<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">The LTL carrier said it will open 15 to 20 terminals this year in a cadence that will help improve efficiency in its network.</div>

The LTL carrier said it will open 15 to 20 terminals this year in a cadence that will help improve efficiency in its network.

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<div>US less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier Saia is not only buying new terminals but also relocating older facilities to new sites as it fine-tunes its expanding network. “These relocated terminals often offer multiple benefits, including better strategic position in the market and added capacity to better serve existing customers,” Saia CEO Frederick J. Holzgrefe said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call last week. “As we continue to absorb the growth in volumes compared to the prior year, we’ve continued investing in our network to maintain our services while also optimizing how we provide the service with our expanding line haul and driving...

US less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier Saia is not only buying new terminals but also relocating older facilities to new sites as it fine-tunes its expanding network. “These relocated terminals often offer multiple benefits, including better strategic position in the market and added capacity to better serve existing customers,” Saia CEO Frederick J. Holzgrefe said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call last week. “As we continue to absorb the growth in volumes compared to the prior year, we’ve continued investing in our network to maintain our services while also optimizing how we provide the service with our expanding line haul and driving teams,” Holzgrefe added. Saia has proved to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the collapse of Yellow last July, increasing its average daily shipment count nearly 16% year over year in the first quarter to approximately 33,000 shipments per day. In April, daily shipments are up 17%. That’s in a market where underlying trends are still “lackluster,” Holzgrefe said. Saia also acquired 28 terminals from Yellow through auctions late last year, and the company is preparing to open them. “We’ve opened seven new locations in the past 12 months, and our employee count has grown significantly, allowing us to staff the new locations and enabling us to handle the growth in volumes,” said Holzgrefe. “Our plans to open 15 to 20 terminals in total this year remain, and we’ll also continue relocating some existing terminals as we’ve done with four so far this year,” he added. As a result, Saia’s capital expenditures this year are expected to hit $1 billion. “We’ve already opened four new facilities in April alone, and we plan to open two relocated facilities before the end of the quarter,” Holzgrefe said. Saia will open additional terminals in the Great Plains region this summer, building network density in that part of the US, he said. Ongoing LTL restructuring Saia’s terminal expansion is part of the restructuring of the LTL sector in the wake of the failure of Yellow, which until last July was the third-largest US LTL provider, owning four carrier subsidiaries. Nearly 50,000 daily shipments moved by Yellow were reallocated throughout the LTL sector last year, and 163 Yellow terminals, to date, have been sold at auction. Saia acquired 28 terminals from Yellow, while competitors Estes Express Lines purchased 29, XPO bought 28 and Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings acquired 25. Several other carriers, large and small, acquired smaller numbers of properties . All of those companies are moving quickly to refurbish and reopen the Yellow terminals. Knight-Swift last week said it plans to open 32 terminals this year. XPO opened three of the 28 facilities it acquired from Yellow this month. Estes opened three terminals this month and plans to open the rest of its terminals acquired from Yellow by the end of the year. If they occur as planned, the reopenings will reintroduce a sizeable amount of capacity to the LTL market by the year’s end. That capacity was down 10% year over year in March, according to transportation research firm SJ Consulting Group. Scheduled terminal reopenings The terminal reopenings aren’t happening all at once, and the scheduling of their arrival is important, Saia executives said. “We view these as long-term investments, with multi-year returns, a 10-year sort of horizon,” Holzgrefe said. The company’s initial focus is on locations where there’s “an immediate service lift for our customers,” such as in Trenton, NJ, and Garland, Texas, said Holzgrefe. Those facilities “are simply in markets that we already are serving and to some extent we’re doing it inefficiently,” he told Wall Street analysts. Over the summer, Saia plans to open terminals in the Great Plains states. To date, there’s been little to no impact on pricing, either at Saia or in the broader LTL market, Saia executives said. The company said it received an average 9.2% rate increase in its first-quarter annual contract renewals. The US long-distance LTL producer price index (PPI), a measure of all-inclusive shipper-paid LTL pricing, was up 5.2% year over year in March. The LTL PPI is down 5.4% from its June 2022 peak. “If we can maintain the level of service that justifies the rate increase, that’s where we’re most successful,” Holzgrefe said. “And if you look across the industry, I think people are trying to adopt similar strategies because fundamentally, additional volume at a lower rate in this business doesn’t make any sense.” Contact William B. Cassidy at bill.cassidy@spglobal.com .

Trucking News

Surface

Saia opening LTL terminals as it absorbs double-digit volume gains

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">With the 62% wage increase being an unprecedented offer to the union, the USMX will be hard-pressed to give in on other key demands the ILA is making, sources say, especially as the offer merely reinforces the longstanding disconnect in the view of ocean carriers between high US port costs primarily driven by longshore labor and low productivity.</div>

With the 62% wage increase being an unprecedented offer to the union, the USMX will be hard-pressed to give in on other key demands the ILA is making, sources say, especially as the offer merely reinforces the longstanding disconnect in the view of ocean carriers between high US port costs primarily driven by longshore labor and low productivity.

