Nearly three full years after the railroad unions went into negotiations with the railroads for new contracts, resolution has been reached. Last week, I blogged about the House of Representatives [...]
News broke on Thursday of last week that a tentative agreement had been reached between the railroads and the two largest rail worker unions, BLET and SMART-TD, preventing a [...]
On Friday, September the 16th, the mandatory cooling-off period on negotiations between U.S. railroads and their employees' unions ends, and the unions will be able to strike. That's just three [...]
Shippers have more fees – or at least faster racking-up fees – to worry about at the Port of New York and New Jersey. Michael Angell reports in the Journal of Commerce (JOC): "The largest marine [...]
For years, we've talked about a trucker shortage that has been a problem for the international shipping industry and U.S. supply chains. Now, a law is going into effect in California that [...]
Both the Loadstar and the Journal of Commerce (JOC) report the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) have broken media silence on their [...]
Shippers who import from China were likely relieved to hear the months-long "Covid Zero" lockdown in Shanghai had been lifted last Wednesday. However, they shouldn't expect the supply chain to [...]
U.S. ports are finally getting a period of time to recover from the unyielding demand and congestion that has plagued them since 2020. However, there are a few things that could make the relief [...]
Contract negotiations between the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) and their employers at the West Coast ports, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), have been suspended until [...]
Ocean freight rates are falling. Yes, they're still extremely high, but they're moving in the right direction. Greg Miller reported this week in Freight Waves that global spot rates for ocean [...]
This is a guest post by Alan Porter. When trying to understand how the modern world economy works, you cannot help but appreciate the role of shipping containers. The only way in which one [...]
As the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach hit record volumes of imports for March and freight rates reached a new peak, experts are telling us that the days of overcapacity, and the lower [...]
If you thought freight rates couldn't get any higher, carriers responded with, "Hold my beer." We often focus on transpacific freight rates, with the prevalence of importing from China, which [...]
It was hoped the high freight rates we've been seeing for about a year now in the international shipping industry would finally start easing back down at this point; however, it appears reprieve [...]
She's afloat once again. The Ever Given, which was stuck sideways in the Suez Canal, has been freed. While one of the companies hired to get the ship free said it could take weeks, in actuality, [...]
You thought port congestion at U.S. ports – the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach especially – is bad. You're right. But at least it's possible for ships to get in and out of the ports (it just [...]
The way ocean freight rates have skyrocketed in 2020 and into 2021, it became expected that the big U.S. shippers – the beneficial cargo owners (BCOs) of the world like Walmart, Target, Best Buy, [...]
Some shippers are looking at Gulf Coast ports like the Port of Houston as possible alternatives to the severely congested ports along the East and West Coasts. Port congestion like we're seeing [...]
We're not completely bereft of signs that port congestion, which is so costly to shippers, could start easing soon; however, congestion is at record-setting levels and what's probably the biggest [...]
This post concludes our long Jones Act blog series, recapping the major points of the debate we covered and putting them all in one easy reference point. We began this series after President [...]
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