FedEx, UPS take divergent LTL freight paths
The two well known global parcel giants, UPS and FedEx, have taken different paths with freight for North American countries in the last few months.
The FedEx company decided to rely on the LTL and dive deeper in it by delivering bulky items ordered through the digital e-commerce platforms to the client’s door.
When UPS switched its Freight segment with the TFI this year, FedEx has doubled down on its commitment to FedEx Freight which is the North American LTL market leader, according to Transport Topics' rankings of LTL firms.
The officials of the previously mentioned company said they would increase the capital spending well beyond 2021 and 2020 levels.
Jim Stinson
South Korea-China rates buck runaway market
The container rates between South Korea and China are bucking the world trend of upward freight movements, as falling exports from South Korea to China are putting downward pressure on costs.
South Korean exportation to China declined by 9% year-on-year in December 2020 and until May 2021, improved notably, registering double-digit growth except in February. Shipping was up 28% in January, 2% in February, 16% in March, and 16% in April.
Decreased exportation of petrochemical goods were suggested as the likely cause of the feebler exports from South Korea to China.
Petrochemical exports saw double-digit declines for the second month in a row in May, after growth in February and March.
Martina Li
European carriers to increase rates from Asia
European based shipping companies such as Hapag Lloyd and CMA CGM did announce the new costs for various Asian countries to various destinations worldwide, which will take effect from this month to the following one, August.
The first step taken by Hapag Lloyd was the implementation of a General Rate Increase (GRI) with a cost of 300 US Dollars per standard TEU and 600 US Dollars per standard and high cube FEU from Bahrain to the Indian Subcontinent (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan) and the Middle East (UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Yemen). All of this became effective on the 23 of this month.
Additionally, there will be an increase of price by the German Liner operator by 100 US Dollars per standard and high cube unit that will be effective on the first of August from Karachi and Pakistan to the Arabian Gulf (UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, and Dammam and Jubail, Saudi Arabia).
For the same date, the Marseille-based CMA CGM is going to be applying a Peak Season Surcharge (PSS) of 1,000 US Dollars per TEU of dry cargo travelling from India to North Europe, Baltic, Mediterranean, Black Sea, North Africa & Morocco.
Container News Team
A congested freight environment shows no signs of improvement for peak
The yearly haste to get inventory onto shelves for the busiest retail season of the year is advancing. Due to the struggle with short space in the ocean shipping market for months that the cargo owners have been dealing with, they chose to bring the cargo earlier than usual before the peak season.
A disappointment will be facing those who are hoping to return to normalcy this year with congestion on the West Coast is getting more serious, and the deluge of containers is not expected to stop any time soon.
Matt Leonard
4 challenges of drayage — and the FreightTech companies solving them
The transportation of freight from an ocean port to its initial destination is called a Drayage and this process does come with multiple struggles that the most developed freight companies now have a solution to deal with.
Shipment visibility
Containers need to reach their destination ports before the drayage movements can occur. Without being able to track shipments, shippers cannot plan inventory or optimize warehouse teams, and most importantly, they may lose customer satisfaction with late deliveries.
Customs clearance
Delays for reshuffling
Turning this concept into a technology solution is the drayage platform EDRAY, which uses the volume leverage of its customers’ containers to stack all of those containers together, enabling the company to optimize the carrier capacity needed to make these pickups.
Carrier capacity
Tight capacity is a struggle that everyone is dealing with now in all areas of transportation. Picking up a container shipment creates a problem for the global shipping community. If the date of pick up is delayed or not respected it would generate not only incurs detention costs, but it adds to the global container shortage, affecting prices all over the world.
Grace Sharkey
Exclusive first ride: Plus autonomous truck is a gentle giant on the highway
With automation dominating different sectors of the world, it is no surprise now that we find trucks controlled with robots on the roads. To facilitate the Freight many companies did move toward autonomous trucks for their shipments.
PACCAR Inc’s Kenworth trucks are amongst 1,000 trucks Amazon is having Plus originally retrofit. Based on the total quantity of units Amazon acquisitions over the life of its deal with Plus, the e-commerce giant has the right to purchase up to 20% of the business.
Alan Adler
