Topic: Blogs

Over the last several years, there has been heightened attention on the Chinese economy and for good reason, too, what with booming GDP numbers, consumer demand, and overall growth.

2015 holiday season deliveries saw solid forward momentum and efficiency.

Intermodalism is set to grow even faster as more business is conducted in cross-border commerce.

If recent stories are any indication, transportation, sourcing, inventory management and supply chain resilience will dominate supply chain projects next year.

"Seafarers spend months away from their home and loved ones, often working in very dangerous conditions. It is a profession that is taken for granted by consumers all over the world, but one that is critical for our economy.”

Newsroom Notes provides a few of the key stories, trends, and themes of 2015, a year that was far from dull in the supply chain, logistics, and freight transportation sectors.

In tennis, when each player (or pair) has three points, the score is known as “deuce.” That in a sense is the current score at the moment when it comes to the ongoing match between Class I rail carriers Canadian National and Norfolk Southern.

While the recently announced climate deal by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is being widely recognized as significant accomplishment, it appeared odd in the sense that it did not directly address emissions reduction mandates or objectives from various transportation modes.

CMA CGM is looking forward to welcoming APL into Euro-centric world and intends to retain and develop the APL brand and leverage it to build its presence in the Asia Pacific.

With President Obama last Friday formally signing the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act into the law, it formally ends what had become the interminable question among freight transportation and logistics stakeholders and other interested observers: will there ever be a new transportation bill signed into law?

U.S. multinationals engaged in Pacific Rim commerce also appear to have a high threshold for risk, notes recent research done by Resilinc, a cloud provider of supply chain resilience and risk management intelligence and analytics

Rising Cyber Monday sales numbers continue to demonstrate the ongoing and emerging influence of e-commerce on consumer shopping habits and patterns and subsequently supply chain and logistics operations, too.

In his opening comments assessing the economy at last week’s RailTrends conference hosted by Progressive Railroading magazine and independent railroad analyst Tony Hatch, FTR Senior analyst Larry Gross said the economy continues to slog ahead at a relatively tepid pace, coupled with some volatility in terms of overall GDP growth. And amid that slogging, Gross said there is currently an economic hand-off occurring between the industrial sector and the consumer sector.

The Global Shippers’ Forum (GSF) says better communication across the whole supply chain is vital to ensure shipper’s needs are not compromised by the container shipping industry’s drive to cut costs through mega-alliances.

While its top-line losses remain intact, with last week’s announcement that it had a $5.1 billion fiscal year 2015 net loss, there are some bright spots mixed in with last week’s fiscal year 2015 earnings announcement from the United States Postal Service (USPS).

In a research brief issued on Nov. 10, EIA said that at the end of July the HTF was at its lowest level in decades at $6.1 billion. And while a Congressionally approved transfer of more than $8 billion brought the HTF balance to $12 billion at the end of the fiscal year on September 30, it still represented the second-lowest fiscal year-end level since 1984, more than 30 years ago.

Federal officials should forge a comprehensive strategy to defend the nation’s ports from cyber attacks, Port of Long Beach Director of Security Services Randy Parsons told a U.S. House of Representatives committee in testimony earlier this month.

Many of these Merchant Mariners are now well into their 80s and 90s and deserve compensation.

While this column has identified the many advantages the Trans-Pacific Partnership would provide U.S. logistics managers once it comes into play, the deal also has positive implications for Asian members.

With the ink now dry from XPO Logistics’ acquisition of Con-way Inc. now dry, the company’s plan for how it plans to integrate Con-way into its plans is coming into fuller focus.