For Rory Anne Hepner, general manager of vehicle logistics and distribution at Mercedes-Benz, making sure both truckers and ocean carriers are performing at the highest level of service is the utmost importance. Hepner has started sharing key performance indicators (KPIs) with Mercedes’ truckers and plans to soon start sharing measurement data with ocean […]
Kapow hammers together manual connections to different systems in the supply chain. Wrangler Jeans has a shipment that needs to go to Walmart, and as a customer service employee for one of the leading trucking companies in the country, your job is to get the jeans from point A to Z. Once the […]
Overcapacity, lackluster rates, terminal inefficiencies and potential labor disruption could upset liner carriers’ performance into 2015. At best, shippers and liner carriers in the transpacific trade are faced with several challenging years. Neil Dekker, head of container research at the London-based consulting firm Drewry, told attendees of the Journal of Commerce’s TPM 2014 […]
Amports operates in eight seaports—if you include efforts to launch business in Port Tampa Bay—and two inland rail ramps in Mexico (Toluca and Salamanca). In two of those locations—Baltimore on the East Coast and Benicia in California—it owns, rather than leases, its land. That essentially makes the auto processor a mini-port authority. The […]
Global pure car and truck carriers (PCTCs) have 63 vessels on order for delivery between 2014 and 2017 and 65 percent of them are post-Panamax size, according to Höegh Autoliners. The number of new buildings is down a third from the peak in 2008-2010, but the vessel size is greater. The […]
Water route could support more finished vehicle exports to United States. Global manufacturers are stampeding into Mexico to take advantage of affordable, quality labor and proximity to the U.S. market and no one is investing more than the auto industry. Plants are springing up around the country, but questions about whether there is adequate […]
Nothing stays the same, and that also goes for American Shipper. The 62-year-old publishing company, based in Jacksonville, Fla., has made a number of changes since the start of this year, which we would like to share with you on this page. For starters, we have expanded our editorial and research staff, […]
Mexico is the first country in North America to achieve a single window. The system has processed nearly 40 million transactions covering 215 procedures for nine different agencies since commencing in October 2011, Alejandro Chacón, the administrator general of Mexican Customs, said March 7 at the U.S. Customs Trade Symposium in Washington. There […]
SeaLand will be Maersk’s intra-Americas brand. Earlier this year, Maersk Line announced it would spin off its intra-Americas service into a new independent unit and operate it under the SeaLand name, reviving a brand of the company founded by container shipping pioneer Malcom McLean. Maersk acquired the international container business of Sea-Land Service […]
Obama puts agencies on notice to be team players, join unified trade data system. In less than three years, many bureaucratic headaches associated with importing and exporting cargo could be minimized if the U.S. government follows through on its goal of implementing new information technology for modernizing how trade is processed to ensure […]
BIS wants to clearly define responsibilities for these transactions. Navigating U.S. export control regulations has always been a tricky task and it’s not uncommon for exporters and their freight forwarders to get tripped up over regulatory language alone. One of those trouble spots, which the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security […]
After a protracted battle and much hand wringing, the European Union’s plan of taxing foreign airlines for emissions is officially dead—at least for the time being. Europe’s controversial aviation law, which took effect in 2012, would tax airlines traveling into or routing through Europe starting in 2013. Now a vote by Parliament on […]
Plano Molding designs and manufactures plastic storage boxes, including tackle boxes for fishermen. When it needed steel molds for its Illinois factory it contracted with CMT International, a company that assists American customers that wish to purchase products in Asia. CMT solicited bids from manufacturers, and Plano selected Kunshan, a Chinese company, to […]
I was recently speaking with someone at one of the larger U.S. freight brokerages when he mentioned in passing the size of the company’s IT department in terms of number of employees. My response: “You’re dangerously close to becoming an IT company.” Surely, I meant it as a joke, but the reality […]
Georgia to step up with project funds, despite White House’s proposed 2015 budget void. When President Obama released his fiscal year 2015 budget proposal in March, a $3.9 trillion request that would fuel the government for next year, port officials in Savannah, Ga., were in for a bit of bad news. They had […]
The Panama Canal Authority and the international consortium building the new locks for an expanded Canal announced Friday that they had reached a tentative agreement on a framework for completing the project.
COSCO announced sharp rate increases for all cargo from the Far East to Red Sea and Persian Gulf trade over 11 weeks, adding a total of $2,000 to existing rates across two lanes.
The governor of Oregon is once again getting involved in problems at the Port of Portland’s container terminal, Terminal 6, operated by International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI). Last December, Gov. John Kitzhaber intervened in a dispute between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers over […]
IAG Cargo, the amalgamation of the cargo divisions at British Airways and Iberia, experienced a 7-percent drop in volume between 2012 and 2013, seeing activity decline to 5,653 million cargo-ton kilometers last year.
Inter Aviation Services and the HAE Group, with the help of Kalitta Air, will launch a twice-weekly Boeing 747-400 roundtrip, freighter service between New York and Amsterdam on March 9. The flights will focus on gaining marketshare in the outsize cargo industry. The parties said they expect oil and gas equipment, auto parts […]
