Archive for August, 2018

Get in Line: Backlog for Big Rigs Stretches to 2019

Anyone ordering a new heavy-duty truck this summer will have wait until sometime next year to get it, assuming strained manufacturing supply chains hold together. An unprecedented run of orders for big rigs has pushed the backlog at truck factories to nine months, according to industry analysts, the largest since early 2006, when truckers stocked […]

NRF raises its 2018 retail sales forecast

There is often a general consensus along the lines of “when retail sales are good, the economy is good.” It makes sense to a large degree and, really, why wouldn’t it after all? Consumer spending accounts for roughly 70% of total United States economic output, making it the largest piece of the domestic economic pie.

Panjiva reports record-high monthly import volumes for July

July shipments, at 1,096,835, topped June’s 1,025,643 and were up 6% annually for a new monthly record, according to Panjiva, topping August 2017’s 1,069,292. All months in 2018 have seen growth, with the exception of a 0.2% decline in March, which was the first one going back to a 7.7% annual drop-off in February 2017. […]

Reefer rates rise

Drewry says freight rates for cargo moving in refrigerated containers have risen since the beginning of 2017. The London consultant says in contrast to its global freight index for “dry”containers, which has fallen 14 percent between the first quarter of 2017 and the second quarter of this year, its global reefer container freight rate index […]

Trade tensions dampen air freight

Cargo demand grew 2.7 percent for the month compared with the same 2017 period, down from the 5.2 percent year-over-year growth rate seen in April and 4.2 percent uptick in May, but still up a full point from March’s 1.7 percent pace, according to the latest data from the International Air Transport Association. The March […]

Analysis: US intermodal interline woes threaten growth

The recent announcement of the imminent cancellation of interline service on almost 200 joint Union Pacific Railroad-CSX Transportation lanes transiting Chicago promises to scramble peak season plans for many intermodal shippers. But setting the near-term disruption aside, what does it say about the ability for intermodal to growth longer term? It will likely result in […]

Rail Traffic for the Week Ending August 11, 2018

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) today reported U.S. rail traffic for the week ending August 11, 2018. For this week, total U.S. weekly rail traffic was 556,887 carloads and intermodal units, up 2.8 percent compared with the same week last year. Total carloads for the week ending August 11 were 271,718 carloads, up 1.8 […]

Uber Ups the Ante on Uber Freight Trucking Division

With the news last week that Uber was abandoning its autonomous commercial vehicle research business (for now, anyway) a logical take-away would be that the San Francisco-based tech company has soured on trucking. In fact, it appears Uber is doubling down on trucking.According to news reports, Uber Technologies is creating a standalone business out of […]