Transportation year in review,

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Friday, December 19, 2008 DAILY LOGISTICS NEWS AND INSIGHT

Thought you would like to read about what happenend in the transportation industry this year.

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Logistics & Technology


The Year in Logistics and Transportation
12/22/2009



JANUARY

-- Oil prices hit $100 a barrel, pushing up gas and diesel prices.

-- YRC Worldwide, the country's largest trucking company, takes an $800 million write-down in charges related to its 2005 acquisition of USF. The company reaches a five-year pact with the Teamsters union three months ahead of schedule.

-- FedEx chief Frederick W. Smith says the U.S. economy is in a "financial crisis" after the company showed sharp declines in profit and volume in late 2007.

-- A congressional commission says the United States must spend at least $225 billion a year to maintain and upgrade its transportation system and calls for a 25 to 40 cent per gallon increase in the federal fuel tax. The Bush administration opposes any tax increase.

-- New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine floats a plan to raise $40 billion for the state budget by leasing the New Jersey Turnpike and other highways. He later drops the plan under concerted opposition.

-- The Teamsters union, Public Citizen and safety groups prepare a new challenge against the Bush administration's interim final hours of service rule for truck drivers. The interim rule, which took effect Dec. 27, preserved provisions struck down twice in court.

-- The Surface Transportation Board issues a tougher formula for determining railroad cost of capital. Railroads warn that investment in their industry could be derailed.

-- The Department of Transportation keeps its crossborder trucking program with Mexico rolling despite a law intended to stop it.

-- Maersk Line cuts up to 12 percent of its global work force, reorganizes its management and splits its container operations into three divisions in an effort to improve profits.

-- After years of steady growth, the Port of Los Angeles says containerized imports declined 1.9 percent in 2007. Thanks to the weak U.S. dollar, exports continue to increase.

-- Schneider National launches a regional truckload unit - Schneider Regional - to handle increasing demand in less-than-500-mile lanes.

-- DHL vows to stay in the U.S. domestic market despite calls by investors, analysts for withdrawal.


FEBRUARY

-- Democrats in Congress push to add infrastructure spending to a second stimulus package.

-- Governors meeting in Washington to push for federal infrastructure investment. The Bush administration urges states to take a leading role and responsibility for projects.

-- Wal-Mart starts charging suppliers at its Desoto, Texas, Sam's Club distribution center $2 per pallet sent without an RFID tag.

-- YRC Worldwide plans a major overhaul of its regional LTL units, closing 27 terminals and pulling USF Holland and USF Reddaway back toward their original territories.

-- Klaus Zumwinkel resigns as head of Deutsche Post World Net after German police raid his home in a tax evasion investigation. He is replaced by Frank Appel.

-- A spate of class action lawsuits that allege LTL price fixing snowballs to include at least 50 lawsuits nationwide.

-- North American railroads reach contract deals with the largest U.S. rail labor group, the United Transportation Union.

-- ABF Freight System and the Teamsters union agree on a five-year labor contract.

-- Facing rising costs and a loss of business with Wal-Mart, logistics operator UTi Worldwide restructures, laying off 1,400 employees.

-- DHL Express USA slashes 600 jobs in response to "economic and market realities."

-- In a victory for UPS, FedEx and other home delivery companies, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a Maine law restricting their ability to deliver tobacco products.

-- A jury in Racine, Wis., awards SC Johnson $147 million in damages after finding its former transportation director and other employees conspired in a bribery and kickback scheme.


MARCH

-- Diesel prices shoot up, hitting $3.66 a gallon March 3 and climbing past $4 a gallon in parts of the country.

-- DHL and the Teamsters union sign their first standalone agreement, covering 12,500 DHL employees in the United States.

-- Standard & Poor's cuts YRC Worldwide's credit rating for the second time in two months.

-- Averitt Express, Pitt Ohio Express, Land Air Express, DATS Trucking, Canadian Freightways and Epic Express form the Reliance Network, integrating data platforms and strengthening interline service.

-- Maersk, Mediterranean Shipping and CMA CGM agree to share vessels in the trans-Pacific trade. They launch three joint services connecting Asia and U.S. West Coast ports.

-- German transport and tourism giant TUI puts $9.8 billion Hapag-Lloyd, the world's fifth-largest container fleet, up for sale.

-- Deutsche Post World Net splits its logistics unit into two businesses, one handling supply chain and the other global forwarding and freight.

-- Railroads and chemical shippers grapple over highly toxic shipments, with the Association of American Railroads suggesting shippers should stop manufacturing dangerous chemicals and switch to safer substitutes.

