Supply Chain Optimization

Truck Shortages And Oil

Truck Shortages And Oil

Truck shortages are old and, unfortunately, recurring news. To add insult to the incremental cost that shippers are paying to hire a truck on the spot market, gains in oil prices seem to be accelerating. On Friday, as I write this, oil is over $66! ...

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Companies Using 3PL’s Can Breathe Easier (For Now)

With the reconstituting of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the stupid Joint Employment rules which had pushed the responsibility for a 3PL’s actions onto the company that hires said 3PL. You can read the summary. But, as the headline ...

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Road & Rail Upgrades

The White House is putting the finishing touches on a plan to direct federal spending of $200 billion or more – funds it would propose to offset with cuts elsewhere in the federal budget – to leverage hundreds of billions more from local governments ...

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Happy Thanksgiving and a Retraction….Plus a Little Fun

Here is what I said last month….”The flow of containers from Asia is likely to get more expensive.” Now comes evidence of a potential countervailing force…lots of Mega-container ships are coming online soon. COSCO, the fourth largest shipping ...

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Avoiding Chicago And Oil Up

Canadian National Railway (CN) and Norfolk Southern (NS) strike a joint-service deal to avoid… Canadian National Railway (CN) and Norfolk Southern (NS) strike a joint-service deal to avoid Chicago’s congestion. They will do their train interchanges ...

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Transportation Pricing

Truckers tell us that Homeland Security is paying at least $4 per mile for loads into Florida. The problem for carriers is that these loads are “really last minute." If you win the auction, there is no certainty that the load will actually go. With ...

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Storms Damage The Labor Market

There will be fewer truck drivers and warehouse workers available once storm cleanup gets underway. There is already a perceived shortage of construction workers in the South, and it will only get worse as skilled and unskilled labor pours in to fix ...

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Big Brother Is Watching

In exchange for better insurance rates, trucking companies are adding cameras to truck cabs. Insurance rates for commercial vehicles are on the rise. Estes says they are up 20% in 2 years. Driven by “nuclear judgments” – penalties that sometimes run ...

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Jolt To The Energy Market

“Circle January 2020 on your calendar for what could be a major disruption to the energy market and a jolt to the global economy” was the lead sentence in the Wall Street Journal. “Circle January 2020 on your calendar for what could be a major ...

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New Pipeline Adds To Rail

New pipeline adds to rail and ocean tanker woes...Bulk transportation rates will go down. Energy Transfer Partners started moving oil through the much disputed but now completed Dakota Access Pipeline. Capable of moving 450,000 barrels a day, it ...

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