Surface

The Teamsters union suffered a pair of setbacks this week in its drive to organize FedEx Freight, the largest U.S. less-than-truckload carrier.

More “solid” and steady U.S. economic growth will increase freight demand and boost shipping costs and domestic transportation rates in 2015, economists and analysts said at the SMC3 JumpStart 2015 conference in Atlanta.

The China-financed Mombasa-Nairobi rail link that is under construction is facing competition from Africa’s largest private equity firm that has invested $70 million in a competing rail connection that will also link the two cities.

Trucks serving various container terminals on the left bank of the Brazilian port of Santos are expected to see shorter trips thanks to a new 3 million reais ($1.15 million) access road.

Asset-light less-than-truckload carrier Shift Freight is expanding from its U.S. West Coast base to the Midwest and Northeast, building out its third-party-based LTL network.

A key indicator of U.S truck activity was flat in December, reflecting a decline in retail sales but an increase in manufacturing production in the same period.

California’s roadways and freeways are in desperate need of repair or expansion, so the trucking industry is willing to examine a variety of funding mechanisms that will raise billions of dollars to address the problem immediately.

Trucking companies serving a major intermodal complex in the Chicago area face longer trips after the Illinois Commerce Commission ruled that a key route must be shut down to commercial traffic because of safety concerns, according to various reports.

Fresh fruit and vegetable will continue to flow through a major New York produce terminal if the Teamsters approve a new proposal for a three-year contract with Hunts Point employers.

The U.S. economic engine is powering cross-border sales and truck freight traffic with Canada, sending spot-market cross-border loads to record highs, TransCore Link Logistics says.

Barring a relapse of intermodal service woes, few shippers are expected to shift their freight back to trucking

Efforts to unionize owner-operator drivers in the New Jersey could get a boost from a state Supreme Court ruling that limits companies’ ability to classify workers as independent contractors instead of employees.

U.S. freight shipments and shipper transport spending both dropped from the previous month in December, but remained close to a post-recession high, according to the Cass Freight Index.

CSX Transportation doesn’t think lower fuel prices for over-the-road trucking will derail its growing intermodal business.

For years, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been urging Congress and the White House to raise the federal fuels tax to help maintain and expand aging highways and bridges. For years, Congress and the White House have said no. It’s time to try and try again, the head of the largest U.S. business lobbying group said Jan. 14.

Twenty-five years after a consent decree settling a federal racketeering lawsuit reshaped the Teamsters union, the government agreed to phase out direct oversight of union affairs.

Roughly 1,650 Canadian Pacific Railway maintenance workers represented by the Unifor union have voted to strike if a contract with the railroad can’t be reached by Feb. 15.

The potential impact of a U.S. West Coast port lockout on intermodal service - should it come to that - varies by expert but analysts agree that the railroads will act fast and decisively if it does occur.

Giving Mexican carriers U.S. authority may not solve the chronic equipment imbalance and capacity problems at the U.S.-Mexican border, a logistics official says.

Even if Mexican carriers rush to apply for U.S. authority, getting freight across the border won't become easier without improved customs processes, an expert on U.S.-Mexican trade says.

The Norfolk Southern Railway chief marketing officer who was key in creating faster and more reliable intermodal services at the railroad will retire later this winter.

Challenges remain for second-tier suppliers of major manufacturers in China’s inland production centres more than 14 years after the Go West policy was introduced to shift factories away from the wealthier coastal areas and boost the economies of its poorer central provinces.

Warnings about U.S. truck driver shortages are on the verge of coming true, Robert Voltmann, president and CEO of the Transportation Intermediaries Association, told JOC.com.

From port congestion and new ocean alliances to driver shortages and rail service worries, the global supply chain is more fragile than at any point in recent memory. Three shippers discuss how they’re adjusting to the challenges.

Total Quality Logistics increased total revenue 31.3 percent in 2014 to $2.1 billion as the U.S. economy grew faster and shippers came up short on truck capacity.

U.S. intermodal shippers surveyed by an investment research firm pulled more freight off intermodal trains and put it back on trucks during the third quarter than vice-versa, the first time the survey tracked intermodal conversion losing ground since 2010.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s decision to finally open up the border to Mexican trucking companies — a key stipulation of NAFTA still not implemented after two decades — has resolved none of the political controversy and still faces severe political backlash from opponents including the Teamsters.

UPS expects to handle 4 million returned gifts in the first week of January, a number that grows each year as consumers turn e-commerce into a two-way pipeline.

Con-way Freight drivers and dockworkers in Bakersfield, California, this week voted to not join the Teamsters, marking the fifth time company employees have rejected the union.

Barely a few months go by without an automaker announcing plans to move or increase production in Mexico. General Motors, for example, said in December it would invest $5 billion in Mexico by 2018, adding to the $1.4 billion it’s already spent on factories there.

U.S. shippers are the most optimistic they have been in nearly three years about freight growth, but they are also bracing for the sharpest uptick in transportation costs, excluding fuel costs, since 2011, according to a recent survey.

TRAC Intermodal, the largest lessor of intermodal chassis, is being offered for sale by Fortress Investment Group, the private equity company that acquired the company seven years ago.

For-hire trucking companies tracked by the Labor Department hired 7,300 employees in December, capping a year-end hiring surge.

U.S. intermodal volume last week slipped 0.7 percent year-over-year but a key metric of rail performance improved, suggesting that the major railroads continue to make headway in improving overall service.

This is the year the “Internet of Things” — the growing network of products, from home thermostats to industrial machinery, that connect to the Internet — moves from the back room to the show floor.

Dry van truckload spot rates dropped slightly post-holiday, but remain elevated, especially in the West, where port congestion keeps demand and pricing high.

BNSF Railway is lifting its embargo on interchanging westbound ocean containers headed to U.S. West Coast on-dock facilities two days after the railroad implemented the ban.

Net orders for new trucks in North America came close to breaking 10-year records in late 2014. But will those net orders translate to much additional capacity for shippers?