JoC Week articles from October 2007

JoC Week archives from October 2007

Youth be served?
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER T. LEACH Janice Merten has tried to retire twice, but both times Bechtel Corp. persuaded her to come back to work as its project chartering manager. With 40 years of experience in managing logistics for the global...

Cold-weather projects.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY DAVID BIEDERMAN Think you have a rough commute? What about the drivers who haul supplies on the "ice road" to the Diavik Diamond Mines in Lac de Gras, in Canada's Nunavut Territory only 120 miles south of the Arctic Circle?...

At home on the North Slope.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY DAVID BIEDERMAN Crowley Maritime Corp. has been serving the Alaska energy industry for more than 50 years. The company is marine logistics alliance provider for the Alyeska Pipeline Services Co., the operator of the...

With Gregory Rusovich, Agility Project Logistics.(Company overview)
October 29, 2007... Gregory Rusovich recently resigned from his post as president and chief executive at Agility Project Logistics. The project forwarding division of the massive, Kuwait-based transportation company Agility Logistics, was founded as Transoceanic...

Traffic jam.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY DAVID BIEDERMAN Strong demand for heavy equipment and a robust global auto trade are straining vessel and port capacity for roll-on, roll-off cargo. Shippers and carriers are starting to worry. The growth of automobile...

Crunching numbers.(UTC Overseas)
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY WILLIAM ARMBRUSTER U.S. manufacturers of heavy equipment are reaping the benefits of the weak dollar at a time of surging overseas investment in infrastructure projects such as power plants. With the strength of the euro...

Squeeze play.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER T. LEACH Shippers of equipment for gigantic energy, mining and power projects are in a bind. On the one hand, business has never been better as they build more and bigger engineering projects worldwide. On the other, the...

Two 'strategies' that don't work.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER SPILLER The Journal of Commerce's Oct. 1 cover story presents evidence that the U.S. economic slowdown may already be causing a downturn, perhaps significant, for import cargo volume. Fortunately, for the U.S. economy,...

Living on the edge.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER TIRSCHWELL Ocean carriers will soon announce their plans for 2008 rate increases in the trans-Pacific import trade, so it's a good time to look at this market. The quick analysis is this: Imports have slowed to a crawl,...

RADAR SCREEN.
October 29, 2007... Driver, equipment shortages may stunt freight recovery The "R" word was heard frequently at this month's annual conference of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. Economists differ on whether the U.S. is heading into a...

Corrections.
October 29, 2007... An item in the Oct. 22 Radar Screen, "Questions raised about security of car shipments," misidentified David Cardle, a British consultant. The report about the Port of Mobile, Ala., in the Oct. 22 edition, "Rising tide," reported the...

THE WEEK.(HHLA Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG)
October 29, 2007... HHLA Plans Initial Public Offering: The Port of Hamburg's biggest stevedore plans to sell 30 percent of its shares in an initial public offering in Nov-ember that is expected to raise as much as $1.5 billion. Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG,...

Clean machines.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL MONGELLUZZO For ports and ocean carriers, environmental awareness is not just a California thing any more. Ship lines have accepted that they must reduce vessel air emissions if they expect to call at the ports of Los...

Gaining ground.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL DIBENEDETTO B razil has the ninth-largest economy in the world and ranks fifth in population, but is categorized as an emerging market with stubborn infrastructure needs. That's the way it goes for Brazil and South...

Missed opportunities.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY ROSALIND MCLYMONT A&K Railroad Materials Inc. has been doing business in Peru for 25 years, selling rail and track materials for railroads, mines and cranes. Exports from the Salt Lake City-based company to Peru, Bolivia,...

Challenging the king.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY IAN PUTZGER Juan Abel Echeverria has a problem. As director of development and logistics of Expoflores, the Association of Flower Producers and Exporters of Ecuador, he sees huge potential for his shipper members to expand...

On common ground.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL MONGELLUZZO Freight interests in California have grown used to warding off attempts by state politicians and port executives to tax cargo flowing through Los Angeles and Long Beach, but when a U.S. congressman talks about...

