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The announcement last week by carrier alliances that beginning in late March they will deploy three new all-water services from Asia to the East Coast through the Panama Canal was a dagger to the hearts of West Coast ports besieged by congestion and labor problems.

If shippers and transportation providers are expecting Congress to do anything more than kick the can down the road on federal highway funding, they’re in for major disappointment come June, say transportation industry insiders.

New York-New Jersey port truckers are growing frustrated with delays accompanying a late-winter cargo spike that container terminals are struggling to handle.

Dubai’s DP World booked an 11.8 percent increase in 2014 profit as it benefited from its focus on container terminals in fast-growing emerging markets.

Lost-time injury incidents at West Coast ports in 2014 declined by almost half compared to the peak year of 2002, according to the annual safety report published by the Pacific Maritime Association.

U.S. Senate legislation introduced on Wednesday could allow railroads to expedite construction of intermodal terminals and other projects, providing shippers with more capacity and more reliable service.

DB Schenker Logistics profit stalled in 2014 even as the company increased ocean container, air freight and trucking volumes.

Ocean carriers must unlock more value from alliances and accelerate internal transformation programs to restore profitability, according to Boston Consulting Group.

Revenue from Li & Fung’s logistics network soared 66 percent in 2014 to $874 million as the acquisition of giant sea freight forwarder China Container Line last year made its presence felt on the financial statements of the supply chain and sourcing group.

China is steadily adding to the rail network linking the mainland with central Asia and Europe, with a large portion of the $130 billion rail development budget for 2014 spent on improving connections in central and western parts of the country.

The formidable challenges facing Hong Kong port were perfectly captured in the above illustration that was presented with OOCL’s 2014 financial results recently. Few, if any, ports around the world have had to cope with such a thorough change in cargo mix over a relatively short period.

A March 13 U.S. District Court decision in Portland that ordered the International Longshore and Warehouse Union to pay $60,000 to the National Labor Relations Board for engaging in illegal work slowdowns at the Port of Portland has not resulted in improved productivity at the Oregon port.

The Port of Virginia is about to enter its second week of near-unprecedented congestion that has now spread to three of its four terminals on the Elizabeth River.

Putting waterfront labor under the Railway Labor Act will be a heavy legislative lift with a divided Congress and a union-friendly White House. And, it’s unclear if such a move would prevent “economic warfare” — whether from union slowdowns and the withholding of labor, or employers’ refusal to hire workers.

Truck drivers employed by Agility in Kenya ended a strike and are back at work, the company said, after a Kenyan court issued an order calling the strike “unlawful, and therefore unprotected.”

Across-the-board gains in freight volumes and a strong peak shipping season drove FedEx profit skyward, lifting net income 53 percent year-over-year to $580 million in the fiscal quarter that ended Feb. 28, while total revenue rose 4 percent to $11.7 billion.

The ports of New York-New Jersey and Savannah have handled the first container ship to call on the U.S. East Coast with capacity of more than 10,000 20-foot-equivalent units.

The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, has renewed his call for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to provide more money for city-owned land the bistate agency uses for seaport and airport facilities.

The agency responsible for the operation and management of the Panama Canal has asked for an international arbitration panel to review a $233 million award to the consortium expanding the waterway.

Container lines’ overall on-time arrival rates on major east-west routes improved slightly in February despite U.S. West Coast port congestion that upset trans-Pacific schedules, according to Drewry Maritime Research.

APM Terminals is considering investments in non-container sectors, including oil and coal, starting this year, according to the head of Maersk Group’s port unit.

Publicly owned major ports in India reported healthy levels of container throughput growth during April 2014 to February 2015, the first 11 months of fiscal year 2014-15, compared to the volumes in the previous year, according to the latest provisional figures compiled by JOC.com.

The Port of Houston has ordered nine rubber-tire gantry cranes for container yard operations at the Bayport terminal. The order will bring to 69 the number of RTGs at the port.

Japan’s exports to the U.S. rose for the sixth consecutive month in February, surging 14.3 percent to 1.215 trillion yen ($10.0 billion) on the back of brisk auto shipments, according to preliminary trade figures released by the Japanese Finance Ministry this week.

Martinair, Air France-KLM’s all-cargo unit, announced it is laying off 330 employees, including 110 pilots, as it downsizes its freighter fleet in a bid to return to profitability.

Cathay Pacific reported a 20 percent increase in net profit for 2014 as a strong second half recovery in the cargo market helped drive up earnings to $403 million.

A bill requiring ocean going ships to switch to low sulfur fuel while at berth in Hong Kong was tabled at the Legislative Council today and, if passed, will effectively raise the cost of shipping containers through the city even as it steadily loses market share to Shenzhen.

Container volumes in Los Angeles and Long Beach plummeted in February as the ports faced another month of severe congestion and labor problems.

The trek toward full funding of for U.S. ports can look a lot like one step forward and two steps back.

Canadian National Railway on Tuesday announced plans to build a $196 million intermodal and logistics hub outside of Toronto as its existing terminal serving Canada’s largest urban center nears capacity and regional freight demand builds.

Coyote Logistics, a third-party freight broker and logistics operator that has grown to be a $2 billion company in less than 10 years, is poised to expand at an even faster clip by tapping Wall Street investors for cash.

Even if the Teamsters fail to overturn a recent federal decision to allow Mexican motor carriers to haul loads past the border region, the impact of the new program may be negligible anyway.

An improved balance between the supply of container ships and demand for capacity is emerging as ordering of new ships has slowed down, a shipping analyst said.

Environmentalists and human rights activists warn that Nicaragua’s granting of a 100-year concession to a Hong Kong construction firm with unclear financial backing sets in motion a nightmarish scenario fraught with violence, depletion of the region’s largest source of freshwater and destruction of biodiversity.

Three carrier alliances are launching Asia-U.S. East Coast services that will increase capacity on the route by 6 percent, according to industry analyst Alphaliner.

Container volume at the Port of Oakland plunged 36.7 percent in February due to terminal congestion, labor issues and cargo diversion, but the problems that caused the loss of cargo are slowly receding.

Idle container ship capacity edged up to 242,000 TEUs on March 9 from 206,000 TEUs two weeks earlier, representing 1.3 percent of the world fleet, according to Alphaliner.

Truck drivers employed by Agility Logistics in Kenya are protesting long working hours and lack of union representation, allegedly disrupting traffic on a key trade corridor that connects the Port of Mombasa to inland markets in Uganda and other nations.

In an attempt to reduce port bottlenecks, the Narendra Modi-led Indian government has approved a special state-aid scheme for the construction of new infrastructure suitable for handling coastal vessels at publicly owned major ports.