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<div class="phx-topic">The 90-day clock has started for the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and US East and Gulf coast longshore employers, who haven’t been at the contract negotiating table since June, to restart the talks and hash out details on a range of complex issues including automation, royalties, work rules and job jurisdiction. Salary increases — <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/ila-usmx-agree-on-new-wage-offer-and-contract-extension-that-reopens-ports-5741882">as were agreed to in a tentative deal to end the three-day strike last week</a> — seem pedestrian compared with the scale of challenge facing both sides. The deal on wages that ended the strike was merely “provisional,” according to one management source, just one element of those several others that still need to be negotiated between now and the new deadline of Jan. 15. Yet several factors suggest agreement on those points in upcoming negotiations, which are expected to resume within weeks, will be difficult to achieve, according to sources. The issues are detailed and complex. Still, the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) and the ILA have not sat down face to face since the union suspended negotiations last June, despite over 10 failed attempts by the USMX to restart negotiations. The union’s lack of response <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/usmx-tries-to-force-ila-back-to-contract-talks-with-nlrb-complaint-5736646">led the USMX on Sept. 26 to file an unfair labor practices case with the National Labor Relations Board</a> seeking to force the union back to the table. The inability of the USMX to get formal negotiations restarted continued throughout the intensive two-week stretch leading up to the strike and over the course of the three-day work stoppage, where what was described as multiple efforts by employers to discuss the wage issue directly with the union, rather than through Biden administration intermediaries, never resulted in face-to-face dialogue with the union. With the 62% wage increase being an unprecedented offer to the union, the USMX will be hard-pressed to give in on other key demands the ILA is making, sources say, especially as the offer merely reinforces the longstanding disconnect in the view of ocean carriers between high US port costs primarily driven by longshore labor and low productivity. That is why, sources say, the USMX will do its best to resist the union’s demand for a rolling back of employers’ automation rights as enshrined in prior contracts. The ILA is seeking <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=255141">“absolute, airtight language</a> that there be no automation or semi-automation,” according to ILA President Harold Daggett, a longtime vocal opponent of automation. If that language is agreed to in a final contract, it would disallow future implementation of semi-automation installed at ports in Virginia and at Global Container Terminal in Bayonne, NJ. <h3>Preserving growth opportunities </h3>The reason why the USMX will resist that demand is to preserve growth opportunities in the US market. Carriers want to be able to grow, but with hardly any new terminals being built — the Hugh K. Leatherman facility that opened in Charleston in 2021 was the first new US terminal opened since 2009 – a key means of facilitating container TEU growth is by densifying terminals, and the only way to do that is through automation. That is not to say that every port aspires to automate – most do not given the cost – but carriers do not want to forestall the possibility because if they give in now, they may never get back the right to automate at a later date. “It is critical that terminals have the capability to densify as American consumer demand and exports continue to rise,” the USMX confidentially told the Biden administration last week, according to documents shared with the Journal of Commerce. “There is not enough land or berth capacity in US ports to handle future trade growth without implementing new technology.” Finally, the USMX appears in no mood to concede on key points such as automation after what was described as a demoralizing experience over the last week, when they were prevented at every turn from returning to direct bargaining with the union — a practice that was standard procedure for decades in negotiating prior contracts — and ultimately saw their unified position on wages and the need to negotiate in person disintegrate on Thursday on orders from some carrier headquarters. <h3>Pressure from the White House </h3>The USMX board members — both carriers and marine terminal operators — displayed unity in holding firm on their approximately 50% wage increase offer despite intense pressure during multiple virtual and in-person meetings with the Biden administration over the past two weeks. They were then overruled on Oct. 3 by carrier head offices following a group CEO-only virtual meeting held early in the early morning hours of Oct. 3 EST, according to one source. That White House pressure manifested itself in what management sources said was a two-week, gradually intensifying campaign by Biden administration officials, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients. What started as what executives described as a polite phone call from Su to the USMX a few weeks before the strike led to a series of more senior-level meetings with industry officials and ultimately to a group CEO-only conference call, after which the tentative deal was swiftly concluded. It included USMX senior staff and board members being summoned to Washington on short notice as well as separate conference calls with US-based carrier CEOs and marine terminal operator CEOs. Throughout the series of meetings, according to sources, Biden administration officials consistently voiced the same or similar messages as that of the union: basically, that because carriers earned record profits during the pandemic, it is their duty pay up to avoid further disruption at the ports. Ever-present, officials said, was the upcoming presidential election and what appeared to be a determination by the administration to avoid a politically damaging distraction in the final weeks of the campaign, which is what they feared from a protracted strike. Now, USMX will have to regroup, as negotiations with the union will likely resume in the coming weeks after what had been a cordial, even cooperative working relationship that led to several contracts and labor peace since 1977 shattered over the course of the last several months, culminating in the strike last week. Contact Peter Tirschwell at <a href="mailto:peter.tirschwell@spglobal.com">peter.tirschwell@spglobal.com</a>. </div>