Jumping Jax.(Port of Jacksonville )
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER T. LEACH The Port of Jacksonville is swinging for the fences. Long a second-tier port for auto imports and the container trade with Puerto Rico, Jacksonville is now positioned to vault into the ranks of the top East...

Wishful thinking.(Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics)(Dundalk Marine Terminal)
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY R.G. EDMONSON Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics this month proudly showed off its new vehicle-processing center at the Port of Baltimore's Dundalk Marine Terminal. The 72-acre facility extended the carrier's stake at Dundalk to...

Made in USA - still going strong.(Quality Float Works, Inc)
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY ALAN M. FIELD Almost universally, politicians and pundits agree that U.S. manufacturing has been decimated by competition from foreigners who take advantage of lower wages and, in the case of China, unreasonably cheap foreign...

Is it real?
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY ALAN M. FIELD It was bad enough when Pfizer Inc. discovered that some of the pharmaceuticals sold under the company's brand name in the U.S. were counterfeits. It was even worse when Pfizer found that it couldn't always tell...

Opening the gates.
October 29, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL DIBENEDETTO Canada's penchant for transportation and trade infrastructure corridor projects went nationwide this month when the country's federal government and its four Atlantic provinces signed an agreement to develop...

End of the LASH era.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER T. LEACH An ingenious bluewater-brownwater transportation system that worked well for nearly 40 years is coming to an end. LASH, an acronym for Lighter Aboard Ship, was invented in 1967 and put into service two years...

Rising tide.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER T. LEACH The stars are coming into alignment for the Port of Mobile. Three large infrastructure projects are under way or nearing completion at the port that will fuel rapid growth of container, rail and breakbulk...

How the west will be won.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL MONGELLUZZO China's seemingly endless supply of land and cheap labor continues to be a magnet for foreign direct investment, but as global manufacturers move to the nation's interior, they will face the realities of...

More risks than opportunities?
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY ALAN M. FIELD Be careful about what you ask for, the saying goes, because you might get what you want. For years, U.S. and other multinationals have been asking China to "level the playing field" for non-Chinese companies....

Advice on Chinese taxes.
October 22, 2007... How can non-Chinese companies minimize their risks and maximum their opportunities from China's tax reform? Jeff Olin, national managing partner, international taxes, at Grant Thornton LLP, advises companies to take advantage of...

Open for business.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY STEPHANIE NALL China has firmly grabbed the title of the world's factory and doesn't seem willing to give it up. Shipments of electronics, clothing and automobiles are streaming out of factories in the world's most populous...

Why CN is adding 'J'.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY LAWRENCE H KAUFMAN The shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line - especially if it runs through the Chicago metropolitan area. Canadian National Railway is spending $300 million to acquire the...

Seeds of doubt.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY R.G. EDMONSON In April 2004, a Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialist in the mail center at San Francisco International Airport opened a package marked "books and chocolates" and found tree cuttings contaminated...

Keeping COOL.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY ALAN M. FIELD When a provision for mandatory country-of-origin labeling was included in the 2002 agriculture bill, American cattle ranchers rejoiced. The law required beef producers to stick labels on their products that would...

Hard-pressed on TWIC.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY JOSEPH BONNEY The electronic pad couldn't capture Robert Senseny's biometric identification on the first try, or the second. "My fingerprint is worn out after all these years," said Senseny, harbormaster at the Port of...

What's the plan?(Report)
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY ARI NATTER New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine has been mum on details of his plans to "monetize" the state's roadways. Now his silence has landed him in court. A state judge has scheduled a Nov. 16 hearing on a lawsuit seeking to...

With Ned Laird, Air Cargo Management Group.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL DIBENEDETTO Ned Laird founded Seattle-based Air Cargo Management Group, which provides consulting for the airfreight and express industry, in 1978. He is the group's managing director and is publisher of the Cargo Facts...

Breakthrough year ahead.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY BOB SAPPIO I recently had the opportunity to speak at the first TPM Asia Conference in Shenzhen, China, and was asked to provide an outlook for the trans-Pacific trade for the balance of 2007 and for 2008. We're nearing...