-- The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles clash over an employee-driver mandate in their shared clean trucks program.

-- Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters warns of Mexican retaliation if critics force an end to DOT's crossborder trucking program.


APRIL

-- Independent truckers threaten a nationwide strike April 1 to protest high fuel prices. The protest fizzles as the economy weakens.

-- The American Trucking Associations asks the White House to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to blunt fuel prices.

-- Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain calls for a summer gas tax holiday.

-- Long-time logistics leader Dell pares back its highly customizable supply chain as it struggles to reduce manufacturing costs.

-- YRC Worldwide issues a "100-day" challenge to its employees to "change the course and performance" of its long-haul LTL units.

-- YRC subsidiaries Roadway and YRC Logistics launch an expedited ocean service from China to the United States.

-- Using its new labor agreement with the Teamsters, YRC's Yellow Transportation begins re-engineering its LTL network.

-- The Transportation Security Administration debuts its certified cargo screening program for air freight in San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia.

-- Food processor and ethanol producer Archer Daniels Midland files a lawsuit against the top five U.S. railroads, alleging a "conspiracy to fix prices of rail fuel surcharges."

-- Railroads and shippers face off at an STB hearing on common carriage obligations and liability for hazardous shipments.

-- The Teamsters union claims to have signed up 9,900 new members at UPS Freight in first few months of 2008 - the union's largest organizing victory in decades.

-- TCI, 3G Capital Partners and CSX Transportation exchange lawsuits in the dissident investors' battle to gain seats on the railroad's board.

-- The Port of Los Angeles signs an agreement with environmental groups that clears the way for terminal expansion.


MAY

-- Jevic Transportation abruptly shuts down. The carrier blames its demise on the freight recession and higher fuel prices.

-- As rising energy costs lead to higher food prices worldwide, agricultural shippers are pushed to restructure supply chains.

-- Air cargo operators report steep declines in profit, despite higher first quarter revenues. They blame higher fuel costs and a slowing economy.

-- A fuel price protest by drayage truckers in Oakland, Lathrop and Stockton, Calif., backs up intermodal pipeline.

-- The Air Transport Association pleads with the Department of Energy to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

-- DHL Express and UPS announce a 10-year, $1-billion agreement that would shift DHL's domestic U.S. air freight to UPS planes.

-- The U.S. Postal Service sets new prices for Express Mail and Priority Mail to make its parcel services more competitive with UPS, FedEx and DHL Express.

-- The STB rules Union Pacific Railroad overcharged Kansas City Power & Light for hauling coal and orders the railroad to pay the shipper $2.9 million.

-- President Bush nominates Husein Cumber, deputy chief of staff at the DOT, to the STB. His nomination stalls in the Senate.

-- Norfolk Southern Railway and Pan Am Railways launch a joint venture to boost volume in the Boston-to-Albany, N.Y., corridor.

-- The Port of New York and New Jersey drops plans to gentrify the Brooklyn waterfront and grants a 10-year terminal lease at Red Hook.

-- Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., introduces a bill that would preserve the current 80,000-pound truck weight limit, effectively banning heavier, larger combination vehicles.

-- A coalition of investors bids $12.8 billion to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike for 75 years. The deal faces strong opposition, however, and eventually falls through.

-- Maersk Line trims its losses to $47 million in the first quarter through improved cost control, higher rates and the sale of ships.


JUNE

-- A report from the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals shows logistics costs climbed for fifth straight year in 2007, rising to a record $1.4 trillion.

-- FedEx reports its first quarterly loss in 11 years, forcing the expediter to rethink its foundation express operations and how it handles international traffic.

-- Dow Chemical hikes the price of its products 20 percent, and promises another 25 percent hike in July. Dow adds fuel surcharges for truck, rail shipments.

-- The Department of Justice expands a four-year airline industry price-fixing probe after collecting $800 million in penalties from four carriers and jailing one executive.

-- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urges presidential candidates to put the need to upgrade the nation's transportation infrastructure at the top of their campaign priorities.

-- State and federal officials from Ohio battling the tentative DHL-UPS partnership threaten an antitrust lawsuit.

-- The Port of Los Angeles begins wooing trucking companies with employee drivers as it seeks to ban owner-operated drayage trucks.

-- Storms and flooding in Iowa swamp rail track, destroy bridges, disrupting service on major railroads and short lines.

-- China says it will ban air shipments of hazardous materials during the Beijing Olympic Games. Shippers sourcing from China begin considering supply chain alternatives.