The 90-day clock has started for the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and US East and Gulf coast longshore employers, who haven’t been at the contract negotiating table since June, to restart the talks and hash out details on a range of complex issues including automation, royalties, work rules and job jurisdiction. Salary increases — as were agreed to in a tentative deal to end the three-day strike last week — seem pedestrian compared with the scale of challenge facing both sides. The deal on wages that ended the strike was merely “provisional,” according to one management source, just one element of those several others that still need to be negotiated between now and the new deadline of Jan. 15. Yet several factors suggest agreement on those points in upcoming negotiations, which are expected to resume within weeks, will be difficult to achieve, according to sources. The issues are detailed and complex. Still, the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) and the ILA have not sat down face to face since the union suspended negotiations last June, despite over 10 failed attempts by the USMX to restart negotiations. The union’s lack of response led the USMX on Sept. 26 to file an unfair labor practices case with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to force the union back to the table. The inability of the USMX to get formal negotiations restarted continued throughout the intensive two-week stretch leading up to the strike and over the course of the three-day work stoppage, where what was described as multiple efforts by employers to discuss the wage issue directly with the union, rather than through Biden administration intermediaries, never resulted in face-to-face dialogue with the union. With the 62% wage increase being an unprecedented offer to the union, the USMX will be hard-pressed to give in on other key demands the ILA is making, sources say, especially as the offer merely reinforces the longstanding disconnect in the view of ocean carriers between high US port costs primarily driven by longshore labor and low productivity. That is why, sources say, the USMX will do its best to resist the union’s demand for a rolling back of employers’ automation rights as enshrined in prior contracts. The ILA is seeking “absolute, airtight language that there be no automation or semi-automation,” according to ILA President Harold Daggett, a longtime vocal opponent of automation. If that language is agreed to in a final contract, it would disallow future implementation of semi-automation installed at ports in Virginia and at Global Container Terminal in Bayonne, NJ. Preserving growth opportunities The reason why the USMX will resist that demand is to preserve growth opportunities in the US market. Carriers want to be able to grow, but with hardly any new terminals being built — the Hugh K. Leatherman facility that opened in Charleston in 2021 was the first new US terminal opened since 2009 – a key means of facilitating container TEU growth is by densifying terminals, and the only way to do that is through automation. That is not to say that every port aspires to automate – most do not given the cost – but carriers do not want to forestall the possibility because if they give in now, they may never get back the right to automate at a later date. “It is critical that terminals have the capability to densify as American consumer demand and exports continue to rise,” the USMX confidentially told the Biden administration last week, according to documents shared with the Journal of Commerce. “There is not enough land or berth capacity in US ports to handle future trade growth without implementing new technology.” Finally, the USMX appears in no mood to concede on key points such as automation after what was described as a demoralizing experience over the last week, when they were prevented at every turn from returning to direct bargaining with the union — a practice that was standard procedure for decades in negotiating prior contracts — and ultimately saw their unified position on wages and the need to negotiate in person disintegrate on Thursday on orders from some carrier headquarters. Pressure from the White House The USMX board members — both carriers and marine terminal operators — displayed unity in holding firm on their approximately 50% wage increase offer despite intense pressure during multiple virtual and in-person meetings with the Biden administration over the past two weeks. They were then overruled on Oct. 3 by carrier head offices following a group CEO-only virtual meeting held early in the early morning hours of Oct. 3 EST, according to one source. That White House pressure manifested itself in what management sources said was a two-week, gradually intensifying campaign by Biden administration officials, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients. What started as what executives described as a polite phone call from Su to the USMX a few weeks before the strike led to a series of more senior-level meetings with industry officials and ultimately to a group CEO-only conference call, after which the tentative deal was swiftly concluded. It included USMX senior staff and board members being summoned to Washington on short notice as well as separate conference calls with US-based carrier CEOs and marine terminal operator CEOs. Throughout the series of meetings, according to sources, Biden administration officials consistently voiced the same or similar messages as that of the union: basically, that because carriers earned record profits during the pandemic, it is their duty pay up to avoid further disruption at the ports. Ever-present, officials said, was the upcoming presidential election and what appeared to be a determination by the administration to avoid a politically damaging distraction in the final weeks of the campaign, which is what they feared from a protracted strike. Now, USMX will have to regroup, as negotiations with the union will likely resume in the coming weeks after what had been a cordial, even cooperative working relationship that led to several contracts and labor peace since 1977 shattered over the course of the last several months, culminating in the strike last week. Contact Peter Tirschwell at peter.tirschwell@spglobal.com .

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Maritime

Despite tentative wage deal, USMX and ILA have bumpy road ahead on other key issues

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Strong demand on the trans-Pacific and Asia-Europe trade lanes through a volatile third quarter has left the Chinese carrier on course for another highly profitable year.</div>

Strong demand on the trans-Pacific and Asia-Europe trade lanes through a volatile third quarter has left the Chinese carrier on course for another highly profitable year.

<div class="phx-topic">Cosco Shipping expects to report a net profit of $6.17 billion for the first nine months of 2024, a 67% increase year over year, with its performance lifted by strong third-quarter peak season demand on the trans-Pacific and Asia-Europe trade lanes, the China state-owned carrier said Monday. In a preliminary filing to the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges, Cosco revealed its earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) for the nine-month period is expected to increase 63% year over year to almost $8 billion. The estimated earnings were released as Cosco Shipping subsidiary OOCL reported its third-quarter operational update in which a 73% increase in revenue and elevated freight rates drove up the top line result despite a moderate 3.6% rise in volumes. Profit and loss figures were not provided. OOCL reported overall third-quarter revenue of $3 billion and volume of 1.9 million TEUs as average revenue per TEU increased 67.6% year over year. The trans-Pacific dominated OOCL’s Q3 result, with revenue of $1.2 billion — double the same period last year — and volume on the trade lane up 15.6% at 551,896 TEUs. Asia-Europe revenue also doubled in the third quarter despite volume falling 12% to 347,135 TEUs as shippers moved cargo early to mitigate Red Sea-related delays. OOCL’s largest trade lane by volume — intra-Asia combined with Asia-Australasia — reported a 5.3% drop in Q3 volume at 922,219 TEUs, although revenue was up 48% at $880 million. Trans-Atlantic volume was down 5.5% at 111,591 TEUs with revenue falling 10.4% to $144 million. The nine-month performance kept OOCL firmly on course for another strong annual result, with total revenue up 23.4% at $7.3 billion. January to September volume rose 2.6% to 5.6 million TEUs and the average revenue per TEU was up 20.3% compared with the same period last year. The trans-Pacific and intra-Asia/Australasia trades did the heavy lifting in the nine-month period. OOCL’s trans-Pacific volume rose 8.3% to 1.5 million TEUs and revenue increased 51% to $2.9 billion, while intra-Asia/Australasia volume of 2.7 million TEUs was up 7.7% and revenue increased 9.2% to $2.1 billion. OOCL’s Asia-Europe volume through September dropped 12.4% to just over 1 million TEUs with revenue rising 36.4% to $1.8 billion, while trans-Atlantic volume fell 4% to 359,784 TEUs and revenue slumped 36% to $452 million. Contact Greg Knowler at <a href="mailto:greg.knowler@spglobal.com. ">greg.knowler@spglobal.com.</a></div>