Bulls vs. bears.
October 22, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER TIRSCHWELL Container lines have been ordering massive ships at a torrid pace over the past six months, and this has sparked a debate over the eventual impact on freight rates. The two sides' views can be summarized...

RADAR SCREEN.
October 22, 2007... CAFTA loose ends remain after Costa Rica referendum Costa Rica's approval of the Central America Free Trade Agreement in an Oct. 7 referendum has apparently cleared the way for full implementation of CAFTA. Costa Rica was the last country...

China plus one.
October 20, 2007... BYLINE: BY JOSEPH BONNEY Those of us who follow such things have run out of superlatives to describe the growth of ChinaOs export economy during the last few years. But nothing grows to the sky, which raises the question: Can this growth...

THE WEEK.(briefs)
October 15, 2007... Retailers Trim Peak-Season Forecast: U.S. retailers expect October to be the busiest month for container gateways on the West, East and Gulf coasts, but they're reducing slightly their cargo projections for the rest of the year. Port Tracker,...

Model of efficiency.(automotive sector's supply chain pitfalls)
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL DIBENEDETTO Walk into the Mini Cooper dealership in Tacoma, Wash., and it's quickly evident that it is not your typical new car lot. Like the vehicle itself, the showroom and lot is small but efficient. It's not the usual...

Supplier woes.
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL DIBENEDETTO Ford Motor Co. has seen its reputation and market share erode dramatically in recent years, a development that its suppliers know intimately. Of the U.S. automakers that suppliers prefer to do business...

Blame game.
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY COURTNEY TOWER The word has come down from Washington, and for shippers and carriers it is not good. At the northern border, they fear a continuation of a long, hot period of what Chuck Chrapko calls "a summer from hell." ...

Rupert ripple effect.(Canadian National Railway Co. merged with Elgin Joliet and Eastern Railway Co.)
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL DIBENEDETTO Canadian National Railway's Prince Rupert strategy - to use a new on-dock container terminal in British Columbia as a major trans-Pacific intermodal gateway aimed directly at the North American heartland -...

Green is good.(Texas. Port of Houston Authority installed backup alarms)
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY JOSEPH BONNEY Shhhuuusssshhhh! At Houston's Bayport Container Terminal, that hissing sound has replaced the familiar beep-beep-beep warning for movements of container-yard equipment. The Port of Houston Authority installed the...

Opening the door.
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER T. LEACH When the joint Georgia-South Carolina committee submits its plan for the proposed container port in Jasper County, S.C., to the governors of the two states in the next week or so, it could signal a change in the...

Ridge looks back, forward.
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY R.G. EDMONSON There's the old saying that it's hard to concentrate on draining the swamp when you're up to your rear end in alligators. Tom Ridge admits that he had such days during his tenure as the first head of the...

Exxon Valdez spill reaches high court.
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY R.G. EDMONSON In March 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground and spilled some 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound. It was one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, and commanded...

Fuel guzzlers find new home.
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY IAN PUTZGER Soaring fuel costs have led established airfreight carriers to dispose of their Boeing 747-200 freighters. But upstart airlines sense opportunities to make money with the suddenly out-of-favor aircraft. In...

Apples to apples.(American Product Quality Center)
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY ALAN M. FIELD logistics productivity Imagine if some baseball teams didn't care much about their players' batting averages, but others thought it was the most important performance indicator. Or if some football coaches...

Thinking logically.
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY GARY FERRULLI For more than a year, the Transpacific Stabilization Agreement and other ocean carriers have criticized the inaccuracies of forecasts by "experts" during the previous few years on market growth between Asia and...

With James J. White, Maryland Port Administration.(Interview)
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER LEACH Jim White returned to the Port of Baltimore as executive director on Aug. 1 after a two-year hiatus. During that time, he served as senior vice president and chief operating officer of NYK's Ceres Terminals, which...

