Trucking
Transport Topics Dan Ronan January 24, 2023
Truck tonnage rose 3.8% in 2022 compared with the prior year, posting the highest year-over-year gain in four years despite closing out with modest December results, American Trucking Associations reported.
The ATA For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index inched up 0.3% to 115.2 compared with December 2021, and was up 0.4% compared with the 114.8 results reported in November, the federation said Jan. 24.
ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello said the annual 3.8% gain was the strongest since 2018, and marked the 16th consecutive year-over-year increase. Still, it was the smallest annual jump over that span and reflected a freight market that slowed as the year drew
to a close, he said.
“Despite the small gain in December, for-hire truck tonnage clearly decelerated during the final quarter in 2022,” Costello said. “The index’s yearly gains were primarily driven by strength in the first half of 2022, so despite a marked slowdown as the year
ended, for the year as a whole tonnage posted a very solid year overall.”
Logistics Management Jeff Berman January 25, 2023
December’s van freight TVI came in at 215, down 4% compared to November and down 3.6% annually. This reading was 5.9% higher than December 2020, as well as the second-highest December reading in record, according to DAT. And the refrigerated (reefer) TVI, at
167, was off 4.0%, from November to December, and down 1.2% annually, with the flatbed TVI off 11.8%, from November to December, and up 3.2% annually.
Industry
Logistics Management Jeff Berman January 24, 2023
For all of 2022, IANA reported that total intermodal volume—at 17,716,445—was down 3.9% compared to 2021. Trailers—at 924,259—decreased 23.8%, and domestic containers—at 8,147,044—were up 1.6%. All domestic equipment—at 9,071,303—fell 1.8%. ISO containers were
down 6.0%, to 8,645,142.
The Journal Of Commerce Ari Ashe January 24, 2023
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“Two things are critically important as we turn the page to 2023,” Fritz said. “First is the trend line of improving freight car velocity, acknowledging there were bumps along the way. And second is how we move forward establishing consistent service for our
customers day in and day out.”
Union Pacific said it will focus on what it can control — providing strong service and the labor necessary to deliver on it — and not overly fixate on the broader US economy or the increasingly competitive truckload market putting downward pressure on the rates
it charges to shippers.
The Journal Of Commerce Ari Ashe January 24, 2023
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Union Pacific Railroad has been forced to halt the movement of all domestic and international containers in both directions between Southern California and the key inland hubs of Chicago and Kansas City due to a bridge outage on its network in New Mexico.
UP said Tuesday the “service interruption” means that trains en route have been stopped in place while no new trains are leaving the affected terminals.
“A bridge outage in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, is impacting operations between Dalhart and El Paso, Texas,” a UP spokesperson said in a statement to the Journal of Commerce. “Customers with rail shipments moving through the impacted area should anticipate a 72-hour
delay.”
Shippers/3PLs
Fleet Owner Cristina Commendatore January 24, 2023
“Some companies, under the rubric of the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA), have relocated production capacity to Mexico, where hard (rail and road accesses) and soft (trade and regulatory frameworks) have been long-established,” according
to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ 2022 Transportation Statistics Annual Report.
That theme of shifting production capacity from China to closer North American markets was made clear during a recent Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week 2023 panel session in Grapevine, Texas. During an opening session, Rob Phillips, president and CEO of Phillips
Industries, explained that 20 years ago, China was an ideal place to operate because costs were so competitive. Today, however, due to container costs that drive up the cost of freight, as well as tariffs between the U.S. and China, for Phillips, nearshoring
manufacturing capacity to Mexico has made the most sense.
Digital Commerce 360 April Berthene January 24, 2023
Online holiday sales nudged up 3.5% year over year, reaching $211.70 billion in web sales in November and December, according to Adobe Analytics.
This marks the largest ever online holiday season, but substantially slower growth than in recent years. By contrast, from 2018-2021 online holiday season sales increased year over year by an average of over 17%.
Of the 61 days in November and December, shoppers spent more than $3 billion online on 38 days, according to Adobe. This is the same as the 2021 holiday season but an uptick from 2020, when 25 days exceeded $3 billion in online sales. Adobe’s data is based
on 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites that offer 100 million SKUs in 18 product categories.
Link: Adobe News Holiday
Shopping Season Drove a Record $211.7 Billion for E-commerce
Technology/Innovation
The Journal Of Commerce Eric Johnson January 24, 2023
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CargoX, a provider of electronic bill of lading (eBL) solutions, said Tuesday it has seen a surge in interest from companies wanting to digitize shipping documents during the pandemic, part of a broader trend in growth of eBL usage, albeit off a low base.
