Surface

The U.S. economy may be crawling along, but Estes Express Lines is moving faster, opening a new less-than-truckload terminal in the Chicago area.

Kansas City Southern Railway has announced the end to force majeure and has resumed intermodal service after severe flooding on the Louisiana-Texas border.

An unexpected economic detour slammed the brakes on revenue growth at the largest U.S. trucking companies in 2015, sending many companies down the financial equivalent of a runaway truck ramp as inventories piled up, fuel surcharges dropped and freight demand slumped.

Truckload rates are dropping as weak demand feeds pressure on shippers to reduce U.S. transportation costs, logistics providers and brokers at the Transportation Intermediaries Association conference learned.

Canadian Pacific Railway announced Monday it has dropped its fight to merge with rival U.S. firm Norfolk Southern Railway, saying it sees “no clear path to a friendly merger at this time.”

Walking through the exhibit hall at the Transportation Intermediaries Association conference, one might mistake it for a technology convention. Freight brokers believe technology is the key to expansion in a “modest” economy.

Trucking bankruptcies in the United States nearly doubled in the first quarter, but the loss was not big enough to put a dent in excess truck capacity, trucking analyst Donald Broughton told members of the Transportation Intermediaries Association on Saturday.

The truck driver shortage is more a problem for large trucking operators, as the total number of drivers and small fleets grows, said Jeff Tucker, chairman of the Transportation Intermediaries Association and head of Tucker Company Worldwide.

BNSF Railway Friday raised the possibility that its proposed international intermodal railyard four miles from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which has been more than 10 years in the making, may never be built because of environmental challenges.

Private equity firm Bregal Sagemount invested an undisclosed amount in Internet Truckstop Group, the parent of spot market load-matching service Truckstop.com, to help ITG rapidly scale its services, extend its market reach, and develop new products and services.

Sweeping new food safety rules are moving from the regulatory menu to the plates of U.S. shippers, logistics operators and carriers engaged in food transportation.

Canada’s Dicom Transportation Group is driving deeper into U.S. markets as it pursues cross-border and last-mile freight and packages.

The proposed merger of Canadian Pacific and Norfolk Southern railways has put the chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure at odds with the former ranking member of the committee.

Intermodal marketing company Hub Group has tapped long-time logistics executive Steve Rand as executive vice president of sales to suceed Jim Gaw, who has been with the company for 28 years.

Shippers moving their goods through Moscow could see their transportation costs rise 15 to 20 percent through a new ban on containerized cargo transiting through the Russian capital.

Three acquisition-hungry companies, XPO Logistics, Celadon Group and Daseke, were the fastest-growing businesses on a list of the 50 largest U.S. trucking companies in 2015.

Intermodal equipment providers are in the early stages of using GPS technology to track their chassis in seaport and inland locations, and if the return on investment is adequate, IEPs anticipate greater use of the technology.

Old Dominion Freight Line opened its 21st service center in Texas as shipment volume increases in the Lone Star State.

The U.S. economy gained jobs in March, but not the trucking industry. The number of employees on for-hire trucking payrolls dropped for the second straight month in March, send a warning to carriers about wages and shippers about capacity.

TransContainer, Russia’s leading containerized rail operator, plans to make more investments in its network after posting a 22.6 percent year-over-year decline in net profit to 2.8 billion rubles ($60 million) even as revenue increased 16.2 percent to 42.5 billion rubles.

Since the beginning of this year volumes across Russia’s shipping industry have begun to show signs of recovery after a dismal 2015 in which Western sanctions and the low price of oil devastated the country’s transportation firms.

Russian railway monopoly RZD is offering significant discounts to shippers in a bid to remain competitive with over-the-road trucking, which carries the largest share of Russia’s cargo volumes.

A California Superior Court judge Wednesday found the environmental impact report on the BNSF Railway’s proposed near-dock intermodal rail yard in Los Angeles to be inadequate, further delaying construction on a project that has been more than 10 years in the making.

Canadian Pacific and Norfolk Southern railways are drawing lines in the sand ahead of a looming shareholder meeting, where NS investors will vote over whether their board should come to the negotiating table with a merger-minded CP.

In certain parts of the country, especially the Southeast, the U.S. spot truck market is showing some early signs of renewal, as retailers gear up for their spring shipping season.

Transportation providers have more than enough capacity to handle peak-season cargo volumes this summer and fall, but cargo interests say a lack of reliability and predictability within the supply chain will cause problems in moving cargo efficiently if not corrected.

John Simone, who as CEO led USA Truck back to profitability after years of losses before taking a medical leave of absence last year, has died at the age of 54 after a battle with lung cancer.

TRAC Intermodal, the largest U.S. chassis lessor, has canceled plans for a $485 million bond offering that would have been used mainly to pay a cash dividend to owner Fortress Investment Group.

The significant decline in Russia’s container traffic as a result of sanctions and an ongoing economic crisis is transforming not only the routes that cargo in Russia takes, but also the underlying dynamics of the country’s shipping business.

The government of Ukraine is struggling to replace transshipment container traffic that has been lost to the country’s ongoing economic crisis caused by its civil war and Russian sanctions.

Norfolk Southern Railway has set a date for its annual shareholders meeting, setting the stage for a showdown with Canadian Pacific Railway, its longtime suitor that has been pursuing a merger with NS for nearly five months.

In the past few months, Amazon has moved openly and aggressively to increase its reach, capabilities and capacity in the logistics and distribution arena. The Seattle-based company purchased thousands of trailers blazoned with Amazon logos in the U.S., registered as a non-vessel-operating common carrier to better manage the flow of goods from China to the U.S. and leased 20 U.S. domestic cargo planes from Air Transport Services Group.

Moscow’s share of overland transshipment traffic fell to 35 percent in 2015 from its typical figure of 75 percent, according to Russia’s Ministry of Transport, as the country’s overland logistics network reorients itself away from the country’s capital toward China and the Asia Pacific.

Waberer's International increased revenue to 522.5 million euros last year, but Europe's refugee crisis, coupled with a Russian embargo, made moving truckloads across borders more difficult.

Most small trucking operations do not have electronic logging devices or any type of on-board computer, and don’t plan to purchase and install them until a December 2017 deadline draws closer, a survey of 1,300 trucking operators found.

Los Angeles-based startup Cargomatic has named two logistics veterans, one from Coyote and another from CEVA logistics, to its leadership team.

Federal and state inspectors have been told to place any unrepaired Volvo trucks affected by a recall out-of-service as they are found for being unsafe to operate. The recall affects as many as 16,000 2016 and 2017 model year trucks in the U.S.

U.S. truck tonnage leaped 7.2 percent in February, after declining a revised 0.3 percent in January, the American Trucking Associations said March 22. Will March gains be as strong?

The movement of people and goods in and around Brussels ground to a halt Tuesday after a series of terror attacks rocked the Belgian capital. Brussels Airport has been shut down, all flights in and out cancelled, and public transportation throughout the city has been put on lockdown, sparking wide reports of gridlock.

APM Terminals Pipavav, or Gujarat Pipavav Port, on Tuesday celebrated the arrival of its first double-stack freight train from Container Corporation of India’s newly-opened “multimodal logistics park” at Kathuwas in the northern state of Rajasthan.