While the price for WTI crude oil is expected to average near $100 per barrel through the rest of this year, transport companies and everybody else getting their supply through their services are bracing for the effects of higher fuel prices during the summer season, defined as the period from April 1st to September 30th.

Pricewise, let’s start with the regular grade gasoline retail prices, which averaged $2.93 per gallon last summer (of 2007) and are projected to average $3.54 per gallon during the current driving season.

The trucking business is going to be hit even harder as diesel fuel prices, which averaged $2.85 per gallon last summer, are projected to average $3.73 this summer.

In fact, the monthly average gasoline price at the pump is projected to peak at just over $3.60 per gallon in June while the monthly average diesel price is expected to peak at just over $3.90 per gallon in April.

These rather scary retail price projections reflect higher prices for the refiners’ average acquisition cost of crude oil, projected to average close to $97 per barrel, up from about $67 per barrel last summer which account for a hefty $30 price hike, per barrel. Furthermore, strong world distillate demand growth, especially in Europe and Asia, will do nothing to help the situation domestically, in America.

It is important to note, however, that even if the US national average monthly gasoline price comes to peak around $3.60 per gallon this summer, it’s entirely possible that prices, at some point, will cross the $4 per gallon threshold, severely hurting the transport industry and those who depend on it.

Countless consumers may be forced to reconsider driving their cars at all and the same kind of dilemma may happen for transport operators of all sizes as well as petroleum-based product manufacturers.

Transportation and logistics companies, especially in America, need to plan (and provision lots of “emergency money”) right now for this summer’s potential fuel price explosion.

Tags: gas, fuel, wti crude oil, oil, diesel, petroleum, pump, america, usa, transport, logistics, summer

For those unfamiliar with this rail industry-specific terminology, limbo time refers to the time on duty that is seldom paid for -and- not counted towards hours of service. Simply said, it’s that time when a worker is exhausted and therefore, more dangerous to himself, his colleagues and the public.

The US Congress is expected to look into this widespread problem, causing (among other things) more train collisions, caused by human factors, in 2006 than any other year in recent history. Until then, the limbo time issue continues to be a major security problem.

Obviously, limbo time or similarly named situations where workers work longer than expected to end up being a danger to themselves and others, is a problem in transportation, at large — not just in the rail industry.

While limbo time eats away at the quality of life of the employee and his loved ones, it’s the security issue that should command swift action to end this situation.

A train accident is already bad enough, per se. Learning that over 90 of them were directly caused by human errors (generally related to limbo time issues) in 2006 alone should prompt the US Congress to stop talking and start moving.

While carriers are unwilling to eliminate limbo time, mainly because they multiply their profits because of it, it’s up to the worker’s unions, the workers themselves and the general public to put some pressure on their elected leaders — it’s also very sad to see the carriers acting so carelessly about their employees’ and the public’s security.

Tags: limbo time, rail workers, rail industry, carriers, transport, utu, congress

“According to the Federal Highway Administration‘s (FHWA) recently released report Freight Facts and Figures 2005 (FHWA-HOP-05-071), international trade is growing faster than the overall U.S. economy. Between 1980 and 2003, the U.S. economy, measured by gross domestic product (GDP), doubled, while foreign trade quadrupled in real value, reflecting unprecedented global connectivity. Ocean, rail, and air carriers use trucks and highways for some component of almost every shipment. Already tight infrastructure capacity will be stressed further by limited new construction and the growing demand from freight transportation. In fact, the FHWA Freight Analysis Framework indicates that by 2020 freight volumes will increase by 70 percent from 1998 totals, and freight volumes through the Nation’s primary gateway ports could more than double. Finding ways to improve the operational efficiency of moving this freight is critical to the Nation’s economic vitality and global connectivity.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) recognize that moving freight involves moving information as well as the goods themselves. Although excellent information management can increase freight efficiency, poor information management can add costs, slow handoffs, open security gaps, create delays at gates, and even lead to erroneous freight movements.

Given the important and growing role that goods movement plays in the U.S. economy and the impact that it has on the transportation network, USDOT’s ITS Joint Program Office and FHWA recently launched the Electronic Freight Management (EFM) project. EFM aims to improve the “information highway” that moves critical business information and facilitates the multimodal movement of airfreight, generating benefits for both private and public stakeholders. In particular, the project addresses weaknesses in freight data exchange processes that add costs, create security gaps, and, over time, contribute to congestion.