The growth in interest got a further kickstart last month, when CargoX and competing eBL provider edoxOnline demonstrated interoperability between their products.
Slovenia-based CargoX said it has now processed more than 3 million shipping documents since its founding in 2017. It went from 336 companies using its product at the end of 2020 to more than 100,000 at the end of 2022, with the pandemic a catalyst for some
entities to transition to eBLs.
Tech Crunch Rebecca Bellan January 24, 2023
Waymo denied claims that it was closing down Via, saying it remains fully committed to bringing its freight trucking solution to scale over time. A spokesperson did say Waymo was pulling back slightly on its fully autonomous deployment for freight trucking.
Waymo will continue to develop its “Driver” in a way that’s applicable across business lines, which includes freeway capabilities that can be applied to both ride-hailing and trucking, the spokesperson said.
Government/Safety/Sustainability
CCJ Jason Cannon January 24, 2023
The bill calls for a temporary $7,500 text credit for eligible truck drivers who logged at least 1,900 hours of on-duty time and whose adjusted gross income for the taxable year does not exceed $135,000 jointly; $112,500 as head of household; or $90,000 individually.
New drivers – defined as someone "who did not drive a commercial truck in the course of a trade or business during the preceding taxable year" – are eligible for a $10,000 tax credit.
The Journal Of Commerce William B. Cassidy January 24, 2023
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A bipartisan bill that would provide temporary tax incentives for new truck drivers and expand access to truck parking and rest facilities was introduced in the US House of Representatives Tuesday, the first step in a long road to potentially becoming law.
The Safer Highways and Increased Performance for Interstate Trucking bill is the second “SHIP IT” bill on Capitol Hill in two years.
Provisions of last year’s SHIP IT – the Stopping Hindrances to Invigorate Ports and Increase Trade Act -- became part of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 signed into law by President Joe Biden last June. The new bill’s sponsors, South Dakota Republican
Rep. Dusty Johnson and California Democrat Rep. Jim Costa, want to follow that law with trucking reforms.
Workforce
The Wall Street Journal Sarah Nassauer And Gabriel T. Rubin January 24, 2023
Three days before Christmas, six student drivers graduated from a Yellow driving academy in South Bend, Indiana.
With the graduates’ achievement, the LTL carrier surpassed its goal to welcome 1,000 graduates by the end of 2022, the company announced last week.
“This is an enormous accomplishment for our company that involved hard work and tremendous dedication from our students, instructors and safety trainers across the country,” Darren Hawkins, CEO of Yellow, said in a statement.
In recent years, Yellow and others in the industry have used earn-to-learn training, apprenticeships and other creative solutions to bolster the driver pipeline.
The Wall Street Journal Sarah Nassauer And Gabriel T. Rubin January 24, 2023
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Starting next month, Walmart’s U.S. workers in stores and warehouses will earn a starting wage of at least $14 an hour, up from $12, the country’s largest private employer said in a memo to staff Tuesday. Rivals, including Amazon.com Inc. red down pointing
triangle and Target Corp., have a $15-an-hour minimum wage, while Costco Wholesale Corp.’s minimum is even higher.
In November, there were 10.46 million unfilled jobs in the U.S., federal data show. Of those, 887,000 were in the retail sector and 1.52 million were in the leisure and hospitality sector—industries that often compete for the same workers. Nearly a quarter
of available jobs in the U.S. were in those two lowest-wage sectors, as of the most recent data.
Average hourly earnings for nonsupervisory retail workers rose 4% from a year earlier to $19.93 in December, according to the Labor Department. Wages rose 5% from a year earlier to $28.07 for private-sector workers not in supervisory roles.
Link: Walmart:
Continuing to Strengthen Our Jobs and Invest in Our People
Economy
Bloomberg/Transport Topics Augusta Saraiva January 24, 2024
U.S. business activity contracted for a seventh month, though at a more moderate pace, while a measure of input prices firmed in a sign of lingering inflationary pressures.
The S&P Global flash January composite purchasing managers index rose 1.6 points to 46.6, the group reported Jan. 24. Readings below 50 indicate falling activity. The gauge of input prices climbed for the first time since May.
While the improvement in the composite measure of output at factories and services providers was the first in four months and points to a slower rate of deterioration, the gain in the price index indicates businesses are still contending with rising costs for
labor and some materials.
Link: S&P Global Flash US Composite PMI
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