Export violations carry big penalties.
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER A. QUINTER P.R.A. World Wide Trading Co., a Brooklyn, N.Y., forwarder, recently agreed to pay a $250,000 penalty to settle allegations by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security that the forwarder had...

Your money or theirs?
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER TIRSCHWELL To me, where the absurdity of the Southern California truck plan is truly exposed is in the trucks themselves. If the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach end up implementing their Clean Air Action Plan for...

Ships and ports.
October 15, 2007... BYLINE: BY JOSEPH BONNEY We've all seen the statistics on trade volume rising, ships becoming larger, more of them being built, and ports struggling to keep up. In the last five months alone, carriers have ordered 100 ships of at least...

RADAR SCREEN.(Briefs)
October 15, 2007... FMC could be in limelight with port trucker case By Washington standards the Federal Maritime Commission is an obscure agency, little noticed outside the shipping industry. The last time the FMC attracted wide attention was in 1997, when...

Don't rush to judge 2007 peak season.
October 15, 2007... Your Oct. 1 article, "August blues," stating that "carriers' hopes are fading fast for a strong peak shipping season" not only jumped the gun, but also missed the mark completely. From everything we've seen and heard in the trans-Pacific...

THE WEEK.
October 8, 2007... New Terminal Owners, New Concerns: The three-year buying binge of U.S. port facilities appears to be winding down. Now the companies that paid substantial premiums to purchase marine terminals must make these acquisitions pay off for their...

Still going strong.
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY ALAN M. FIELD Although financial markets trembled at last summer's subprime mortgage crisis, East Asia's economies emerged largely unscathed. Only in the case of Japan have economic growth forecasts been lowered, and only...

India rising.
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL DIBENEDETTO Increasing congestion and higher labor and real estate costs at China's manufacturing centers could provide an opening for India to become a major global manufacturing center. The consensus has been that...

Not so fast!
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL MONGELLUZZO The first legal shots in the war over the controversial clean-trucks program in Los Angeles-Long Beach were fired in late September, with the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association and the National Industrial...

Too little, too late?
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY BRUCE BARNARD It's so far, so good along the European waterfront as the continent's major container ports keep pace with the waves of peak-season imports arriving from Asia. As each day passes, port executives become a...

Short-sea savior.
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER T. LEACH The long-awaited development of new short-sea shipping services got a significant boost last month when Horizon Lines announced it may ply routes along the East and Gulf coasts next year. But Chuck Raymond,...

Grand plans.
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER T. LEACH Trailer Bridge is thinking big. Encouraged by the success of the extension of its Puerto Rican service to the Dominican Republic, the Jacksonville, Fla.-based tug-barge carrier is considering new services to...

Balancing act.
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL DIBENEDETTO What do you call it when a non-asset-based logistics service company acquires another non-asset-based company? Is it adding assets or non-assets? Perhaps that's a philosophical riddle for another time and...

With Joel Anderson, International Warehouse Logistics Association.
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL MONGELLUZZO Joel Anderson is president of the International Warehouse Logistics Association in Des Plaines, Ill. The IWLA represents third-party warehouse and logistics providers on issues affecting their industry. Prior...

Embracing Colombia.
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY CARLOS M. GUTIERREZ In Medellin, Colombia, last month, a bipartisan U.S. delegation rode high above a once-violent and poverty-stricken neighborhood of Santo Domingo Savio in El Metro Cable, a modern mass-transit cable system....

Road to clean air isn't a one-way street.
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER TIRSCHWELL To the city governments that control the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the concept of alternative points of view meant little to nothing when crafting a plan to combat pollution in the harbor. With...

More Philadelphia Phunny business.
October 8, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER T. LEACH Just when it looked like Philadelphia was getting its act together for development of a major new container terminal at Southport on the city's former Navy Yard, a large fly has dropped into the ointment. ...

RADAR SCREEN.
October 8, 2007... Overcapacity? Who can tell? A surplus of container ship capacity may be looming, but it's difficult to tell because it's getting harder to collect information on big orders, warns AXS-Alphaliner, which collects data on container fleet...

