Supply chain

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.

By connecting to forwarder-customers of software vendor e2open, Freightos is continuing its push to develop electronic booking capability in the air freight industry.

A dearth of consolidation means there are still plenty of visibility vendors for shippers to choose from, but it also means the market as a whole is on somewhat unsteady ground.

Brokers would have to make transaction records, including shipper rates, available to trucking companies electronically and the requirements could supersede non-disclosure agreements, according to a proposed rule from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

GenLogs, founded by an ex-counterterrorism expert, is offering shippers and brokers a way to track lost trailers and trucks as cargo theft booms in the US.

The company has the largest ground transportation fleet in Asia, with more than 86,000 trucks and 100,000 first- and last-mile delivery vehicles.

Sean Duffy is the incoming administration’s pick for transportation secretary, with much of his prior legislative focus on issues related to trucking.

The New York Shipping Exchange’s plan to introduce indexes to support long-term contracts adds to an already crowded field of providers.

The company sees its new Broker Access product as another channel for brokers to find capacity outside of contracts with truckload carriers and posting spot freight on a load board.

The deal for privately-owned IMC Logistics gives NVO Kuehne+Nagel a significant advantage in selling door-to-door products to cargo owners.

Developing an over-the-road network to handle containers carried on ships too large to traverse the waterway could increase the canal’s annual throughput by over 60%, officials say, although funding concerns exist.

Customers of automated freight procurement tool Keelvar will get access to more than $1 trillion in truckload pricing data as part of a new arrangement with DAT Freight & Analytics.

The Democrat, appointed under the previous Trump administration, had taken a particular interest in port and terminal operations while at the US maritime regulator.

Volume and rates on the Asian export corridors to the US and Europe have been high all year and online shopping promotions in November are further stoking the market.

Advisors to beneficial cargo owners say mitigating future supply chain disruptions requires BCOs to proactively engage with ocean carriers and forwarders, seeking to build partnerships even if past experience suggests they end in disappointment.