Cosco Shipping expects to report a net profit of $6.17 billion for the first nine months of 2024, a 67% increase year over year, with its performance lifted by strong third-quarter peak season demand on the trans-Pacific and Asia-Europe trade lanes, the China state-owned carrier said Monday. In a preliminary filing to the Hong Kong and Shanghai exchanges, Cosco revealed its earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) for the nine-month period is expected to increase 63% year over year to almost $8 billion. The estimated earnings were released as Cosco Shipping subsidiary OOCL reported its third-quarter operational update in which a 73% increase in revenue and elevated freight rates drove up the top line result despite a moderate 3.6% rise in volumes. Profit and loss figures were not provided. OOCL reported overall third-quarter revenue of $3 billion and volume of 1.9 million TEUs as average revenue per TEU increased 67.6% year over year. The trans-Pacific dominated OOCL’s Q3 result, with revenue of $1.2 billion — double the same period last year — and volume on the trade lane up 15.6% at 551,896 TEUs. Asia-Europe revenue also doubled in the third quarter despite volume falling 12% to 347,135 TEUs as shippers moved cargo early to mitigate Red Sea-related delays. OOCL’s largest trade lane by volume — intra-Asia combined with Asia-Australasia — reported a 5.3% drop in Q3 volume at 922,219 TEUs, although revenue was up 48% at $880 million. Trans-Atlantic volume was down 5.5% at 111,591 TEUs with revenue falling 10.4% to $144 million. The nine-month performance kept OOCL firmly on course for another strong annual result, with total revenue up 23.4% at $7.3 billion. January to September volume rose 2.6% to 5.6 million TEUs and the average revenue per TEU was up 20.3% compared with the same period last year. The trans-Pacific and intra-Asia/Australasia trades did the heavy lifting in the nine-month period. OOCL’s trans-Pacific volume rose 8.3% to 1.5 million TEUs and revenue increased 51% to $2.9 billion, while intra-Asia/Australasia volume of 2.7 million TEUs was up 7.7% and revenue increased 9.2% to $2.1 billion. OOCL’s Asia-Europe volume through September dropped 12.4% to just over 1 million TEUs with revenue rising 36.4% to $1.8 billion, while trans-Atlantic volume fell 4% to 359,784 TEUs and revenue slumped 36% to $452 million. Contact Greg Knowler at greg.knowler@spglobal.com.

Peak season surge drives up Cosco’s estimated nine-month earnings

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Shippers on the trans-Atlantic will find space in short supply by the end of October with bottlenecks on both ends of the trade lane reducing capacity.</div>

Shippers on the trans-Atlantic will find space in short supply by the end of October with bottlenecks on both ends of the trade lane reducing capacity.

<div class="phx-topic">Ship delays resulting from the three-day strike at ports along the US East and Gulf coasts last week will come on top of port congestion across several European hubs, significantly reducing the available trans-Atlantic capacity this month. Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis noted that capacity from Mediterranean and North European routes was already heading for a 10% to 14% reduction by the end of October, but additional post-strike delays in clearing waiting ships would dramatically increase the capacity cuts. “We can see that North European shippers should prepare for a capacity reduction of up to 14% in week 44,” the analyst noted in its Sunday Spotlight newsletter. “If clearing the USEC congestion adds another four days, this could potentially reach a temporary capacity reduction of up to 30%.” The three-day strike will reduce Mediterranean-US East Coast capacity by 10% in week 43 starting Oct. 21, with a full-week effect from worsening congestion resulting in a short-term 24% reduction in capacity, Sea-Intelligence noted. Maritime employers and the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/ila-usmx-agree-on-new-wage-offer-and-contract-extension-that-reopens-ports-5741882">reached a tentative deal</a> to reopen container terminals at East and Gulf coast ports on Oct. 3 following a strike that began at midnight Oct. 1. Ports up and down the US East and Gulf coasts <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/us-east-gulf-coast-ports-confident-of-smooth-post-strike-reopening-5742607">expect a generally smooth resumption of cargo flows</a>, noting that they have spare capacity and expect minimal disruptions in processing a <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/ships-backing-up-outside-of-strike-shut-us-east-gulf-ports-5741090">backlog of more than 60 ships</a>. Reduced volumes through the ports due to frontloading and diversions ahead of the strike threat — and the relatively short duration of the stoppage — will make the return to pre-disruption fluidity a matter of days, rather than weeks. <h3>Domino effect </h3>But the domino effect on the trans-Atlantic trade lane will be exacerbated by port congestion in North Europe. Kuehne + Nagel’s digital ocean shipping platform SeaExplorer indicates “heavily disrupted operations” at Hamburg. “The yard utilization is at 112% with back-to-back vessel arrivals until mid-October,” a SeaExplorer advisory noted, with rail waiting times at Container Terminal Burchardkai (CTB), Hamburg’s largest terminal, nearly 14 hours. Operations at Southampton in the UK are also classed as “heavily disrupted” by the K+N platform as high import volumes are creating bottlenecks in clearing containers, with disruption also reported at London Gateway. Several ports in the Mediterranean are experiencing “slightly disrupted operations,” including Barcelona and transshipment hub Algeciras. The inland transport of containers in Europe is also being affected by severe flooding that last month impacted transportation networks and container terminal depots in central Europe. Seasonal low water levels on the Rhine River are also affecting container movement. Inland barge operator Contargo last week reported handling delays of 73 hours at Rotterdam and 33 hours at Antwerp. Rate levels on the trans-Atlantic took off last week, with North Europe to the US East Coast prices rising $600 to $2,700 per FEU, up 157% year over year, according to Platts, a sister company of the Journal of Commerce within S&amp;P Global. Contact Greg Knowler at <a href="mailto:greg.knowler@spglobal.com">greg.knowler@spglobal.com</a>. </div>