-- The Georgia Ports Authority signs an agreement with the Suez Canal Authority to promote an all-water shipping route from Asia to the U.S. East Coast.

-- Caterpillar exits the 2010 U.S. heavy-duty engine market, narrowing truck buyer choice in a year when new emissions controls will push up equipment costs.

-- Roadway partners with NonstopDelivery to get a toehold in the home delivery market.

-- Gemini Air Cargo seeks Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in two years.


JULY

-- Hurt by a strike at a customer's plant, regional LTL Alvan Motor freight shuts down.

-- Heartland Express says high fuel costs helped push its quarterly profits down 13 percent.

-- As jet fuel prices soar, Air France and KLM revamp their fuel surcharges for air cargo.

-- Dissident hedge funds claim victory in their battle to gain four seats on CSX's board, but the railroad challenges the results.

-- Five additional airlines agree to $504 million in fines in the DOJ's four-year antitrust investigation, pushing the total amount of fines past the $1 billion mark.

-- Nearly two dozen class action lawsuits accuse U.S. Jones Act shipping lines of price fixing.

-- The International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association reach a six-year labor contract covering West Coast ports.

-- YRC North American Transportation rolls out the Velocity Network, a plan to restructure its national LTL carriers and expedite freight in 30,000 lanes in Eastern United States.

-- The STB orders CSX Transportation to cut "unreasonably high rates" and repay a portion of those rates to chemical shipper DuPont.

-- The DOT moves to extend its crossborder Mexican trucking program for two years despite opposition in Congress.

-- The Senate approves the Railroad Safety Enhancement Act.

-- Citing a weak economy and a slump in container traffic, the Port of Tacoma drops plans for an inland rail-truck logistics and distribution center.

-- Intermodal operator RoadLink USA makes its third harbor-trucking acquisition in three months with the purchase of Vancouver, Wash.-based American Freight System.

-- Former EGL chief James Crane launches Crane Worldwide Logistics.

-- Averitt Express launches an Asia-Memphis service for less-than-containerload freight from China destined for customers in the Southeastern United States.

-- Bucking the economy, Roadrunner Transportation Services makes a public offering.


AUGUST

-- Gemini Air Cargo, in bankruptcy protection since June, shuts down.

-- As Class 8 truck sales decline, Mack Trucks undergoes a $60 million overhaul, moving its headquarters from Allentown, Pa., to Greensboro, N.C.

-- Estes Express opens a terminal in Wausau, Wis., its 14th new terminal in the Upper Midwest in 2008.

-- Con-way Freight and APL expand their ocean-trucking partnership offering less-than-containerload service from nine points in Asia to the United States and Canada.

-- The American Trucking Associations files a court challenge against the drayage concession plans in the Los Angeles and Long Beach clean-truck programs.

-- Nationwide truckload carriers Swift Transportation and Knight Transportation apply for drayage concessions at the Port of Los Angeles.

-- Following its acquisition of logistics software vendor Manugistics, JDA Software offers $346 million for i2 Technologies.

-- LTL carrier UPS Freight says it may expand into the truckload market to "complete our suite of offerings."

-- Canadian National Railway asks the STB to expedite review of its plan to purchase the Chicago-area short line Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway.

-- Profits decline at Swiss forwarder Panalpina as the company struggles with a sour economy and a DOJ probe into bribery allegations in Nigeria.


SEPTEMBER

-- The financial crisis that strikes the banking industry and credit markets reverberates across the transportation world, ending halting steps toward recovery in some sectors and sending already weak freight demand sharply downward.

-- Hurricane Ike devastates Galveston, Texas, and causes rail disruptions throughout much of the Central United States.

-- FedEx says it will effectively raise air express rates 4.9 percent, an-nouncing a 6.9 percent hike with a 2 percent cut in its fuel surcharge.

-- Truckload carrier Celadon Group grows by acquiring the assets and operations of two struggling smaller carriers, Priority Transportation and C.W. Johnson Xpress.

-- YRC Worldwide says it will merge the networks of its national LTL units, Yellow Transportation and Roadway, creating one company called Yellow Roadway.

-- YRC Worldwide cuts into its nonunion work force, laying off about 300 employees across all its businesses.

-- Dedicated fleet specialist National Retail Systems applies for a clean-truck drayage concession at the Port of Los Angeles.

-- Manufacturers put green trucks on sale at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

-- California sues two port trucking companies, claiming they mislabel employee drivers as "owner-operators."

-- The Federal Maritime Commission requires the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to provide more information about the costs and benefits of their clean-trucks program.