“It is well accepted that technology systems and electronic data represent one of the few remaining tools for improving both productivity and security,” says Margaret Irwin, director of customs and cross-border operations for the American Trucking Associations. “In addition, regulatory costs can be successfully managed in the long term only by replacing labor-intensive paperwork with electronic systems. Given that international trade now represents 25 percent of our country’s GDP, it is particularly important for ports and borders to operate more efficiently.”

EFM advances several concepts, but the single key concept is to promote electronic data exchanges along a supply chain in an end-to-end manner more robustly than is currently being done.

Typically, freight movements are supported by point-to-point communications, either paper-based or electronic, between parties who agree to such communications. Using the Internet to make data available broadly to any authorized and authenticated user in near real time is key to enabling freight transportation networks to operate more efficiently and securely. This type of data exchange provides buyers and other authorized parties with open visibility into supply chains. Program officials expect that these improvements will help to reduce unnecessary traffic on the transportation network and mitigate congestion.”

For more insight on EFM, please read the original article which goes about covering important themes like the best approach to have, the international data standards to observe, the public and private sector benefits as well as the added security.

This initiative is already bearing fruit and the transports and logistics industry should continue supporting such bold attempts to help our freight flow from the sending point to its destination, as fast and as efficiently as possible.

Tags: freight efficiency, freight flow, transit, highways, transport, logistics, destination

The tone was resolutely engaging and the crowd listening to this speech meant business, big infrastructure development business. Most experts agree Mr Mineta want to help the American transports industry as well as the already stressed out commuters, especially in dense urban areas.

“Thank you very, very much everybody. I appreciate it. I want to thank my very, very good friend, Tom Donohue, for that kind and wonderful introduction. Tom and I have been friends for some 30 years. My wife Deni and I very much appreciate our friendship with Tom and Liz and I, especially, am grateful for Tom’s advice. And my thanks to Tom and to the members of the United States Chamber of Commerce for everything that you do to keep our economy strong and vibrant.

Today, I come full circle. I delivered my first policy address as the United States Secretary of Transportation to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in February 2001. Now, I return to make the final speech of my tenure as the Secretary of Transportation. In a broader sense, I leave my public service career as I began it four decades ago – as a passionate believer in the power of transportation to build prosperity and to improve the quality of our lives.

I am grateful to President Bush. He reached across party lines to give me the high honor and privilege of serving in his cabinet, to guide the transportation policies of this great Nation. And I am proud of all that has been accomplished working as part of a tremendous team.

There is much talk of the bitter partisanship that coarsens the political dialogue here in Washington, D.C., and seems to stymie effective action. But I would like to believe that we have shown – at least in some small measure – that it is still possible to place country ahead of party affiliation, in the noble tradition that defines public service at its best.

Our transportation system today is at a critical juncture that cries out for such bipartisanship – or, more accurately, for statesmanship. And while we have laid important legislative and policy foundations over the last five-and-a-half years, continued progress requires facing some basic truths.

The first is that the modern economy – and by extension, our transportation systems – are global in nature.

When I began my public service career many years ago, trade with the rest of the world represented a very small percentage of the United States’ overall economic activity. For sure, certain international markets were heavily developed. But, by and large, American prosperity was determined by what Americans bought from and sold to each other.

Today, international trade is propelling the American economy – and the world economy – in ways previously unimaginable.

The United States has the strongest, fastest growing economy in the developed world because we have some of the world’s strongest transportation systems. But we will lose that competitive edge if we make a habit out of turning our noses up at investors in our seaports, airports, and highways just because they are headquartered outside the United States.

Security is, and must always remain, a foremost concern. But it is pure folly to think that economic isolationism is an option in today’s interconnected world.

Around the globe, I find a growing recognition among my counterparts that the development of transportation systems has become a major determinant of a nation’s economic success. And while the rest of the world is building up its infrastructure, the United States can ill-afford to close the door on much-needed investments – even international investments – in our transportation network. Not when our economic competitiveness depends on our ability to move products and people more efficiently in our growing economy.

Our growing international linkages compel us to face a second transportation truth: Americans must be concerned with the safety of not just our own, but of the world’s transportation systems.

With our unprecedented focus over the past five-and-a-half years, the United States has gained important momentum when it comes to safety on our roadways, along our tracks and at railway crossings, and in our skies.

But the recent series of airplane crashes around the globe stands as a tragic reminder that a weak link in aviation safety, anywhere, reverberates throughout the international aviation community and the global economy.

