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The latest news from the JOC Inland Distribution Conference in Oak Brook, Illinois. Check back with this document frequently for the latest news and insights from key logistics, shipping, and trade decision makers.

“Railroads and ports are spending billions of dollars for infrastructure. All of that of that is great, but let’s focus more on what is needed to get drivers into and out of the port. Railroads should look at their in-gates and out-gates. Most of the delays occur in the queue lines,” Patrick Maher, executive vice president of Gulf Winds International, told attendees at the JOC Inland Distribution Conference 2018 on Tuesday.

Two major developments have produced unusually strong price increases in both international and domestic freight movement this year, analysts on Tuesday told more than 370 attendees of the JOC Inland Distribution Conference.

Transport America's solo salary offers remuneration for a solo driver that is above the $75,000 a year that trucking executives have admitted would need to be breached to end the driver shortage.

Tight trucking capacity after the Mexico government introduced new regulations on truckers, along with congestion at the Pacific Coast Port of Manzanillo, have boosted Kansas City Southern's volume.

The trucking effects from the extreme weather the Southeast US experienced are expected to be temporary, with strong pre-holiday demand in November and possibly December likely to restore “balance” in the storm’s wake.

The electronic logging device rule imposed in the United States in November has already affected Canadian trucking, both cross-border and domestic services.

The new Amsterdam link will provide greater service resilience for the Netherlands-Italy rail option, as the connections to the two Dutch ports will run on different routes, enabling a flexible response to any rail-related or port-related delays, according to Samskip UK trade manager David Besseling.

This could be the best of times for Europe’s rail freight operators: the dominant trucking sector is short drivers and capacity, fuel prices are rising, and toll roads are boosting rates; meanwhile, barges still face congestion at Rotterdam and Antwerp. But can rail seize the day?

The revamped/upgraded rail link, which had its first train depart from Chennai on Monday with 80 TEU, is intended to speed freight handled via the government’s two flagship supply chain reforms — direct port delivery for imports and direct port entry for factory-stuffed exports.

CSX is the only Class I railroad offering better train speeds and lower terminal dwell times while volumes are on the rise.

The agreement will see the two companies provide their respective customer bases with tracking access to 175,000 multimodal carriers — 90,000 in North America and 85,000 in Europe.

Echoing analysis regarding the trans-Pacific, some analysts believe shippers tried to beat US tariffs on a slew of Chinese-made goods by moving up cargo activity into July.

After a year of double-digit increases, spot rate gains are slowing, and truck rates and revenue increases are expected to ‘moderate’ to the mid-single-digit range in 2019.

PierPass, the oldest extended-gates program in North America, was launched in 2005 to increase throughput capacity at the largest US port complex while diverting a sizable portion of the truck traffic from the peak daytime hours in order to relieve traffic congestion on local freeways and roads.

US trucking has entered a new era, in which a ‘new normal’ has been established. Even so, for shippers, there are some encouraging sector developments concerning driver recruitment and overall truck capacity.

There is no debate: US truck capacity is tight. Still, this supply and demand imbalance offers an opportunity for shippers to assess their shipping practices. They will find their inefficiencies are responsible for more cost in absolute dollars than the increase in expenditure that results from higher rates.

The new Harbor Trucking Association-Milestone pool at LA-LB is improving truck turn times and round-the-clock access to a variety of chassis types during the current peak season.

Storm damage reached from Florida into the Carolinas on Thursday and severed the I-10 east-west route. The likely outcome is higher costs and lengthy detours.

Shippers can and should stop using paper bills of lading (B/Ls). If truck drivers can live without paper logbooks, shippers can scrap paper B/Ls. Savings for carriers and shippers will result.

This has been a record year for US intermodal rail, but changes in shipping patterns apparently have lowered the autumn intermodal peak — or broken it into two smaller peaks.

Transplace CEO Frank McGuigan sees more rate hikes but also more lane-specific ‘minibids’ ahead, and he urges shippers to work together and deploy this new tactic to unlock capacity.

On Tuesday evening, the owners of trucks called off their strike after a meeting with government officials. The officials said they would communicate the strikers' concerns to the prime minster about a new law's traffic liability provisions.

For shippers, the results of the latest vote on a Teamsters union contract at UPS were nothing if not confusing. But don’t panic. There’s little chance the wheels will stop turning at UPS or UPS Freight.

During the past several years, the less-than-truckload industry and the analyst community have made a big deal of the need to convert to dimensional pricing instead of the classification system of the regulated era that ended in 1980.

Transplace, with headquarters in Frisco, Texas, near Dallas, has been growing rapidly in recent years and expects to move $8 billion through its network this year.

End-to-end visibility will make supply chains more efficient, Chicago-based project44’s President Tommy Barnes says, but only if shippers use data received to collaborate with partners.

For those who think that it’s somehow counterintuitive to have a pricing model designed to create a loss or to reduce operating margins, rest assured, it is.

Innovation and outside-the-box thinking are needed to help shippers and trucking companies kick old, bad habits and bring pricing into the 21st century. This is Part 1 in a 5-part series.

From warehousing to trucking, US employers are rushing to get workers in place for the peak shipping season — and another, likely substantial, increase in end-of-year e-commerce purchases and deliveries.

The announcement is yet another decision to condense CSX’s vast intermodal network into precision scheduled railroading.

A chassis split creates two extra stops for truckers, wasting their on-duty hours, reducing asset productivity, and restricting available capacity to shippers.

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.

China’s government has invested billions in the China-Europe rail network, and volume, propelled by subsidies, has surged. However, those subsidies have created other downsides for shippers and the broader market.

It’s an axiom that certainly applies in the current US intermodal market: shop around. Even if they’re under contract, not every rate is better than spot truckload. And these price comparisons can save shippers money when every cent counts towards remaining within transportation budgets.

The port authority, after discussions with rule-implementer the New Jersey Department of Labor, is disseminating detailed information to truckers on the new rules, which the authority believes will have little impact on the drayage fleet and won’t affect many truckers.

Rising transportation costs, the driver shortage, and accompanying rail and barge congestion have created challenging times for Europe’s shippers, to say the least. And then there’s the Brexit summit in two weeks.

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

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.