Ship delays resulting from the three-day strike at ports along the US East and Gulf coasts last week will come on top of port congestion across several European hubs, significantly reducing the available trans-Atlantic capacity this month. Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis noted that capacity from Mediterranean and North European routes was already heading for a 10% to 14% reduction by the end of October, but additional post-strike delays in clearing waiting ships would dramatically increase the capacity cuts. “We can see that North European shippers should prepare for a capacity reduction of up to 14% in week 44,” the analyst noted in its Sunday Spotlight newsletter. “If clearing the USEC congestion adds another four days, this could potentially reach a temporary capacity reduction of up to 30%.” The three-day strike will reduce Mediterranean-US East Coast capacity by 10% in week 43 starting Oct. 21, with a full-week effect from worsening congestion resulting in a short-term 24% reduction in capacity, Sea-Intelligence noted. Maritime employers and the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) reached a tentative deal to reopen container terminals at East and Gulf coast ports on Oct. 3 following a strike that began at midnight Oct. 1. Ports up and down the US East and Gulf coasts expect a generally smooth resumption of cargo flows , noting that they have spare capacity and expect minimal disruptions in processing a backlog of more than 60 ships . Reduced volumes through the ports due to frontloading and diversions ahead of the strike threat — and the relatively short duration of the stoppage — will make the return to pre-disruption fluidity a matter of days, rather than weeks. Domino effect But the domino effect on the trans-Atlantic trade lane will be exacerbated by port congestion in North Europe. Kuehne + Nagel’s digital ocean shipping platform SeaExplorer indicates “heavily disrupted operations” at Hamburg. “The yard utilization is at 112% with back-to-back vessel arrivals until mid-October,” a SeaExplorer advisory noted, with rail waiting times at Container Terminal Burchardkai (CTB), Hamburg’s largest terminal, nearly 14 hours. Operations at Southampton in the UK are also classed as “heavily disrupted” by the K+N platform as high import volumes are creating bottlenecks in clearing containers, with disruption also reported at London Gateway. Several ports in the Mediterranean are experiencing “slightly disrupted operations,” including Barcelona and transshipment hub Algeciras. The inland transport of containers in Europe is also being affected by severe flooding that last month impacted transportation networks and container terminal depots in central Europe. Seasonal low water levels on the Rhine River are also affecting container movement. Inland barge operator Contargo last week reported handling delays of 73 hours at Rotterdam and 33 hours at Antwerp. Rate levels on the trans-Atlantic took off last week, with North Europe to the US East Coast prices rising $600 to $2,700 per FEU, up 157% year over year, according to Platts, a sister company of the Journal of Commerce within S&P Global. Contact Greg Knowler at greg.knowler@spglobal.com .

Trans-Atlantic

US port strike, Europe congestion heralds trans-Atlantic capacity crunch

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Figuring out why growth in intermodal volumes between Mexico and the US is significantly lagging that of trucking demand will be crucial to unlocking one of intermodal’s biggest growth opportunities, writes Journal of Commerce analyst Larry Gross.</div>

Figuring out why growth in intermodal volumes between Mexico and the US is significantly lagging that of trucking demand will be crucial to unlocking one of intermodal’s biggest growth opportunities, writes Journal of Commerce analyst Larry Gross.

<div class="phx-topic">Tracking intermodal rail volumes in the major North American geographies, one thing that catches the eye is the relatively poor performance of intermodal in the US-Mexico cross border market. <div class="wrapper-narrow float-right-element"><img src="/images/phoenix/5743859_0.1.jpg"></img></div>Cross-border steel-wheel revenue moves fell 8.5% year over year in the first eight months of 2024 and have run behind 2023 levels every month so far in 2024 except for April, according to data from the Intermodal Association of North America’s (IANA’s) European Technical Standard Order (ETSO) database. This seems at odds with news coverage speaking of a “boom” in the volume of freight crossing the border, driven by near-shoring and “tariff washing” of Chinese goods moving to the US via Mexico. What does the data say? <div class="wrapper-narrow"><dynamic-object type="jocchartid" resource-id="0c651159-75ec-4432-8bdb-1de275383c98"></dynamic-object></div>According to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the number of “loaded truck containers” — a data set that includes dry vans, refrigerated trucks, flatbeds, etc., both straight trucks and semis — entering the US from Mexico grew 93% year over year in the first half, a clear signal that the market is indeed booming. But again, this compares with an 8.5% decline in cross-border intermodal volumes, which begs the question: why is there such a large disparity in demand for trucking and intermodal? One theory is that there is a reporting issue in the IANA numbers. It is possible that volume is being trucked across the border and then put on the rails to travel farther inland. But if that were the case, revenue moves out of the US South Central region would be rising quickly, and they aren’t. In fact, year-to-date through August, outbound South Central revenue moves have ticked up 1.2%, a substandard performance compared with the 2.9% year-over-year gain in total domestic volumes for the same period. It could be an issue of capacity — i.e., a lack of containers being made available in Mexico to load — due to the heavy imbalance between northbound and southbound traffic. Or it could be a lack of demand in a market where the current intermodal value proposition of service consistency, speed and savings versus truck is simply missing the target. Either way, answering this question will be important for railroads and intermodal providers, as the cross-border market represents one of the major growth opportunities currently available to intermodal. Contact Larry Gross at <a href="mailto:lgross@intermodalindepth.com">lgross@intermodalindepth.com</a>. </div>

Tracking intermodal rail volumes in the major North American geographies, one thing that catches the eye is the relatively poor performance of intermodal in the US-Mexico cross border market. Cross-border steel-wheel revenue moves fell 8.5% year over year in the first eight months of 2024 and have run behind 2023 levels every month so far in 2024 except for April, according to data from the Intermodal Association of North America’s (IANA’s) European Technical Standard Order (ETSO) database. This seems at odds with news coverage speaking of a “boom” in the volume of freight crossing the border, driven by near-shoring and “tariff washing” of Chinese goods moving to the US via Mexico. What does the data say? According to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the number of “loaded truck containers” — a data set that includes dry vans, refrigerated trucks, flatbeds, etc., both straight trucks and semis — entering the US from Mexico grew 93% year over year in the first half, a clear signal that the market is indeed booming. But again, this compares with an 8.5% decline in cross-border intermodal volumes, which begs the question: why is there such a large disparity in demand for trucking and intermodal? One theory is that there is a reporting issue in the IANA numbers. It is possible that volume is being trucked across the border and then put on the rails to travel farther inland. But if that were the case, revenue moves out of the US South Central region would be rising quickly, and they aren’t. In fact, year-to-date through August, outbound South Central revenue moves have ticked up 1.2%, a substandard performance compared with the 2.9% year-over-year gain in total domestic volumes for the same period. It could be an issue of capacity — i.e., a lack of containers being made available in Mexico to load — due to the heavy imbalance between northbound and southbound traffic. Or it could be a lack of demand in a market where the current intermodal value proposition of service consistency, speed and savings versus truck is simply missing the target. Either way, answering this question will be important for railroads and intermodal providers, as the cross-border market represents one of the major growth opportunities currently available to intermodal. Contact Larry Gross at lgross@intermodalindepth.com .

