Supply chain

Shrinking inventories have helped drive up warehouse vacancy rates and decreased utilization, but signs that demand is building point to a tightening market.

The Federal Maritime Commission has set out the guidelines ocean carriers will need to follow to avoid claims from exporters that they are not being treated fairly.

The certification that Houston can handle cargoes treated for pests while in transit means more fresh produce such as grapes and berries can move quickly through the port.

The collaboration comes barely a month after Google researchers said they could help shipping lines improve their network designs and profitability.

There is growing pushback against the pending regulation that some sectors believe poses an impossible challenge in tracing and verifying the origins of certain products that could lead to their exclusion from the EU market.

A landmark ruling from the nation’s high court weakens the powers of federal maritime regulators ahead of imminent rulemaking that ocean carriers may challenge in the courts, writes Journal of Commerce Executive Editor Mark Szakonyi.

The US maritime regulator said the initial information the two carriers filed with the agency about the operational partnership “lacks sufficient detail to allow for a complete analysis of its potential competitive impacts.”

The former CEO of the now bankrupt logistics software vendor has landed in federal prison after a high-profile saga that began with Slync employees not getting paid for weeks in 2022.

While the industry has focused on areas such as tracking and quoting, advancements in booking technology portend new potential for digitizing containerized supply chains.

Electronic booking standards across ocean carriers would make it easier for shippers and forwarders to do business with a range of capacity providers, says the Digital Container Shipping Association.

Shippers and forwarders now have a range of options to book with ocean carriers, who themselves have developed direct online portals to lure smaller ocean freight buyers.

Maritime employers at the Port of Vancouver prevailed at a last minute federal hearing over a strike vote that longshore foremen took against DP World.

An appellate court ruled the US Federal Maritime Commission erred when it solely applied its “incentive principle” to a detention case involving container carrier Evergreen Line.

The company believes shippers will benefit from a payments network it has created to help brokers and carriers bill shippers accurately before an invoice is sent out.

Supply chain management is about competitive advantage, and the industry deserves to be better understood than the “freight ignorance” portrayal that is too common today, writes Ted Prince.

The Biden administration’s attempts to build a homegrown crane industry due to cybersecurity concerns drew little interest from the National Association of Waterfront Employers, which doesn’t see a threat from Chinese-made cranes.

As the crisis in the Red Sea hits seven months with no end in sight, the container shipping market has reached a point where stakeholders need to seriously consider their plan B in case the current reality persists for several more years, writes Lars Jensen.

While Cool is “cash rich,” it is under pressure to fill the newbuild capacity it already has as well as what is scheduled to be delivered, writes analyst Richard Bright.

Progress on the industry’s goal of fully moving to electronic bills of lading by 2030 has been slow, but more carriers are signing with vendors to enable the migration.

US exporters face unexpected costs and delays due to changes in dates for dropping off containers, which the FMC hopes to address with more consistent data.

The current tight capacity in the container shipping market is helping to shine a light on the mistake some shippers make when playing hardball in contract negotiations with carriers, writes an industry veteran and consultant.

The $1.025 billion acquisition gives RXO growth not otherwise available in a weakened brokerage market and narrows UPS’s focus to package deliveries.

US importers are pulling forward orders to avoid potential congestion, but trucking and intermodal networks are still slack, speakers said at the launch of CSCMP’s State of Logistics report.

With supply chain volatility becoming “permanent,” more companies are taking control of previously outsourced parts of their supply chain, and even offering their own services, according to a closely watched annual report on the state of logistics.

The uneven success of the digital brokerage model suggests that the foundations of the market were harder to disrupt than venture investors first envisioned a decade ago, and maybe even harder than some of the founders of digital brokerages had foreseen.

Still, insurers said the difficulties have yet to materialize in a noticeable rise in claims for spoiled cold chain or perishable products.

The ocean carrier joins rivals Maersk, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd — all investors in NYSHEX — in using the contract management platform.

CargoSense said the funding will be used to expand its partner ecosystem of integrated management systems and data sources for its shipper customers.

The agency’s detention and demurrage rules are still unclear as to billing those charges to truckers, according to challenges put forth by ocean carriers.

The new products were launched as Ship Angel announced a $5 million funding round by venture investors.

The volume of complaints filed to the US maritime regulator against shipping lines and forwarders has surged since OSRA-22 became law.

The thorny issue of running more efficient ocean carrier networks on a global scale has been a long-term quandary for liners and the software vendors catering to them.

One of the first “digital-native” brokerages, Transfix is shifting its focus to selling software as a service to other brokers, including NFI.

To the extent carriers can’t pass those costs along, the industry faces the prospect of sharply higher costs for zero-carbon fuels and potentially further consolidation and reduction in choice for shippers.

The forwarder says it has been “conditionally” restored to CBP’s so-called Type 86 program and has filed a complaint against the agency to get reinstated without conditions.

The post-pandemic resilience of small fleets has been attributed in part to driver reliance on apps such as the one Convoy built, which Flexport purchased last November.

The huge investment required to produce green fuels for the shipping industry needs to be underpinned by certainty over demand, which suppliers are not yet seeing, according to the European climate activist Transport & Environment.

Growth in the use of a low-value shipment rule has attracted critics, who say the de minimis program provides a loophole for e-commerce companies abroad to evade duties.

FMC investigators found the carrier “overbroadly defined and applied” the merchant clause in its bill of lading to a third party “who should not have been billed,” the agency said.

Amid growing interest in making the truckload appointment scheduling process more efficient, the US visibility provider has added weight to an initiative started in late 2022.