-- UPS Freight cuts transit times for the second time in four months, speeding freight on more than 1,200 traffic lanes in the Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

-- The STB rejects Canadian National Railway's appeal to expedite review of its plan to acquire Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway. The railroad asks a federal appeals court to compel fast action.

-- Higher oil prices boost profit for A.P. Moller-Maersk, parent company of Maersk Line and several fuel-related businesses. The same prices pinched its container operation.

-- Matson Global Distribution Services acquires asset-light warehousing, distribution and packaging company Pacific American Services and targets "Tier One" logistics competitors.

-- ABF Freight System expands its next-day service, adding 1,300 new next-day lanes and 21,000 new second-day lanes.

-- A federal appeals court clears a path for hedge fund dissidents to join CSX Transportation's board.


OCTOBER

-- The $700 billion federal bailout of the banking industry doesn't quiet transportation turmoil, as carriers of all types report tightening credit lines.

-- Democrats in Congress call for more infrastructure spending as part of a second stimulus package.

-- Fuel prices plunge as economic activity falls off, bringing some relief - but not much - to carriers, shippers struggling with falling orders, freight volumes.

-- TUI sells Hapag-Lloyd to a consortium of German investors for $6 billion.

-- Spurred by a fatal rail accident in California, the Senate passes a rail safety bill creating new hours of services rules for rail workers and ordering some railroads to adopt positive train control technology by 2015.

-- The Transportation Security Administration begins implementing tougher air cargo screening requirements that include all cargo bound for narrowbody planes.

-- The STB approves Canadian Pacific Railway's $1.5 billion purchase of the Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad - the largest rail industry merger in years.

-- Congress approves a bill ordering the Department of Defense to en-sure that its motor carriers pass fuel surcharges on to owner-operators.

-- Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach press forward with their clean-trucks programs despite lawsuits from trucking industry and a Federal Maritime Commission investigation.

-- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger rejects a $30-per-TEU fee on all containers moving through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and a similar but lesser fee in Oakland.

-- UPS matches FedEx's 4.9 air express rate hike for 2009 and boosts LTL ground rates 5.9 percent.

-- The Teamsters union strikes regional LTL Oak Harbor Freight Lines.



NOVEMBER

-- Infrastructure spending plans gain steam as Washington prepares for the transition to an Obama administration.

-- DHL says it will scrap its U.S. domestic air and ground business by Jan. 30. Some 9,500 jobs will be lost - most of them in Ohio.

-- The Bush administration begins a final sprint of rulemaking, releasing a final truck driver hours of service rule and a regulation on the routing of hazardous materials by rail.

-- YRC Worldwide says it will cut about 3,750 jobs in the merger of Yellow Transportation and Roadway.

-- Con-way Freight strips 40 terminals from its 343-terminal LTL network.

-- Class I railroads report strong third-quarter profits and revenues despite widespread economic pain, declining volumes.

-- The STB orders Central Oregon & Pacific Railroad to sell its Coos Bay line to the International Port of Coos Bay, Ore.

-- Maersk Line temporarily suspends one of its Asia-Europe services in response to slowing cargo growth and falling freight rates.

-- Nippon Cargo Airlines stops flying to New York's Kennedy International Airport and shunts air freight to trucks running from Chicago to New York.


DECEMBER

-- President-elect Obama calls for a massive infrastructure spending bill to stimulate the economy and create jobs.

-- In a bid to cut costs further, YRC Worldwide and the Teamsters agree to cut wages for union and nonunion employees.

-- Customs and Border Protection releases its interim final import security filing rule, popularly called "10+2," requiring importers and carriers to file additional information on shipments.

-- Somali pirates escalate attacks on cargo ships and other vessels in the Gulf of Aden, capturing a Saudi-owned oil tanker. Shippers fear higher rates, delays and war-risk surcharges.

-- The Federal Maritime Commission files a suit challenging the clean trucks program at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The court refuses to delay the program.

-- JDA Software and i2 Technologies scrap their merger
agreement.

-- Pressed by fast decline in freight demand, Con-way Freight lays off 1,450 employees. FedEx Freight cuts 540 jobs.

-- Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway said it owns 70,089,029 shares of BNSF Railway, or about 20.5 percent of the rail giant's outstanding common stock..

-- The DOT issues a rule requiring railroads and steamship companies owning intermodal container chassis to share safety responsibility with motor carriers.

-- California adopts emissions rule requiring gradual replacement of older diesel trucks with trucks powered by 2010 engines.

-- The price of diesel drops below $2.50 a gallon as oil prices fall beneath $50 a barrel.










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