The pilot project that was to let Mexican trucks haul freight into the US has been stalled since the Senate panel voted for a delay.

The earlier decision was to allow hundred Mexican trucking companies to come beyond the present twenty-mile limit for a period of one year initially, provided they complied with on-site Department of Transportation audits and prescreening of Mexican drivers, along with drug tests and insurance checks. Similar to Canadian carriers, the Mexicans are not allowed to haul point to point within the US. At the present time Mexicans are allowed to travel twenty miles into the commercial zone, north of the US-Mexico border. But the Senate panel wants to delay the plan – and wants details of this pilot program published. They feel the public should have enough time to express its opinion before the program is executed. It is felt that the move to open the US border to Mexican trucks is compromising safety. In the meantime, the Transportation Department expressed its commitment to going ahead with the program, taking care of law enforcement concerns on the way. The Department feels that allowing the Mexican trucks into the US will benefit the US economically as well as maintain safety standards.

The Senate’s concern is that the US has opened the border to the Mexicans before Mexico opened the border to US trucks. The International Brotherhood Of Teamsters is happy with the delay. Though access to US highways to Mexico was to materialize in 2003, it was stalled due to disagreements between the US and Mexico.

Panther Expedited Services Inc., Seville has acquired Integres Global Logistics, a California based freight forwarding and logistics company. Integres offers shippers access to air and deferred air ground transportation networks. This acquisition will make Panther the largest full service premium logistics provider. Integres will also bring with it all its blue chip clients, giving Panther a much wider reach than before, especially on the West Coast. Seventy new people will join the 300-strong workforce at Panther. So in addition to ground expedite, Panther will now provide real time freight quoting, booking and shipment-tracking information from the time the shipment is picked up to delivery on all-important freight. The acquisition came about with Panther’s customers requesting Panther to handle more freight.

Panther is a portfolio company of Fenway Partners, New York, which is a middle market private equity firm. Fenway has extensive transportation and logistics experience and practice. In June last year, Panther filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission to make the company public.

Elsewhere, the Apollo Management Group, in its bid to buy transport company EGL Inc. has filed a suit against EGL. This is to stop the sale of EGL to a group of investors headed by its chief executive officer. Also, Apollo has upped its offer to $41 per share to buy EGL – this is a $1.9 billion offer. Last week, Apollo made a $ 40 per share offer to buy EGL. EGL CEO James Crane offered $ 38 per share at the same time. Now the problem is – the EGL board okayed the lower bid from Crane, which is why Apollo filed a suit against EGL.

The Ports of Long Beach ($ 3.3 million) and Los Angeles ($ 3 million) are funding the Gateway Cities Council of Governments for the maintenance of its Fleet modernization program, which replaces older diesel trucks with newer and environmentally safer vehicles.

Gateway Cities will replace older harbor trucks while the ports develop the truck fleet modernization initiative as per the San Pedro Bay Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP). Under this initiative more than 16000 harbor trucks will be retrofitted or replaced. These trucks make 80% of the calls on the marine terminals in the San Pedro Bay Ports. The objective is to either replace these trucks with newer cleaner diesel or other alternative fuel rigs or they will have devices that minimize emissions of diesel particulates and oxides of nitrogen.

This new strategy of replacing trucks is the biggest replacement program so far. The Ports are closely interacting with Gateway Cities to learn the best way to plan and implement the CAAP truck replacement program. They are also learning how to communicate efficiently with the stakeholders, including the independent trucker owner/operators, about the program.

Owner-operators qualifying for the funding by the Ports are required to demonstrate that they make hundreds of calls at San Pedro Bay Ports’ cargo terminals every year. When the trucks are replaced, the new trucks must be used in port service or container drayage as they are called so that the nearby communities can benefit from the emission free operation.  

In a move to encourage competition by opening the US border to Mexican trucks, the latest is that there wont even be a thousand Mexican trucks crossing the border in this pilot program, according to the DOT. Also these companies will only be transporting international freight. They will not be authorized to transport domestic deliveries between the US cities.  The big US trucking companies are okay with this plan. Truckers like Con-way Inc. and other biggies are supportive of opening the border to let Mexican trucks in to speed up trade and save costs. The American Trucking Associations also support this pilot plan of letting in the Mexican trucks. Oddly, when the ATA met at their HQ last week they were said to have been all for letting the Mexican trucks compete with the US trucking companies on an equal footing.

