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Sometimes bad news isn't as bad as it appears. This isn't one of those times. Last week, I wrote about the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) using the word shippers most fear [...]

If there's one word shippers hate to hear in relation to the dockworkers and their unions that control the jobs up and down the U.S. coasts, it's strike. We're a little under a year away from the [...]

Panama's drought, affecting the water level of the Panama Canal, continued in October. According to the Weather Channel, "The driest October since at least 1950 has left the Panama Canal with too [...]

Freight rates, particularly Asia to U.S. West Coast (USWC) freight rates, have increased by more than 100% since June. That's not too surprising, since we're in the peak season, and freight rates [...]

If there was a war over freight rates, whoever ocean freight carriers' version of Paul Revere is would be riding out, yelling, "The ships are coming! The ships are coming!" Back in February, I [...]

One of the things we often do in Universal Cargo's blog is give shippers an outlook for how the international shipping freight rate market is behaving and looks to behave. Over the years, [...]

Shippers may find themselves uneasy when they realize North American dockworker unions coast to coast will be negotiating contracts at the same time. As port disruption from labor slowdowns is [...]

Ocean freight rates have fallen, for which U.S. importers can rejoice. Readers of Universal Cargo's blog certainly don't need a recap of how freight rates skyrocketed during the pandemic, thanks [...]

Air freight shippers may want to consider avoiding Chicago O'Hare until a bad and potentially very disruptive situation there is resolved. A Chicago mandate pushed forward by the city's [...]

2022 is just days away from being over, so it's time to look forward to 2023. We'll probably have a few posts focused on what the year will have in store for international shipping, but today we [...]

2022 is nearly over, so it's time to look back on the year and digest what happened. Here at Universal Cargo, we like to count down the top international shipping news stories we covered from [...]

Importers, and shippers in general, had a rough couple of years when it came to international shipping after the pandemic hit. But the landscape, or ocean-scape, looks quite different now. [...]

Another union has voted to reject the tentative labor agreement the White House pressured union and railroad negotiators to reach back in September, at the last moment before unions could, and [...]

Imports for the end of the year were already expected to decline, but at the end of last week the expected decline for October basically doubled. November and December's expected decline [...]

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 [...]

West Coast ports, East Coast ports, Gulf Coast ports... we're seeing congestion all over. A great deal of the focus lately has been on congestion at East and Gulf Coast ports as many shippers are [...]

In the last blog, we looked at how – with the slowing economy – retailers and shippers are decreasing their imports and expected to keep doing so in 2023. As discussed, that should mean [...]

It's kind of a good news, bad news situation. Or more accurately, bad news, good news situation. Because of the slowing economy (bad news), freight rates should see decline (good news) in the [...]

Strike, strike, strike! The U.S. supply chain is in a triple strike threat from truckers, dockworkers, and rail workers. Normally, it's three strikes and you're out, but this is no game. Any one [...]

The Port of Oakland is back to full operation after truckers, with an assist from ILWU members, screeched the port to a halt last week over Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5). The port says it will take [...]