Free Republic

Talks have been bubbling in recent months about making major route changes to Interstate 14, but the primary organization behind the push says it’s facing resistance from a West Texas representative and the state’s senior senator. Regional transportation lobby group Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance (MOTRAN) has pushed to change the congressionally approved western route of I-14, also known as the Forts to Ports Highway and the Gulf Coast Strategic Highway System. Forts to Ports aims to connect Fort Bliss in El Paso with Fort Hood in Central Texas and Fort Polk in Louisiana. The plan also connects to military deployment ports...

Global freight forwarder Senator International plans to invest nearly $7.4 million over five years to establish a new facility in Spartanburg County and create 100 jobs. The company, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, has signed a lease on 181,440 square feet of Spartanburg-based Johnson Development Associates’ more than 362,000-square-foot speculative, or spec, building at 769 Flatwood Industrial Drive. Senator International signs were placed near the property’s entrance Monday. The building sits on 53 acres of Johnson Development’s 1,400-acre Flatwood Industrial Park in northern Spartanburg County beside Rite Aid’s 900,000-square-foot distribution center. In its fourth quarter report, Greenville-based commercial broker Lee &...

Customer demand for new equipment is keeping production lines so busy at Stoughton Trailers that the company plans to hire 150 more employees to keep up. Ron Jake, marketing manager for the Stoughton-based designer and manufacturer of semitruck trailers, said Friday that recently secured large orders from new customers are behind the need for more workers. The company needs people for all of its operations from professional positions to crews to assemble trailers. He said hiring will be done gradually over the next several months. “We’ve grown 15 percent when you compare 2016 with 2015, and we’re on pace to...

The problems that sank South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping last week could be just the tip of the iceberg, with the long global downturn leaving the industry burdened by excess capacity. With growth refusing to budge and consumer demand still slack, the world’s freight carriers have more ships than they can fill — a quarter of cargo space lies empty. That has led to fierce price cuts and cut-throat competition, badly impacting the bottom lines of some of the giants of the seas. Those problems played out last week when Hanjin, the world’s seventh-largest shipping firm, filed for bankruptcy in Seoul,...

The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration jointly issued a new regulation last week that is meant to help protect the world from “climate change” by limiting “greenhouse gas emissions” and improving fuel efficiency in medium- and heavy-duty vehicles operated in the United States. The 1,690-page regulation is approximately 700,000 words long. A “regulatory impact analysis” published by EPA and NHTSA estimates the regulation will add an average of as much as $13,749 to the cost of a tractor truck and $1,370 to a trailer, making some tractor-trailer combinations $15,119 more expensive in 2027 than they...

American truckers, and the big rigs they drive, are literally the lifeblood of this nation, transporting food, raw materials and finished goods from one end of the country to the other and back again, delivering what is needed where it is needed when it is needed on a daily basis. But those truckers just had a major roadblock placed in their way, courtesy of President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, and the consequences for not only the trucking industry, but America as a whole, could be devastating. According to The Daily Caller, the EPA just announced on Tuesday that it...

Michael Snyder June 23rd, 2016 When less stuff is being bought, sold and shipped around the country with each passing month, how in the world can the U.S. economy be in “good shape”? Unlike official government statistics which are often based largely on projections, assumptions and numbers seemingly made up out of thin air, the Cass Freight index is based on real transactions conducted by real shipping companies. And what the Cass Freight Index is telling us about the state of the U.S. economy in 2016 lines up perfectly with all of the other statistics that are clearly indicating that...

Steve Jobs went ballistic when public shipping manifests leaked the existence of the iPhone 3G. That’s about the only time something exciting happened in the freight forwarding business. The circulatory system of the global economy is a trillion-dollar industry, yet no one really talks about it, or builds tech for it. That’s what makes freight such a massive disruption opportunity for a startup like Flexport. Transparency begets data, which begets efficiency. Smarter shipping shrinks the physical world the way faster internet shrinks the digital one. New businesses emerge. High bandwidth connections paved the way for Netflix. Now Flexport could make...

We continue to get more evidence that the U.S. economy has entered a major downturn. Just last week, I wrote about how U.S. GDP growth numbers have been declining for three quarters in a row, and previously I wrote about how corporate defaults have surged to their highest level since the last financial crisis. Well, now we are getting some very depressing numbers from the rail industry. As you will see below, U.S. rail traffic was down more than 11 percent from a year ago in April. That is an absolutely catastrophic number, and the U.S. rail industry is feeling...

First, let’s take a look at the reports, then we will take a look at what this may mean for the economy. Class 8 Truck Orders Plunge 39% The Wall Street Journal reports Truck Orders Fall in April. Last month, trucking fleets ordered just 13,500 Class 8 trucks, the big rigs used on long-haul routes, down 16% from March and 39% from a year earlier. It was the fewest net orders in any April since 2009, FTR said. DAT Solutions, an Oregon-based transportation data firm, reported that loads available for dry vans, the most common type of tractor-trailers used for...