In any case the ATA insists that Mexican companies will also be bound by the same stringent US regulations that the US trucking companies are expected to stick to – in terms of highway safety, occupational safety, the environment, insurance, taxes, fees and finance.

The Teamsters President voiced that the union is against opening the border since it would mean letting in unsafe Mexican trucks to be on the US highways, compromising highway safety and national security. There is no way arrangements can be made to keep an eye on those Mexican trucks.

Lets keep a track of this to see how it turns out.!

Schneider National is one of the largest truckload carriers in North America. This week they were the proud recipients of the NSF Healthy Sleep Community Award. Schneider National ran the sleep apnea program in response to a study sponsored by Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the American Trucking Associations. This study showed that about 29 % of commercial drivers suffer from some degree of OSA – Obstructive sleep apnea. This is a life threatening respiratory system-related sleep disorder. Sleep apnea shows up as daytime sleepiness, falling asleep at odd times, loud snoring, depression, irritability, lack of concentration, and memory loss. Untreated, it can be very risky and result in motor crashes on the highway.

Alarmed by the potential danger to its drivers, Schneider took the initiative and started off an education campaign to make its staff aware of OSA. Around 547 drivers were tested in the period April to December 2006. A whopping 80% of them were found to be suffering with sleep disorder and treated. This was a major humanitarian move by Schneider in caring for its drivers’ heath and safety.  This pioneering action by Schneider National in creating the OSA detection and treatment program for its drivers was applauded by the National Sleep Foundation in Washington. Schneider hopes that everyone in the trucking industry will recognize the seriousness of this problem and take measures to diagnose and treat it since the safety of the highways is at stake. With the average age of drivers gradually rising, they are significantly at risk. For Schneider, its creation of the program for its drivers also resulted in reduced heath care costs which it shared with its drivers.

Ryder, a Fortune 500 company that provides transportation, logistics and supply chain management solutions worldwide named Con-way Freight as ‘Carrier of the Year’ for Xerox North America out of 12 LTL carriers. Con-way earned this privilege for the excellent service on a national basis to Xerox Corporation’s North American manufacturing and distribution operations. Ryder, third party logistics provider, manages surface freight transportation resources for Xerox. Con-way’s no.1 ranking came from competing with twelve other LTL companies that Ryder uses to support its logistic activities for Xerox. The award was recognition of performance in 2006. The categories taken into account were Overall Customer Service, On-time Performance, Operations, Claims and Damages.

Con-way Freight feels very honored to be receiving this award as it endorses their professionalism and dedication. It proves they can match the stringent customer standards expected of them. Ryder has a multi carrier transportation network for Xerox, manages thousands of shipments on a daily basis, and follows high standards of quality and performance. But Con-way Freight has sent a new benchmark this year for performance and service. They have demonstrated a deep commitment to customer service and quality consistently.

Providing “day-definite, less-than-truckload freight delivery services” for commercial and industrial businesses in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and Mexico, Con-way Freight is a subsidiary of Con-way Inc. based in California. This freight transportation, supply chain management and trailer manufacturing giant reports an annual turnover of US $ 4.2 billion.

UPS, top air freight carrier will incur a one time cost of $80 million, with almost 200 of its employees accepting the voluntary buyout package. This cost will be recorded as expenses in the first quarter and is expected to generate a positive return in a couple of years. This buyout is part of a continuous effort to consolidate various functional areas like network planning, procurement, human resources, finance and sales. This deal was initiated in December 2006 to employees who were 50 years old or more and with a minimum of 10 years service. Employees at UPS usually retire at age 65.

UPS is ranked as No.1 in the for-hire carrier business in the US and Canada. They provide package delivery and supply chain solutions. The main business of the company is time-definite delivery of packages and documents Supply chain solutions include freight forwarding, customs brokerage, fulfillment, returns, financial transactions, repairs and less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation services. UPS operates in three segments - U.S. Domestic Package operations, International Package operations, and Supply Chain & Freight operations. In 2005, UPS delivered more than 14.7 million shipments per day, globally. Added to this, the supply chain solution service goes out to its clients in 186 countries. In 2005, UPS acquired Overnite Corp. to expand its and expanded its LTL transportation services. Overnite Corp. offers regional, inter-regional and long-haul LTL services in all 50 states, Canada, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands and Mexico.