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Intermodal underperforming in booming Mexico-US market

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Ports on the US East and Gulf coasts say they have spare capacity and expect minor disruptions as they process more than 60 ships backlogged by a three-day strike</div>

Ports on the US East and Gulf coasts say they have spare capacity and expect minor disruptions as they process more than 60 ships backlogged by a three-day strike

<div class="phx-topic">Ports up and down the US East and Gulf coasts expect a generally smooth resumption of cargo flow after reopening early Friday morning thanks to a tentative agreement Thursday that ended a three-day dockworker strike. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), which represents maritime employers, said in a joint statement late Thursday they “have reached a tentative agreement on wages and have agreed to extend the master contract until Jan. 15, 2025, to return to the bargaining table to negotiate all other outstanding issues.” Port leaders say they have spare capacity and expect minimal disruptions in processing a backlog of <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/ships-backing-up-outside-of-strike-shut-us-east-gulf-ports-5741090">more than 60 ships</a>. Reduced volumes through the ports due to frontloading and diversions out of fear of the Oct. 1 strike threat — and the relatively short duration of the strike — will make the return to pre-disruption fluidity a matter of days, rather than weeks. In a Friday press conference, Bethann Rooney, port director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, downplayed concerns about the impact of the strike on the East Coast’s busiest port, noting that the port often closes for two to three days for snow during winter. ”After a closure, we’ve been able to recover in a very quick way,” Rooney said. “I have not seen it take one week for every day of closure.” The total backlog of containers offshore and on the ground in New York-New Jersey amounts to about one week worth of volume at the port. The 19-ship backlog should be cleared by the end of next week, along with servicing ships that are still heading to the port, Rooney said. To the south, there was no waiting line for trucks at the Port of Savannah nor delays in discharging and loading at berths and the Mason Mega-rail facility, Georgia Ports Authority spokesman Tom Boyd said Friday. The port is offering weekend gates. At the Port of Baltimore, officials also compared the operational impact of the stoppage to a winter weather-driven interruption. The Maryland Port Administration, which has extended hours to include Saturday to deal with the backlog, said delayed vessels are being “quickly assimilated into the schedule.” The Port of Virginia said it has opened its reservation system and expects a return to normal operations within 24 hours, “with many components of the operation being restarted in parallel.” <h3>Labor peace ... for now </h3>The <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/ila-usmx-agree-on-new-wage-offer-and-contract-extension-that-reopens-ports-5741882">tentative agreement between the ILA and the USMX</a> ends a nearly two-year standoff over a new six-year master contract covering 45,000 longshore workers. The agreement ensures labor peace for 90 days, giving both sides time to wrestle with how automation is addressed in the contract. The two sides have agreed on economic terms, however, with container lines represented by the USMX agreeing to hike dockworker pay by more than 60%. The three-month extension, something <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/ila-usmx-remain-at-odds-over-dockworker-wage-increases-daggett-5215515">ILA President Harold Daggett had vehemently opposed</a> in the lead up to expiration of the existing contract on Sept. 30, removes any peak season pressure for the upcoming holiday shopping season. Most goods needed for Black Friday and up until Christmas moved through the East and Gulf coasts before the strike, with toys and electronics coming through the West Coast now. The end of the three-day strike, which grabbed global and popular attention, also takes political pressure off the Biden administration, and by extension, the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. With election polling ending Nov. 5, President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/white-houses-executive-lever-to-prevent-port-strike-is-politically-toxic-5733927">refused to break the strike</a> and risk antagonizing organizing labor and <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/house-republicans-shippers-up-pressure-on-biden-to-stop-us-port-strike-5740135">made no attempt to hide his support of the ILA</a> and scorn for “foreign-owned” ocean carriers. Public attention and emotions rose in the lead up to the tentative agreement. The ILA drew the ire of some for not working ports handling relief supplies for Hurricane Helene in the US Southeast. The union pledged $100,000 to the American Red Cross and asked its locals to contribute as well. The threat of a port takeover from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ratcheted up pressure to end the strike. Overnight, Daggett grabbed global attention, and much of it was negative. The New York Post published aerial photos of Daggett’s Sparta, NJ, home, along with his address and details of the union leader’s two salaries as president of the international and a New Jersey ILA local that amount to $900,000 per year. The next day, the ILA said in a statement that Daggett and other union leaders received “threats of violence” directed against them. There was also the doxing of USMX President Dave Adam by publishing his address and phone number on X, formerly Twitter. <h3>The automation elephant </h3>While a tentative agreement has been reached, some details haven’t been released, much less worked. Sources have told the Journal of Commerce the USMX offered longshore workers an average $4-per-hour per-year increase to get talks restarted. The offer amounts to a 61.5% increase in the top tier of longshore wages. The USMX’s last offer prior to the strike was a $3-per-hour hike, equal to a 46% raise over the life of the six-year contract, according to a White House presentation shared with the Journal of Commerce last week. Back in June, the USMX initially offered <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/port-employers-urge-ila-to-return-to-contract-talks-5723976">the ILA a $2.50-per-hour (38%) raise</a>, which the <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/ila-halts-talks-over-new-contract-until-maersk-apm-clarify-port-it-projects-5244243">union flatly rejected</a> before breaking off talks. However, the tentative agreement does not address one of the key sticking points between the ILA and USMX: <a href="https://www.joc.com/article/conflicting-post-pandemic-worldviews-bring-ila-employers-to-historic-strike-5738509">automation</a>. The ILA has repeatedly said that it wants a complete ban on any automation project that would eliminate longshore jobs, while the USMX says it wants to keep language from the current contract that allows semi-automation projects to go ahead with the union’s consent. “Unless an agreement is reached on ILA’s very vocal demands to limit automation, disruption and uncertainty could return in January,” Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition said in a statement Friday. “Some who shifted to the West Coast gateways may stay there until the automation negotiations are resolved.” Contact Michael Angell at <a href="michael.angell@spglobal.com">michael.angell@spglobal.com</a>. Contact Laura Robb at <a href="laura.robb@spglobal.com. ">laura.robb@spglobal.com.</a>Contact Mark Szakonyi at <a href="mark.szakonyi@spglobal.com">mark.szakonyi@spglobal.com</a>. </div>

