Flatbed carriers are seeing a softening demand driven by seasonal factors and, unlike in recent years, a dramatic slowdown in consumer confidence in the building industry. A reliable flatbed demand indicator for many years has been The Fannie Mae Home Purchase Sentiment Index® (HPSI), which captures home buying/selling consumer sentiment and other indices. The HPSI…
On the Central Californian Coast, where temperatures are mild year-round, lettuce is planted from late December to mid-August for harvest from early April to November. So far, California’s less-than-optimal weather (extreme heat and heavy rain) limits supplies of iceberg and romaine lettuce, and green leaf varieties. The problems are expected to continue through the end…
The wild blueberry season winds down in Maine, pumpkins roll into farmstands around the country, the sugarbeet harvest wraps up in Minnesota, potatoes are dug up, processed, shipped, and stored in Idaho and Prince Edward Island (PEI), apples are picked in Washington State and also imported from China, and watermelon season runs out of juice.…
This year, the focus of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) International Roadcheck Week was on wheel ends. Out of the top 10 vehicle out-of-service violations, tires ranked second, and wheels came in seventh. Of the 18,213 total vehicle out-of-service violations, there were 3,374 out-of-service tire violations, accounting for 18.5% of all vehicle out-of-service violations,…
Supply chain disruption has been a hot topic over the past 2.5 years, and although there are signs it could be improving, measuring the level of disruption and improvement remains elusive. Ari Ashe, Senior Editor at The Journal of Commerce, recently wrote about “box turns” in his weekly Please Haul My Freight newsletter, where he…
How much does the average person spend on apps? As much as $200 per month. A lot of times the person doesn’t even know that they’re paying for some of those apps. And if you’re like most truckers, you often bounce back and forth between several apps to get the job done. Would it be…
November means a focus on drowsy driving after daylight saving ends as the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) gears up for Drowsy Driving Prevention Week (DDPW) from November 6-13. It’s also the perfect time to focus on sleep deprivation and drowsy driving as it coincides with the end of Daylight Saving this Sunday at 2:00 AM…
American teenagers aren’t getting enough sleep these days, nor are their parents, and that’s especially dangerous when there’s a long-distance trucker involved. Since the iPhone was released onto the market in June 2007, we’ve all been subjected to an increasing amount of light pollution, severely disrupting our sleep. In more recent times, teenagers who already…
Port Houston handled 353,525 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in September, an increase of 26% compared to last year, according to the recent release of September data. This is the second-highest month ever for containers at Port Houston, following only August 2022. The increase in volume is largely due to demand for imported goods and a…
Even though it’s Florida’s slack season for truckload volumes of fruit and vegetables, the damage resulting from Hurricane Ian is expected to ripple through the economy for many months. Florida will kick-start the 2023 produce season early next month, typically peaking in May, but the season start may be delayed, according to some growers DAT…