Posts Tagged ‘container trucking’
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
Diesel prices hit their highest point since November of 2008 last week, as the average price nationwide rose to $2.90/gallon. That’s mostly bad news for freight carriers, who have to try to pass those higher costs on to suppliers or see their profits diminish. It’s hard to tell what is “normal” in the fuel market given the volatile nature of fuel prices in the last two years, but things are returning to pre-financial-meltdown levels.
That increase is a measure of economic activity driving fuel prices higher; container shipping traffic is forecasted to grow during 2010. The added amount of container trucking will add to the demand for diesel as we go forward.
Trucking logistics firms will need to look at fuel-saving alternatives in this high-diesel-price environment. Intermodal transport becomes more of a factor, especially if the railroads in an area are electric; they will both be less affected by the increased price of diesel and used what gas they do use more efficiently. Since most ships run on diesel, moving things onto the seas isn’t a huge advantage, although shipping is more fuel-efficient, albeit slower.
If the increase in diesel is deemed to be normal and we’re going to be stuck with these prices, alternative fuels are going to get a big push. Biodiesel will get a long look as a fuel additive at $3/gallon levels, and electric trucks might get more of a push; range is a factor, but if you can make a Porsche muscle-car electric, you’ll have a shot at making a interstate transport truck electric as well.
Sources: http://www.truckinginfo.com/news/news-deta…_category_id=42
http://www.thetrucker.com/News/Stories/201…entinMarch.aspx
Tags: container shipping, container trucking, freight, freight carriers, freight forwarders, freight moving, freight shipping, freight transport, heavy haul, moving freight, shipping freight, trucking companies, trucking services, Trucking transport
Posted in Auto Industry News, Freight Industry News, Momentum Freight, Momentum Freight News, Shipping News, freight shipping | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Survival of the fittest is definitely the rule of business in the freight carrier industry of late and Europe has had just as tough a time dealing with the problems in the industry as the rest of the world. The moves and hard choices that have had to be made by many firms has kept them in business while firms in financial situations that aren’t as strong have fallen by the roadside. The ocean freight industry has started slow-steaming and put freight capacity away in order to reduce costs and keep the ships traveling back and forth with freight. The container trucking industry has begun looking at the newest technologies to help reduce costs and deal with the problem of reducing their carbon footprint on the surface of the Earth.
European freight carriers LD Lines and Transeuropa Ferries have decided to combine business resources in an effort to improve the services each firm supplies to customers in the geographical regions of Europe in which they both do business. The current agreement is for the firms to share space on ferries moving back and forth along the channel run between Ramsgate and Ostend next month. This means that freight capacity on the run will be increased sometime in the second half of 2010. They haven’t provided a firm date for the start of the service, but this will improve freight movements on this run and provide customers using the run with the more space for moving freight.
The freight industry could see more similar agreements between firms looking to take advantage of freight capacity that isn’t being used. Firms can improve their services by using the ability of another firm with overlapping freight services and services that one firm or the other doesn’t have as much capacity for. This kind of agreement is good for the industry as it makes use of the present capacity we have, rather than building additional capacity that is expensive and might not be used to its full. This will definitely reduce overall costs for firms that can use this strategy and should make the freight industry healthier as a whole.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/8504588.stm
http://www.ifw-net.com/freightpubs/ifw/ind…tid=20017746639
http://info.jctrans.com/jcnet/news/osn/2010210850387.shtml
Tags: container trucking, freight, freight carrier, freight carriers, freight forwarders, freight moving, freight shipping, freight transport, heavy haul, moving freight, shipping freight, trucking companies, trucking services, Trucking transport
Posted in Auto Industry News, Freight Industry News, Momentum Freight, Momentum Freight News, Shipping News, freight shipping | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
The old Harry Truman joke was that if you laid all the economists end to end, you couldn’t reach a conclusion; that may well be true of folks who are forecasting container transport volumes.
On one hand, we have the monthly Global Port Tracker report, which is forecasting a 25% rise in containerized traffic from for the first quarter of 2010 compared with the first quarter of 2009. The report is put out by the National Retail Federation, who may well be cheerleading people into stores to buy all those imports.