Ports up and down the US East and Gulf coasts expect a generally smooth resumption of cargo flow after reopening early Friday morning thanks to a tentative agreement Thursday that ended a three-day dockworker strike. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), which represents maritime employers, said in a joint statement late Thursday they “have reached a tentative agreement on wages and have agreed to extend the master contract until Jan. 15, 2025, to return to the bargaining table to negotiate all other outstanding issues.” Port leaders say they have spare capacity and expect minimal disruptions in processing a backlog of more than 60 ships . Reduced volumes through the ports due to frontloading and diversions out of fear of the Oct. 1 strike threat — and the relatively short duration of the strike — will make the return to pre-disruption fluidity a matter of days, rather than weeks. In a Friday press conference, Bethann Rooney, port director for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, downplayed concerns about the impact of the strike on the East Coast’s busiest port, noting that the port often closes for two to three days for snow during winter. ”After a closure, we’ve been able to recover in a very quick way,” Rooney said. “I have not seen it take one week for every day of closure.” The total backlog of containers offshore and on the ground in New York-New Jersey amounts to about one week worth of volume at the port. The 19-ship backlog should be cleared by the end of next week, along with servicing ships that are still heading to the port, Rooney said. To the south, there was no waiting line for trucks at the Port of Savannah nor delays in discharging and loading at berths and the Mason Mega-rail facility, Georgia Ports Authority spokesman Tom Boyd said Friday. The port is offering weekend gates. At the Port of Baltimore, officials also compared the operational impact of the stoppage to a winter weather-driven interruption. The Maryland Port Administration, which has extended hours to include Saturday to deal with the backlog, said delayed vessels are being “quickly assimilated into the schedule.” The Port of Virginia said it has opened its reservation system and expects a return to normal operations within 24 hours, “with many components of the operation being restarted in parallel.” Labor peace ... for now The tentative agreement between the ILA and the USMX ends a nearly two-year standoff over a new six-year master contract covering 45,000 longshore workers. The agreement ensures labor peace for 90 days, giving both sides time to wrestle with how automation is addressed in the contract. The two sides have agreed on economic terms, however, with container lines represented by the USMX agreeing to hike dockworker pay by more than 60%. The three-month extension, something ILA President Harold Daggett had vehemently opposed in the lead up to expiration of the existing contract on Sept. 30, removes any peak season pressure for the upcoming holiday shopping season. Most goods needed for Black Friday and up until Christmas moved through the East and Gulf coasts before the strike, with toys and electronics coming through the West Coast now. The end of the three-day strike, which grabbed global and popular attention, also takes political pressure off the Biden administration, and by extension, the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. With election polling ending Nov. 5, President Joe Biden refused to break the strike and risk antagonizing organizing labor and made no attempt to hide his support of the ILA and scorn for “foreign-owned” ocean carriers. Public attention and emotions rose in the lead up to the tentative agreement. The ILA drew the ire of some for not working ports handling relief supplies for Hurricane Helene in the US Southeast. The union pledged $100,000 to the American Red Cross and asked its locals to contribute as well. The threat of a port takeover from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ratcheted up pressure to end the strike. Overnight, Daggett grabbed global attention, and much of it was negative. The New York Post published aerial photos of Daggett’s Sparta, NJ, home, along with his address and details of the union leader’s two salaries as president of the international and a New Jersey ILA local that amount to $900,000 per year. The next day, the ILA said in a statement that Daggett and other union leaders received “threats of violence” directed against them. There was also the doxing of USMX President Dave Adam by publishing his address and phone number on X, formerly Twitter. The automation elephant While a tentative agreement has been reached, some details haven’t been released, much less worked. Sources have told the Journal of Commerce the USMX offered longshore workers an average $4-per-hour per-year increase to get talks restarted. The offer amounts to a 61.5% increase in the top tier of longshore wages. The USMX’s last offer prior to the strike was a $3-per-hour hike, equal to a 46% raise over the life of the six-year contract, according to a White House presentation shared with the Journal of Commerce last week. Back in June, the USMX initially offered the ILA a $2.50-per-hour (38%) raise , which the union flatly rejected before breaking off talks. However, the tentative agreement does not address one of the key sticking points between the ILA and USMX: automation . The ILA has repeatedly said that it wants a complete ban on any automation project that would eliminate longshore jobs, while the USMX says it wants to keep language from the current contract that allows semi-automation projects to go ahead with the union’s consent. “Unless an agreement is reached on ILA’s very vocal demands to limit automation, disruption and uncertainty could return in January,” Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition said in a statement Friday. “Some who shifted to the West Coast gateways may stay there until the automation negotiations are resolved.” Contact Michael Angell at michael.angell@spglobal.com . Contact Laura Robb at laura.robb@spglobal.com. Contact Mark Szakonyi at mark.szakonyi@spglobal.com .

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US East, Gulf coast ports confident of smooth post-strike reopening