On 26th February 2007, Navistar International Corp. decided to suspend production of diesel engines for Ford Motor Co. since Ford did not honor contract terms. Navistar is the parent company of International Truck and Engine Corp., which makes class 4-8 heavy-duty engines. Navistar has been supplying engines called Power strokes for Ford’s heavy-duty pickup trucks since 1979.  In January, Ford and Navistar had a dispute regarding warranty costs and engine prices for the 6.4 liter engines and Ford filed a suit against Navistar in a Michigan state court. Navistar produces Power Strokes, the engines for Ford’s heavy duty pick up trucks at its plants in Huntsville, Ala., and Indianapolis. Starting Tuesday, they planned to idle their Indianapolis plant.

Now, just three days after it decided to suspend producing the engines for Ford, Navistar has said it will resume production as a result of a court order from a Michigan judge where Ford filed the suit against Navistar. The court order instructed Ford Motor Co. to pay, without deductions, for all diesel engines it receives from Navistar.

Ford has been using Navistar diesel engines for a while now. A few weeks ago Ford introduced their 2008 Super Duty F-Series. The 6.0L V-8 in the last generation of the Super Duty caused Ford a lot of problems as a result of which they sued Navistar last month to recover some of the warranty costs they incurred on that engine. They claim that Navistar is not sharing these costs, and hence had to hold back payments – resulting in Navistar stopping production for Ford.

A rise in the price of crude oil has made gasoline prices soar up during the last few weeks. About 7000 gas stations were surveyed and mid grade gasoline was $2.46 per gallon, while premium was $2.56. The diesel price went up 8 cents more than the same week last year, while gas was 12.9 cents higher than a year ago, according to Department Of Energy.

According to the US Energy Information Administration drivers paid $2.83 last week for a gallon of regular gasoline, which was 8.7 cents more than the previous week. Compared to the same period last year, prices at the pump have gone up by 13 cents.

Retail price of gasoline also went up drastically costing 10 cents more in New England and 10.3 cents more on the Gulf Coast, compared to last week. New England gasoline prices were about $2.358 a gallon last week, while Gulf Coast prices were $2.234. But in spite of the increase, gasoline prices in the Gulf Coast were still the cheapest in the nation. West Coast service stations had the costliest gasoline at $2.60 a gallon. San Francisco’s pump price was the highest at $2.81 a gallon.

Oil prices appeared to go down at the beginning of the year, but began to rise quickly. Prices go up when the demand goes up. According to the EIA, Americans are using about 3.6% more gasoline than they were the previous year.

Will we touch the $ 3 mark in 2007?

FedEx’s OptiFleet E700, the environmentally superior delivery truck was actually first introduced in 2004. This truck decreases particulate emissions by 96 %, reduces smog-causing emissions by 65 percent, and travels 57 percent farther on a gallon of fuel, bringing down FedEx’s fuels costs by over a third.

This environmentally friendly low emission hybrid electric-powered truck brings in great benefits without affecting utility and performance to the driver. Imagine, if 10,000 hybrid trucks were on the road in place of the standard vehicles, here’s what you can expect in just ONE year:

• Smog-causing emissions of nitrogen oxides would be reduced by 1,700 tons annually – which in plain language means taking off passenger cars off New York City roads for 25 days.
• Carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 83,000 tons annually – the same effect as planting 2 million trees.
• Save 7.2 million gallons of Diesel fuel – equal to saving 1 million barrels of crude oil to produce.

Innovative Technology used in making these hybrid trucks combines a diesel engine with an electric motor to drive the truck. A computer determines the best combination taking into account current operating conditions and driver demand. Instead of the present six-cylinder engine, a four-cylinder engine is used. Engine size is smaller thanks to the power from the electric motor. A particulate trap further brings down emissions. Batteries capture and stores electrical energy every time the vehicle brakes, which is useful for acceleration and also charges the battery, making it a perfect balance between conventional and electrical technology. (Source: www.fedex.com)