Logistics Management Magazine Archives

Following the issuing of a final rule by the United States Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) earlier this month, establishing establishes minimum safety requirements for train crew sizes, with the new rule requiring a second crew member on all trains, four U.S.-based railroads are calling on federal appeals courts to toss out the rule, calling it “arbitrary, capricious, and an illegal abuse of discretion,” according to an Associated Press report.

XPO opened up three of the 28 service center locations it acquired through an early December court-supervised auction, in which a dozen trucking companies bought properties that resold about three-fourths of Yellow’s properties for a total of just under $1.9 billion.

For February, the most recent month for which data is available, the TCI reading came in a -5.31, down from January’s -1.41, which was ahead of December’s -4.3.

Rail carloads, at 209,142, were off 4.5% annually, and intermodal containers and trailers, at 241,000 units, increased 7.6% annually.

In this podcast, Tony Hatch offered up his views on various aspects of the freight railroad and intermodal sectors, including: market conditions, service levels, volumes, and nearshoring, among others. 

While 2023 proved to be a comeback year, there's still a ways to go before a return to pre-pandemic normalcy.

The new edition of the TD Cowen/AFS Freight Index, which was recently released by New York-based investment firm TD Cowen Inc. and Shreveport, La.-based 3PL and freight audit and payment company AFS Logistics LLC, was somewhat mixed, with less-than-truckload (LTL) and truckload rates steady, and parcel rates being impacted by fuel surcharge increases and various accessorial charges amid lower demand.

From February to March, the report observed that U.S.-bound container import volumes eked out a 0.4% increase, to 2,145,341 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), while posting a 15.7% annual gain, ahead of pre-pandemic 2019 by 20.6%. Descartes explained that the timing of the week-long Lunar New Year in Asia, which commenced on February 11 may have held import growth back, as the subsequent impact on U.S. import numbers was not realized until the last two weeks of March.