Commentary

In each of the past two years, The Journal of Commerce TPM event has convened in early March in an atmosphere of unmitigated crisis.

Two months into the first quarter, one of the watchwords for the economy during the past year is living on in 2011. Anywhere you go and in seemingly everything you read, the word is uncertainty.

Will Congress determine how long truckers are allowed to work each day, or will that decision rest with the Department of Transportation?

“Semper Paratus” – Always Ready – is the U.S. Coast Guard’s proud motto.

It should be clear by now that the Obama administration and those planning its transportation policies have a thing for railroads -- both passenger and freight.

Demand Periodic Reviews of Fuel Surcharges

As we move into the third month of 2011, we’re already seeing signs that this will be a transformational year.

Q: Isn’t it time to scrap the antediluvian Carmack regime of motor and rail carrier liability for cargo and replace it with a North American Free Trade Agreement scheme that more closely follows

It’s fair to say at this point that South Carolina’s objections to the Georgia Ports Authority’s plan to deepen the Savannah River to 48 feet have become a full-blown political contr

Anyone hoping this would be a year of clarity in shipping demand must be sorely disappointed by initial reports from the retail world.

Trucking interests are issuing dire warnings about the proposed changes to truck driver hours-of-service rules they say would cut driver and truck productivity, jack up transportation costs and potent

Karen Rae had to catch a train, so the Federal Railroad Administration's deputy administrator departed early from a high-powered Jan.

The release of the president’s fiscal 2012 budget on Valentine’s Day and its historically low funding level for the U.S.

STB Hearings: Going Through the Motions?

It’s impossible to pick up a technology publication these days without reading why cloud computing is the next great thing that will make our lives better.

Although I, along with many fellow Americans, occasionally question the effectiveness of the Transportation Security Administration, there are voices out there that go far beyond that.

Whether you are looking at a business or a government, there usually is no clearer evidence of priorities than a budget.

It is a tale of two ports, but it’s a story with enormous implications for how U.S. trade will move for decades to come.

Q: I just read your Jan.

The release of the Obama administration 2012 budget this week offers a revealing snapshot of the state of East Coast preparedness – or lack thereof - for the scheduled 2014 expansion of the Pana

I am well aware that Washington and the American public have been focused on recovering from the deep recession.

’Tis the season. No, not that season, the container shipping service contract season!

Two U.S.

Before the 10-day West Coast port shutdown nearly a decade ago and the various disruptions at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach that followed between 2004 and 2007, few thought about East Coast-

Q: Some months ago, our company as a broker arranged transportation of a shipment of alcoholic beverages.

The Danish financial newspaper Borsen reported this month that Maersk Line and logistics operator Kuehne + Nagel signed an agreement with the sort of scale bound to make waves around the world when it

In his Rational Irrationality blog, John Cassidy of The New Yorker tries to make

One of the storied exchanges in American journalism took place in the New York Sun in September 1897 when eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon sought the truth about Santa Claus.

Q: As I’m sure you’re aware, the National Classification Board has approved a change in the classification of clothing from class 100 to a range of classes, from 70 to 400, based on densit

It may be new information for some reading this column that Houston is the largest port in the U.S., and has been for the past 14 years.

The history of shipping, in whatever form of transportation you might mention, has been all about speeding things up.

One could be excused for thinking the start of 2011 provides an opportunity to sit back and reflect upon another exhaustive and challenging year for those working in the shipping industry.

Fresh off its lengthy and secret study of container availability, the Federal Maritime Commission has a new investigative target in mind: slow-steaming carriers.

We tend to look at the history of U.S.

Welcome to the first year of the second decade of the 21st century. Happy New Year to you all.

On Jan.

To say infrastructure and trade have never been as prominent in a presidential State of the Union address as they were last week would be an understatement.

Thanks to the recession, transloading is rapidly evolving from a tactic shippers used to avoid high rail rates for intact containers into a strategic tool in importers’ supply chains.

Q: We’re a maritime freight forwarder that does business with a client who imports from Hong Kong under credit arrangements.

We live in a world of immediacy. We want our news now. The Internet delivers. Shippers want their goods now.