President Truman always longed for a one-handed economist, because the able-bodied ones always added “On the other hand …” Playing the second hand, we have a major railroad executive expecting international intermodal shipping to be flat for 2010.
However, those two factoids could coexist nicely. If traffic rebounded in the last part of 2009, we could have container trucking going to stores up quite a bit from early 2009 and yet be stable when compared with late 2009. The other prospect, which goes against trends, is for intermodal to get a smaller share of import traffic. Given that we’re seeing an increase in intermodal traffic over the years, a reversal of intermodal market share seems unlikely.
Chrystal balls have a way of getting rather hazy, especially on the economic front. We’re not quite sure what 2010 will bring yet, as there are too many variables at play to make a firm conclusion of where the world economy is going.
Sources:http://www.joc.com/node/416609
http://www.cargobusinessnews.com/news/monday/news1.html
Tags: container transport, container trucking, freight, freight forwarders, freight moving, freight shipping, freight transport, heavy haul, moving freight, shipping freight, trucking companies, trucking services, Trucking transport
Posted in Auto Industry News, Freight Industry News, Momentum Freight, Momentum Freight News, Shipping News, freight shipping | No Comments »
Monday, February 15th, 2010
The interstate transport system will see some changes with the awarding of $8 billion worth of high-speed rail grants. The money being spent will help freight rail companies, as part of the money will be spent improving the tracks which will help both passenger and freight rail service in those areas. However, there are areas of the trucking industry that will be helped as well.
Since faster freight rail service will involve containerized shipping, container trucking firms will be aided. Intermodal facilities will be given a boost as well, as trucking logistics will be moved away from pure trucking and to a truck-train blend. That will be even more the case if the president gets his wish and sees exports double in the next five years; most of those goods would head overseas via containers.
Another trucking boost will be to trucking firms who make local runs along the highways paralleling the high-speed rail lines. President Obama was in Tampa for his announcement today, where a new Tampa-to-Orlando line is being built. Trucks that have to use I-4 between the two cities will be aided, since a lot of car traffic will be taken off the highway and onto the rail lines, possibly allowing the Malfunction Junction of I-4 and I-275 in Tampa to function for a change.
Delivering supplies for the projects will be another boost for trucking; out of that $8 billion, a few billion will be in the form of steel, concrete and other supplies, and most of that will arrive by truck.
Thus, what seems to be a boon to freight rail can be a blessing for trucking as well, for there will be a number of plusses to an improved rail system for the trucking industry.
Sources:http://www.joc.com/node/416331
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte…0012704921.html
Tags: container trucking, freight, freight forwarders, freight moving, freight shipping, freight transport, heavy haul, interstate transport, moving freight, shipping freight, trucking companies, trucking logisitics, trucking services, Trucking transport
Posted in Auto Industry News, Freight Industry News, Momentum Freight, Momentum Freight News, Shipping News, freight shipping | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
In his Monday Night Football days, OJ Simpson once credited Howard Cosell of having “a firm grasp of the obvious;” the same can be said of American Trucking Associations CEO Bill Graves in his assessment of the trucking service industry’s future. He projected a 30% increase in trucking by 2020. That’s nothing to write home about, since that assumes only a 2.65% yearly increase in trucking, which would be about right if we expect about 3% GDP growth a year and that trucking transport’s share of GDP stays stable.
Graves is a bit optimistic about trucking’s market share of transport, forecasting it to go up to 70.9% of total freight tonnage by 2020 compared with 68.3% today. Given the intermodal push to put container trucking onto rail for more of the trip and Washington’s love for rail, that would seem like an high estimate.
However, Graves may be right and not just putting a manageable amount of positive spin on the trucking industry that he’s paid to promote. Another item in the news today was about a Natural Resources Defense Council suit on a proposed rail hub in Missouri, claiming that the Army Corp of Engineers didn’t do enough of an environmental study on the project. Intermodal hubs are going to be more prone to environmental and not-in-my-back-yard protests and may be harder to bring to fruition than it would appear.
