News for the seafarers
Vineyard Wind is one of the first commercial-scale offshore wind projects under construction in the US and at completion will generate some 800 megawatts of power.
The railroad is reducing demurrage fees and restoring additional free time that was eliminated in the past two years as international intermodal volumes have fallen sharply from East Coast ports.
Slow-steaming has come to the fore of late as ocean carriers seek help in absorbing overcapacity, but analyst Lars Jensen says the common refrain that slower speeds also help to improve schedule reliability doesn’t hold water.
An index based on truck counts at large truckload carriers dropped nearly 5% in the first quarter from late 2022 as those carriers adjusted to a softer market and lower contract and spot rates.
An emerging trend of sending smaller shipments more frequently is leading to growing demand for LCL services across the major trade lanes.
Union Pacific’s launch of direct intermodal service from Houston comes two weeks after competitor BNSF announced it would begin a new service from the port’s Barbours Cut marine terminal.
Shippers and port executives say the post-COVID shift of cargo back to Hong Kong is being hampered by the global slump in demand as developed countries grapple with elevated inventories and inflationary pressures.
Weeks after starting a new daily train between central Mexico and Chicago, CPKC is introducing 1,000 temperature-controlled containers to the service in a bid to court freight from reefer shippers.
The long drop in truckload spot market rates has eased, revealing a soft bottom for pricing, but more demand is needed to fuel any upswing benefiting truckers, observers say.
Thanks to a recent GRI push, average contract rates for India to the US have seen modest gains in recent weeks and carriers are now looking to build around that limited success.