292 Union Pacific engines idled in Arizona Desert Total US rail traffic in April plunged 11.8% from a year ago, the Association of American Railroads reported today. Carloads of bulk commodities such as coal, oil, grains, and chemicals plummeted 16.1% to 944,339 units. - snip - Only five of the 20 commodity categories saw gains. Of the decliners, coal was the biggest. But petroleum products also plunged 25%, and grain mill products dropped 7%. Even without coal, carloads were down 3% year-over-year.

Few things are as essential to economic growth and development as our nation’s roads. In a state as expansive as Arizona, riders understand the importance of having sound infrastructure, especially when it fails, as it did with the recent bridge collapse on I-10 in California not far from the Arizona border that continues to impact travelers across our state and region. Throughout history, providing for our nation’s infrastructure has been a central priority for both political parties. And, since President Dwight Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System in 1956, our roads and bridges have served as the backbone to our...

Business is booming, fuel prices are down. So it’s time to start thinking about the next threat to the industry: 3D printing. Advocates of 3D printing have said it can transform manufacturing. This week, a new startup company announced a new 3D printing technique it says may actually deliver on that promise. In traditional 3D printing, the machine "prints" layers of material to create a 3D object. This takes time and leaves ripples showing where those layers were laid down. But what if you could "grow" an object out of a pool of liquid, much like the T-1000 rising from...

This is really interesting........ he freight rail across Eurasia officially launched on Thursday night, with a cargo train leaving on its journey from Chongqing to Duisburg, Germany, filled with laptops and LCD screens scheduled to arrive in Europe two weeks after leaving China. The 11,179 kilometers long track will be running through the far western Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, and Poland, before finally reaching Germany. China Daily reports that the rail link to Europe will cut transportation time dramatically, compared to the sea trade route: The route offers a major shortcut to the more traditional sea trade...

China will "top out" a new skyscraper every five days for the next three years as it continues to embark on the biggest building boom in history, according to newly published research. The 2011 China Skyscraper City List shows the speed with which China is redrawing the skylines of its major cities as it builds houses and offices for the millions of people migrating from a rural to urban lifestyle over the coming decades. Compiled by "Motian City", a Chinese website for skyscraper enthusiasts, the list finds that China and Taiwan currently boast five of the world top 10 tallest...

Land is being cleared, leveled for new bypass track in Vancouver Excavators are eating into a slope above BNSF Railway’s main line in the Fruit Valley neighborhood. The work is to prepare the site for a 3.2-mile-long set of bypass tracks designed to help ease a railroad chokepoint in Vancouver. The new line will run along the east side of the BNSF main line from downtown Vancouver all the way to the Fruit Valley Road overpass. Contractors demolished two old houses on the west-facing slope last week. BNSF is contracting to do the earthwork north of the 39th Street overpass,...

Freight And Truck Traffic Point To Recovery by: Edward Harrison June 10, 2010 One common metric used by analysts to gauge how the economy is doing comes from freight or rail tonnage. If the economy is doing well, then more goods will be shipped via trucks and trains. This is exactly what is happening. Andy Lees showed this via a few Bloomberg charts in a note earlier today. Of note: The seasonally adjusted truck tonnage index is at its highest level since September 2008. US railcar container index which is just 4% off its all time high. The ConTex container...

Shippers Are Blowing Off European Problems And Rushing Vessels Back Into Action Vincent Fernando, CFA May 25, 2010, 1:20 PM Despite the concerns about Europe, global trade continues to show signs of a continued rebound. For example, average freight rates and volume reported by the container shipping company NOL (a leading player) have both continued to rise thanks to strength between North America and Asia. Moreover, ship owners are bringing vessels back into action based on demand growth expectations. Fearnly Fonds: The idle container fleet fell to 4.1% or 549,000 TEUs (263 ships) from 5.3% or 306 ships two weeks...

On rail lines, freight trains have priority over passenger service, which frequently causes delays for Amtrak customers. Freight also appears to have the upper hand when it comes to money for improving service and infrastructure. Recent federal grant awards to Western Pennsylvania have included $35 million for improvements for cargo-hauling trains and just $750,000 for those that move people. But people stand to benefit from the freight investment because it will mean fewer trucks on congested highways, less pollution and lower road maintenance costs, railroad officials told a state House committee on Wednesday. ~~~SNIP~~~ The money will be used to...

The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation on Tuesday to impose sanctions on foreign companies that help supply gasoline to Iran, a move lawmakers hope will deter Tehran from pursuing its nuclear program. The bill authorizes President Barack Obama to levy sanctions on energy companies that directly provide gasoline to Iran along with the firms that provide insurance and tankers to facilitate the fuel shipments. The Senate is likely to approve a similar bill, but it is uncertain how soon it will vote.