, but is that extra capacity capable of ending the escalation in trans-Pacific spot rates long term?

There were several, telling data points that placed the business loss in a historical context.

Overall, recent research by Drewry Supply Chain Advisors found that the liner shipping industry is exposed to $34.4 billion in invoice and payment processing inefficiencies, based on 1.26 billion invoices issued in 2017.

One overriding factor is underpinning the sailing cancellations.

Initial integration problems of Ocean Network Express had an impact on the first-half share of US trade, both exports and imports, carried by the Top 5 US trade carriers.

Ocean carriers plan October blank sailings even as they introduce extra-loader vessels to handle an import surge in September.

As with other ocean carriers, rising bunker fuel prices weighed on CMA CGM’s second-quarter results. Even so, its CEO and chairman remained positive regarding 2018’s second half, citing the rise in freight rates and sustained volumes, in addition to the quality of its service offering.

The provider, Lanehub, this week said it was extending its lane matching, collaborative procurement platform to capture empty backhauls on dedicated and private fleets based on demand from its customers.

Its status may change in the future, but at least for now, instant pricing is a bit of a two-edged sword for ocean carriers.