Confidence in the air cargo market and concern over tight capacity at peak periods is keeping charter operators busy, with the carriers reporting a rise in first-quarter business and renewed interest from forwarders in signing longer-term charter contracts.
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Author Archives: Jeffrey Goh
The latest Airlines Financial Monitor from IATA indicates that cargo load factors have dropped back to levels last seen at the start of 2017. Across the air cargo industry, the freight load factor fell 0.5% in April compared to the same month of 2017. Capacity (available freight tonne-km, AFTK) increased 5.1% year on year in April while demand as measured in revenue freight tonne-km (FTK) rose 4.1%.
CN is investing C$400 million in new capacity this year, primarily in western Canada and the Edmonton-Chicago corridor. Projects currently in progress include 60 miles of double track, 11 new sidings or siding extensions, and eight yard expansions. All should be completed in November.
he Association of American Railroads (AAR) today reported U.S. rail traffic for the week ending June 9, 2018. For this week, total U.S. weekly rail traffic was 561,061 carloads and intermodal units, up 4.2 percent compared with the same week last year. Total carloads for the week ending June 9 were 271,641 carloads, up 2.8 percent compared with the same week in 2017, while U.S. weekly intermodal volume was 289,420 containers and trailers, up 5.6 percent compared to 2017 and the second highest intermodal week in history.
The pricing train for truckload and intermodal freight movements continues to accelerate at a rapid clip, according to data in the most recent editions of the Truckload Linehaul Index and Intermodal Index from Cass Information Systems and Broughton Capital.
Driver turnover at large truckload carriers increased in the first quarter of 2018, pushing it 20 points higher than the same period last year. Turnover at truckload carriers with more than $30 million in annual revenue climbed six percentage points from the previous quarter to a rate of 94 percent, according to the American Trucking Associations’ quarterly report. Driver turnover up to 94 % during 2018’s first quarter.
The trucking industry may be in a crunch as companies struggle to fill driver positions, but it may ultimately be consumers that feel the pain as prices continue to rise.
With transport stocks surging, some market watchers are hopeful that the current expansion period will continue despite downturns in the broader market earlier this year. This hope is rooted in Dow theory, which asserts that stock market trends confirm each other. According to the theory, a bullish transportation sector is an indicator of overall economic health because thriving manufacturers produce and ship more goods.
Canada’s trade deficit in April narrowed to the lowest in six months as imports slumped and exporters continued to show signs of strength. The merchandise trade gap narrowed to $1.90 billion (US$1.5 billion), half the $3.93 billion gap recorded a month earlier, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday in Ottawa. Imports fell 2.5 per cent, paring back strong gains in March. Exports advanced 1.6 per cent, the sixth gain in the past seven months.
The Trump administration’s imposition of tariffs on neighbors and allies presents a growing risk for the broader U.S. economy, as the prospect of a tit-for-tat trade war mounts. The U.S. has imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on the European Union, Canada and Mexico, and they have pledged to return fire on a range of U.S. goods from motorcycles and bourbon to berries, grapes and blue jeans. The Trump administration has also taken steps toward imposing tariffs on industrial supplies and other goods imported from China and is considering an additional wave of tariffs on auto imports.
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