100, Plus

A friend once told us that one advantage of growing older was that you get to see how things turned out.

By that measure, Traffic World and its readers have had a front-row seat to perhaps the greatest show of the past 100 years.

Formed in 1907 when transportation across the United States was still very truly a Wild West affair, Traffic World arrived at the dawn of a new era that saw dramatic changes in the way goods are moved.

But the real reason The Traffic Bulletin was launched was because of the burgeoning field of regulation that came about with the Hepburn Act of 1906, a law that sought to bring order to chaotic and contentious shipper-carrier relations on the railroads (How''d that turn out?).

The Hepburn Act also set a path for national transportation regulation that was erected and maintained over decades, and dismantled with seeming suddenness in the late 1970s.

It wasn''t that sudden, of course, and some argue that maintaining deregulation has been even tougher than maintaining the enormous superstructure of collective ratemaking, bureaucracy and filed tariffs that were a hallmark of regulation. Just a few weeks ago, ocean carriers on the trans-Pacific sought the right to make collective decisions on capacity, proving that some still believe that a free market is a luxury to be enjoyed only when times are good.

Traffic World has stood for free market through the era of regulation and through the nearly 30 years since deregulation. The free market in transportation, logistics and trade that Traffic World has covered, explained and advocated has been a backbone of economic strength for the country. It has bred efficiency in transportation and innovation in logistics and supply chain management.

The editors of Traffic World joined that movement of innovation after 1980 as they transformed the publication from a paper of regulatory record to a business magazine covering a dynamic field of carriers, shippers and everyone else with an interest in getting goods from source to sale.

It''s said that the business Traffic World once covered was so important to the country, when President Harding had a problem in 1921 with an Interstate Commerce Commission decision he left the White House and walked over to the ICC headquarters. That era may be gone, but we hear echoes of the weight of the country''s transportation economy today when President Obama talks about a stimulus plan with large funds for infrastructure.

We''ll continue to cover that transportation and trade economy, starting next week within the pages of The Journal of Commerce as Traffic World and its venerable sister publication begin publishing together under the single name, The Journal of Commerce. We will offer a broader field of coverage that will take in the larger supply chains that are the mark of the 21st century.

Subscribers of Traffic World will get that newly expanded publication, along with the names and the coverage they''ve come to expect. And they will get the same commitment the editors of Traffic World made back on April 13, 1907: The contents of this paper tell its story.