Supply chain

The US is seeking to amend rules regarding so-called de minimis shipments, which have skyrocketed since the pandemic.

The US last-mile market has become fragmented, benefiting shippers from both a cost and capacity perspective.

Shippers have long outsourced drayage to third parties, but farming out allocation decisions to managed transportation providers threads the needle between access to capacity and neutrality.

The acquisition is part of a surge in logistics M&A transactions aimed at simplifying access to systems and services for shippers and brokers.

The challenges for truck demand growth in 2025 vary depending on activity in four major sectors: warehousing, office, data centers and manufacturing, according to Jason Miller.

Carriers adopting a “wait-and-see” approach to the new regulation will face significant penalties and a potential loss of income from decarbonization-focused customers, according to a report from the classification society.

More uptake of transactional pricing in the less-than-truckload market is a sign that some carriers are targeting smaller or more infrequent LTL shippers.

The IMO tends to move at a glacial pace, but with 2030 emissions targets looming, it no longer has that luxury.

Shippers must weigh the merits of a single-source relationship on drayage through key ports over splitting volume among regional and national carriers, or even brokers.

The charges come as spot rates for ex-Asia cargo into the US have climbed sharply over the past month.

The deal will see Acuitive Solutions’ AcuAudit product integrated into Cass’ freight audit and payment platform, one widely used by large shippers.

The world has become more turbulent and fragmented, with geopolitical events that are beyond the control of any supply chain participants playing an ever-larger role, writes Lars Jensen.

Booming e-commerce and expectations for faster end-to-end delivery are still reconfiguring distribution networks.

The action, announced last week, is likely to result in US e-commerce brands shifting their fulfillment back to the US or switching to fulfillment providers in Asia, sources have told the Journal of Commerce.

Whether it be geopolitical crises, labor unrest or the wild card of a second Trump administration, the global supply chain will face no shortage of unknowns in 2025.

Container shipping has become a market where prior patterns of cyclicality must now coexist with non-cyclical forces of external shocks that long-beleaguered carriers have learned to use to their advantage, writes Peter Tirschwell.

The end of a regulation that limited import house locations will allow more flexibility for warehousing options, making the cold chain network more efficient for food importers.

Acquisitions, new product releases and fresh investment among companies catering to truckload brokers speak to an industry wrestling with the need to make things easier for customers.

Spot rates from Asia to the US rose to highs this week as a looming dockworker strike on Jan. 15, the early Lunar New Year in Asia and the threat of tariffs under the new administration are keeping front-loading of imports at unusually high levels for December.

The acquisition of Trucker Tools will give DAT access to carrier positioning data to arm its truckload broker customers.

While US customers are importing more than usual, C.H. Robinson Worldwide’s CEO Dave Bozeman doesn’t see a ‘major material’ pull-forward of goods in the last weeks before a potential US longshore strike.

Forwarders and shippers expect a pending trade agreement with the European Union to boost South American imports from the continent as soon as late 2025.

Advent eModal, a three-decade landmark provider of fee collection and appointment scheduling at container terminals, has been sold by private equity group Blackstone to air cargo software specialist CargoSprint.

The two companies, already building a temperature-controlled warehouse at the site of CPKC’s intermodal terminal in Kansas City, Missouri, are looking to replicate that business model south of the border.

The facility’s launch customer is known to be Amazon, which will use the strategically located warehouse to provide fulfilment services across the region.

Fears that methanol will not be available in the coming years at the scale required to power a growing and thirsty ocean fleet are pushing the order book deeper down the LNG pathway.

The Global Port Tracker upgraded its forecast for imports over the next several months despite the threat of labor unrest and new tariffs by the incoming Trump administration.

The Federal Maritime Commission said that it needs more information about the new grouping of ocean carriers known as the Premier Alliance before the vessel-sharing agreement can begin in February on US trades.

The extensive frontloading of imports that occurred this fall will keep cargo volumes modest this month, but the vagaries of labor negotiations and new tariffs threaten to disrupt the market in short order.

Canada’s anti-trust enforcer said laws already on the books adequately cover the liner industry, but it has no ability to police freight rates or service levels.

US maritime regulators are investigating reports that the Spanish government has blocked US-flag Maersk ships carrying military cargoes for Israel from calling Algeciras.

Generative AI is changing the nature of core freight brokerage processes, potentially impacting the amount brokers earn and how employees get paid.

The regulation is designed to enhance security across global supply chains and brings the EU in line with other major exporting countries.

Freight brokers large and small are testing software, including the tools developed by Vooma, that automate core functions such as quoting, load building and tracking.

There is no guarantee we will see the same market shifts in early 2025 that we saw during the last big alliance shakeup in 2017, but the operational realities faced by carriers are essentially the same, writes Lars Jensen.

The two biggest transportation visibility vendors in the market have been battling each other in court since 2019 but can now refocus on winning market share.

The selection of Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer is seen as favorable to unions, with the new administration potentially facing the need to intervene if ILA contract talks aren’t settled before Trump takes office.

NYSHEX is making a renewed effort to solve the fundamental problem of ocean container supply chains, promoting the use of index-linked contracts to build contract integrity and certainty.

The use cases for sensor-enabled container fleets could expand if shipping lines see such hardware as a legitimate tool to combat the threat of illicit goods movement.

Major retailers such as Ralph Lauren and Target say they successfully mitigated disruptions from the early October port strike and are ready for the next labor threat and the fallout from likely higher tariffs on Chinese goods.