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The world of LTL is slow to embrace change. Business anachronisms permeate current supply chain processes. These vestiges of the way things used to work define the LTL freight transportation procurement process of many modern shippers.David Knuth, logistics specialist at IEWC, a global supplier of cable and wire based in Wisconsin, is happy to have modernized the RFP process, automating the entire LTL bidding procedure with Bid$ense, SMC³’s automated truckload and LTL freight transportation sourcing solution. But when prompted, he can still recall what once was.In his previous job, a large part of his duties were consumed by creating an intermodal bid package for carriers. In a spreadsheet, Knuth detailed the company’s volumes lane by lane, taking care to delete any errant keystrokes or misleading data. He would then email out the information to each carrier, taking time to respond to detailed technical questions about the spreadsheet data. Finally, he had to compile all the results, create an algorithm that would compare the carriers on each lane, and award the business.“It was a huge undertaking. It took about four months to do,” Knuth said of the old process. “It was almost a full-time job for that part of the year, every year.”In his new job at IEWC, he sat down with Bid$ense on day one and was amazed at the capabilities. Knuth had never before used a bid tool. SMC³’s latest versions of Bid$ense automate the process even further, taking truckload and LTL RFPs entirely online. The tool draws on RFP best-practices protocols to streamline the bidding communication process, enabling bidding carriers to respond accurately and promptly to shipper requests. The solution also does all the distribution work automatically, electronically submitting shipper bid data to carriers based on their actual service capabilities and performance records. Carriers are alerted with timely prompts for RFP deliverables, so shippers aren’t waiting by the phone for responses.Another benefit of automating the process is the data-cleansing assistance. When Knuth sent spreadsheets to carriers, data errors might cloud the bidding process; he might have to resend data or simply accept a price that did not truly reflect the costs of doing business. Data cleansing is incredibly beneficial, he said.The spreadsheet technique also made bidding analysis an onerous task. Since Bid$ense automates and streamlines the entire RFP process, intensive examination is now simple. SMC³ knows that each bid has more than one best outcome. With uniform responses from each carrier, shippers can quickly rank results and create an unlimited quantity of what-if scenarios to make the optimal procurement decision.Jesse Burnett of Central Garden &amp; Pet experiences many of the same benefits. Founded in 1980, Central Garden &amp; Pet has spent the last three decades growing from a small garden supply company to a provider of a range of products from dog chews and bird seed to soil supplements and natural insecticides. For much of its life, the company shipped these disparate goods via LTL and truckload carriers to retailers throughout the country, relying on each business unit to negotiate directly with their freight transportation providers. This arrangement worked fairly well for a small company, but as Central Garden &amp; Pet expanded, leadership decided to consolidate decision making.Burnett helped centralize the transportation decision making in 2015 with SMC³’s Bid$ense. Before Bid$ense, every business unit operated independently as far as negotiating with carriers.“There were a lot of different things just floating around,” he said. “We didn’t have master agreements in place; no national pricing at all. The pricing from carriers was just all over the place, depending on where you were.”The transformations he saw with Bid$ense were immediate. Burnett has been using the tool about every other year since its implementation at the company. Central Garden and Pet’s $19.6 million 2019 LTL bid saved the company just more than 9 percent when compared to its historical average. For Burnett, though, bid automation extends far beyond savings.“We knew that we weren’t getting the best pricing offer from our carriers just because nothing was centralized,” he continued. “We knew that if we combined everything from all these business units and paired it with one corporate offering, then it would drive some cost benefit with it.”When the company initially decided to centralize bid procurement, executives researched a number of different methodologies and technologies. In the end, though, Burnett found that Bid$ense was both widespread and well known, and that his carrier partners already knew how to use the application. Burnett also highlighted the data-cleansing process as a major benefit, saying the rigorous process ensures that carriers always return the best price.“It definitely has helped drive savings,” he said. “Any time you go out there and you drive that competitiveness with the carriers and they know they’re in a bid environment, it seems to sharpen their pencils.”Transportation procurement is an integral part of the modern supply chain. With Bid$ense, shippers can develop a strategic implementation plan that saves them time and money, but also helps them create strong relationships with their carrier partners. These carriers appreciate the solution’s data-cleansing process; when carriers receive a complete shipment history and future volume forecast, they don’t have to guess on pricing. Carriers that receive more data from shippers get a complete picture of that shipper’s freight, allowing them to accurately plan instead of simply preparing for the worst-case scenario. Clean data presented through an automated system can lead to both bigger shipment savings and a lasting partnership between carrier and customer.Whether customers are looking to streamline over-the-road transportation bidding by automating the RFP process or create an entirely new, centralized sourcing process, Bid$ense has the analytical horsepower to get the job done.SMC³ 2020 Customer Case Study

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Shippers save money, time with automated transportation bidding tools

If there’s one immutable truth in the world of logistics, it’s this: LTL is an inherently complex form of transportation. Tariffs, rates, DIM weights, transit times — it’s enough to confuse even seasoned logistics professionals. The solution to this knowledge gap has historically been on-the-job training or university supply chain education, but for a variety of reasons there is now a pressing need for third-party, remote LTL training that prepares logistics workers for transportation success. Global Scope Can Overlook Local Intricacies In the past, professionals looking to move into a supply chain career learned about the basics of supply chain from universities. However, many of these college supply chain programs are now global in scope, focusing on worldwide supply chain management instead of the intricacies of specialized domestic transportation. And even these programs, which used to be widespread, are becoming less common. LTL is not an industry of broad-brush strokes; supply chain professionals really need a pointillistic understanding of the logistics of LTL in order to excel in the industry. Accelerating Need for Dedicated LTL Education This lack of specified training put the onus on employers to prepare new hires with the LTL knowledge needed to do their jobs. Dedicated LTL study is a necessity, not a luxury. At the same time, changes in LTL and the broader supply chain world are accelerating. The reliance on e-commerce has ballooned since the start of the pandemic, and last-mile LTL shipments and related e-commerce strains on the supply chain won’t diminish once social distancing abates. That genie isn’t going back into the bottle. So supply chain employers need logistics workers that are fully versed in all aspects of the industry, ready to solve unique shipping and delivery problems based on their extensive supply chain knowledge But why care about LTL? It’s been reported that some shippers in today’s world are no longer concerned with what mode is used to ship their goods. A Multimodal Approach Ensures On-Time Delivery This mode agnosticism means supply chain stakeholders have to be well versed in all modes of transportation. As unforeseen weather events and other disruptions, such as protests, become more common, savvy logistics employees will need to be armed with familiarity of all modes, not just the most popular, to ensure that freight is delivered on time, without damage, and in the most financially expedient way possible. Offerings like SMC³’s LTL online education courses cover a wide range of topics from LTL basics and operations to more advanced concepts like pricing analytics and transportation law. The company also has plans to continually refresh content, adding new expert presenters and taking the feedback of students to make the courses even better as time goes on. Learn more about&nbsp;<a href="https://logisticstrainingcenter.com/smc3-courses/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">SMC³’s LTL Online Education program</a>&nbsp;and view the 2021 hybrid schedule, featuring live industry experts,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.smc3.com/onlinelearning2021/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">here.</a>

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