THE WEEK.(resignation of Michael P. Jackson from Department of Homeland Security)(approval of Water Resources Development Act by senator)(influence of trade agreement on international trade)
October 1, 2007... Jackson To Step Down From DHS: Michael P. Jackson, second-in-command at the Department of Homeland Security, will resign, effective Oct. 26. In an e-mail to staff, he cited financial reasons, "The simple truth . . . is that after over five...

Ripple effect.(influence of economic conditions on international trade and containerization)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER T. LEACH Although their crystal balls are still a bit murky, most economists are saying that U.S. economic growth will slow sharply through the middle of next year. While they differ on the odds that the slowdown will...

Battle of Bayonne.(megers, acquisitions and divestments and management of container port)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY JOSEPH BONNEY The view from the former Military Ocean Terminal at Bayonne, N.J., is spectacular - the Manhattan skyline in the distance, the Statue of Liberty closer by, the parade of big ships sailing in and out of New York...

Different frequencies on TWIC.(transportation worker identification credential .)(management of safety and security measures of ports)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY R.G. EDMONSON The Transportation Security Administration and Coast Guard have proposed that encryption technology be included in specifications for an electronic device to read the Transportation Worker Identification...

August blues.(forecasts and trends of growth in international trade and its influence on shipping industry)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL MONGELLUZZO Carriers' hopes are fading fast for a strong peak shipping season this year in the eastbound Pacific. West Coast port statistics show a year-to-year drop in containerized imports for August, which was expected...

Green containers.(mterials and environmental aspects of containers)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY R.G. EDMONSON The 2 million ocean containers that are built each year are cutting into forest resources that go into container floors. That's why the Institute of International Container Lessors is looking for more sustainable...

The best defense is a good offense.(laws, regulations and rules and management of contract manufacturing)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY ALAN M. FIELD You've decided to source your widgets in China, where contract manufacturers can make them at half the price and supply them at a 20 percent discount. Weeks after you take your first delivery, you discover that...

Questions to ask.
October 1, 2007... Despina Keegan, senior trade adviser at JPMorgan, says companies should ask these questions when they evaluate their product-safety business practices: -- Do we inspect our foreign factories (announced or unannounced)? -- Do we have...

By the book.(influence of laws, regulations and rules of warehousing on exports of food industry)
October 1, 2007... BYLNE: BY R.G. EDMONSON Was this a crackdown or not? A few weeks ago, refrigerated warehouses began noticing that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service was less willing to cut corners on the paperwork...

Fighting fires.(usage and influence of firefighting skills in shipping industry)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY TED PRINCE The forest fire season is upon us once again. A mild winter, with lower-than-average precipitation, produced major fires that have torn through western states. One 375-square-mile fire burned for more than two...

Paying for results.(evaluation of management and contract of business logistics)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY BILL DIBENEDETTO Leonard Sahling sees performance-based logistics as "the next big thing" in supply-chain management. In an industry noted for its vague jargon, performance-based logistics is pretty much what its name...

Insecurity over screening.(influence of new laws, regulations and rules on air freight services)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY MICHAEL FABEY For Quick International Courier, the new 100 percent screening requirements for air cargo could be more than just another price point. The new rules could literally mean the difference between life and death. ...

With Sandra Liss Friedman, Barnes, Richardson & Colburn.(Interview)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY ALAN M. FIELD Sandra Liss Friedman is a partner at Barnes, Richardson & Colburn, a law firm that specializes in global trade issues. She is president of the Customs & International Trade Bar Association and previously chaired...

BIS throws exporters a (phone) line.(Bureau of Industry and Security)(technical advisory committees)(Column)
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY DONALD ALFORD WEADON JR. In 2005, I offered a recommendation to David McCormick, then newly confirmed as commerce undersecretary for the Bureau of Industry and Security. I suggested that he effect a much-needed expansion in...

Straight talk on the Northwest Passage.
October 1, 2007... BYLINE: BY PETER TIRSCHWELL If you were to stand a few feet from the North Pole and take the few seconds you would need to walk in a circle around that imaginary point on the earth's surface, you will have circumnavigated the globe just...