Monday, November 15, 2010

The trucking industry could lose significant capacity as more drivers are facing disqualification as the federal government initiates tough safety standards in December and truly rolls them out during 2011. That’s because the federal government is poised to launch the toughest safety crackdown on the estimated 3 million long-haul truck drivers and 800,000 carriers in the history of the industry.

Friday, November 12, 2010

The United States Postal Service (USPS) reported that it had a net loss of $8.5 billion for the fiscal year which ended on September 30. USPS officials cited various factors for the loss, including “continuing economic pressures and migration to electronic media [having] a significant adverse impact on mail volumes and operating revenues. Despite rigorous initiatives that eliminated 75 million work hours and drove productivity to record highs in 2010, the losses mounted.”

A wide-ranging survey published by UPS and IDC Manufacturing Insights based on interviews with senior-level supply chain, operations, logistics, and distribution executives at 125 high-tech companies found that taking care of the bottom line is imperative when looking back at the lessons learned from the Great Recession.

Data from Panjiva, an online search engine with detailed information on global suppliers and manufacturers, indicated that the number of global manufacturers shipping to the United States fell in October for the second straight month, following modest gains the previous two months.

Railroad volumes for the week ending November were up year-over-year, according to data released by the Association of American Railroads (AAR). Carload volume at 288,056 was up 4.9 percent compared to the same week last year but down compared to the three previous weeks at 292,884, 302,855, and 303,664, respectively.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Ocean carriers serving the U.S.-Puerto Rico trade may not be the only ones to feel the impact of a discriminatory tax on multinational companies

A.P. Moller-Maersk has indicated that ocean cargo rates are not only firming up, but will remain robust in the coming year

Learn the key tenets of Cost-to-Serve Optimization, and how it differs from both Cost-to-Serve Analysis and Activity-Based Costing. Understand the methodology for data collection and project execution. Delineate the alternatives that Cost-to-Serve Optimization presents and the impacts of their implementation.

Even though the prospect of raising the federal gasoline tax has been described as a “non-starter” multiple times as a way of increasing revenues for the Highway Trust Fund and other sources of transportation funding, it appears to be back on the table again.

Prior to this week’s G20 Summit in Seoul, Korea, the Washington, D.C.-based Airforwarders Association (AfA) sent a letter to President Barack Obama replete with suggestions on how the Administration could best work on making improvements and changes to air cargo security processes in light of the October attempts by terrorists to send explosives originating from Yemen to the United States on cargo and passenger planes.