Houston is one of DAT’s top markets, recently boosted by the surge in imports impacting capacity for all equipment types – more volume means more options for carriers and brokers. Traditional West Coast shippers have increasingly shifted imports to Gulf Coast ports to avoid potential labor disruptions and port congestion in the Ports of Long…
Hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean typically begins to ramp up in earnest around mid-August. But things had been eerily quiet without a single storm to be seen anywhere in August. After predicting an above-average hurricane season, many forecasters were left wondering about their initial predictions of a busy season. According to Phil Klotzbach, a…
September 27th, 2022–Determining the cost of operating a truck in 2022 depends on who you ask, plus a range of other factors, including the type of business (for-hire, private fleet, power-only, etc.), length of haul, fleet size, truck and trailer type, customer base, accounting methods, debt levels, and commodity hauled, to name just a few. It’s…
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…