The distributed nature of trucking services makes it harder to block via lawsuit and protest. That might well allow it to gain 2.6% in market share over rail over the next decade.
http://www.truckinginfo.com/news/news-deta…s_category_id=6
http://www.thetrucker.com/News/Stories/201…ermodalhub.aspx
Tags: container trucking, trucking services, Trucking transport
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Friday, December 18th, 2009
Container trucking and transport go through a series of checks from port to port. The most effective process is scanning what is inside the container to make sure that nothing illegal is being carried in inside a certain country. Different types of technology are used to scan containers. One of the active systems used nowadays are Acoustic –an ultrasonic device that uses acoustic sensors to detect the reflection of what is inside the container. Once that is done, an image is formed. It is able to identify presence of threat so long as it is in liquid form. It does not however provide material discrimination. It takes about 2-5 minutes for this system to determine what is inside of a certain object within a container.
Gamma Ray is also used in container scanning.
Gamma Rays interact with what is inside a container and these are displayed as images. This system is able to indicate the presence of threat of the “merchandise” inside a container but like the acoustic-based system, it does not provide material discrimination. TNA or Thermal Neutron Activation on the other hand can determine if there is potential threat inside a container and can also provide material discrimination. This sophisticated technology can be either fixed or mobile but it is rather expensive.
X-Ray is more efficient though but it is more expensive than TNA. However, if a container inspection is looking for nuclear weapons and other radioactive materials, the best combination for an inspection system would be neutron and gamma ray detection. It does not stop there though, because if the material is covered by something to hide it from the first inspection device, there would be a need to use x-ray. The ICIS also known as Integrated Container Inspection System has all the above mentioned capabilities –making scanning a breeze for everyone.
Tags: container trucking, freight forwarding
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Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Container trucking information concerns correctly receiving and processing of data related to where the container should be moved. The importance of getting the right information is paramount. When the said chain is examined, it can reveal certain discrepancies that may indicate criminal or terrorist involvement.
The amount of information generated through a container move is a bit daunting and this includes around 30 physical documents and other communication such as electronic messages. What s gathered from such a transaction is then transmitted all throughout the move and can cover a few hundred discrete information or data from the shipper.
Even if container transport companies get a lot of information about a company or an individual shipping certain goods or cargo, the said data is difficult to cross-reference. With container transport companies’ aim of dispatching the container as quickly and accurately as possible, the flow of information from the shipping company to the port suffers from fragmentation. This means that much of the data generated in the early part of the transaction does not reach the Customs of the country where the cargo is being shipped. If the information provided early on is accessed by Customs, it will be easier for them to do their security screening.
At present, the data gathered by all players in the container shipping industry is not harmonized making messaging interoperability impossible. This in itself is a security risk since there is no single controlling entity that regulates the entire transport chain. Because of this, many industry specialists and governments have concluded that the whole container transport system is vulnerable when it comes to terrorist misuse.
Tags: container transport, container trucking
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Thursday, December 17th, 2009
Container trucking and transport are very much vulnerable to attacks but to overcome this, ports all over the globe are advised to scan every container’s contents. Scanning remains as the most effective yet most costly security measure. A hundred percent physical inspection of the container is of course ideal but this remains unattainable given the type of technologies ports and shipping companies have. On top of that, the present trade imperatives do not give much room for a thorough search or scan.
In the UK for example, a mere 7% of all containers coming from other countries are checked. While in the US, only 10% of the millions of containers going in and out its different ports are scanned thoroughly.
But What Is Container Scanning?
As of date, there are only 2 methods of physically inspecting cargo contents. The first method is scanning through the use of NII also known as Non-Intrusive Inspection. NII is much like an X-ray. Utilizing such a device provides an accurate image of what is inside the container. When the container’s cargo or contents are not identified by the X-ray efficiently, the container is then physically opened and checked manually. This process takes up about 8 hours that is why NII is usually used to minimize delays.
NII devices have different capabilities i.e. identifying specific materials such as explosives or drugs or anything radioactive to identifying equipment. NII technology is being developed to further improve its scanning capability so that it would be easier for Customs to detect biological, chemical, nuclear and radioactive materials.
Tags: container trucking
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