And the mounting traffic deaths on the world’s roadways can only be described as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions. Each year, more than 1.2 million members of our world family lose their lives – and tens of millions of others are injured or disabled – as a result of road traffic crashes. In addition to the sobering toll on humankind, the economic costs are a staggering $518 billion a year.

If we do nothing, the World Health Organization projects that, by the year 2020, traffic crashes will run ahead of malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS among all contributors to the global health burden.

But, as we have shown here in the United States, we have the power to change that grim future. Traffic crashes are among the most clearly preventable causes of death in the world. And government leaders – as well as every company doing business overseas – have a moral obligation to ensure that there is no easing up on the safety throttle.

Just as morbidity should not be accepted as the price of mobility, so too must Americans reject the unhealthy notion that congestion is a fact of life and that they must learn to live with growing gridlock and an unreliable transportation system.

We can and we must address the congestion that is so pervasive in today’s America before it seriously undermines our economic competitiveness and quality of life. Nationwide, the economic price tag of congestion is already a whopping $200 billion a year, not to mention the largely unmeasured social costs when parents leave for work at dawn, only to get home just as their children are about ready to go to bed.

But we do not have to resign ourselves to live with congestion. To the contrary, a little over a month ago, I announced a plan that can begin to seriously reduce traffic congestion nationwide – now, and not ten or fifteen years down the road – if we have the leadership and political will at all levels of government to see it through.

Some of what we have suggested will be controversial. It will necessitate a cultural change to move from a government-monopoly model for much of our transportation infrastructure toward acceptance of the private sector and market forces.

If we can fix the policy problems, I am confident that the conditions will be ripe for substantial investment. Virtually every major financial institution on Wall Street has created – or is in the process of creating – an infrastructure fund with transportation as a major component.

They correctly recognize the enormous potential in American infrastructure. And it is imperative that future transportation decision-makers continue to foster this interest, not take steps to discourage it.

History may very well reflect back on this as one of the defining public policy debates of our time – as consequential as the one that gave birth to the Interstate Highway System some fifty years ago. And the business community must be active participants.

Finding a way to tackle congestion more meaningfully and successfully is not a problem for some future generation. It is an urgent challenge for today’s leaders.

And the risks of inaction are magnified when one recognizes this final transportation truth: Our transportation systems are lifelines in times of emergency.

We saw these lifelines in action in the aftermath of the horrific attacks of September 11th, 2001, and again during the hurricanes that devastated the Gulf Coast this last year.

Whether an emergency is caused by a deliberate act of terrorism or results from a natural disaster or a health care crisis such as avian flu, we must be able to depend on our transportation systems to evacuate people in need, to move critical supplies and emergency workers, and to provide essential resources rapidly into affected areas.

It is no coincidence that terrorists target our transportations systems. They are the heart of modern societies and modern economies. And I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to help strengthen the heartbeat of America’s transportation network during the first half-decade of the 21st Century.

Let me conclude by gratefully acknowledging the support that I received from President Bush and Vice President Cheney, for whom I have the utmost respect. And the wise counsel, advice, and assistance that I have received from the United States Chamber of Commerce and Tom Donohue, from across the transportation community, and from the highly competent and dedicated staff at the United States Department of Transportation.

Travel safely. May God bless each and every one of you. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.”

Tags: transportation, 21st century, transport, us, infrastructure, highways, airlines

The Truck Show is an opportunity for your company to meet with decision makers from the Western U.S. and beyond. For many truck show visitors this may be their only opportunity to meet face to face with exhibitors.

Roger Sherrard, President of Independent Trade Show Management resumed the show’s intent in an elegant way:

“Our goal is simple. Bring together buyers and sellers of heavy and medium duty truck equipment and services in a forum that makes it easy to conduct business. Achieving this goal is our speciality.

In 2005 over 16,000 registered attendees visited with 342 companies during the three days of The Truck Show Las Vegas.

Almost 90% of our attendees were qualified industry personnel and over 67% of them told us they were decision makers or company management.”

It’s also a great way to spend some quality time in Las Vegas, Nevada, June 15, 16 and 17, 2006. The event will take place at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Tags: las vegas, nevada, convention center, quality time, trucks, transport, attendees, trade show

Or, should we say “http://www.tc.gc.ca/” to be more precise — this abundant and resourceful public web site has celebrated its 10th year on the web on January 15th, 2006.

The full story is available here.

It’s one thing to create a web site of this scope but it’s another to maintain it daily. More than 8 million visitors came to TC’s web site in 2005 alone.

In their own words, TC looks into the future with these objectives in mind:

“As more Canadians turn to the Internet as a source of information, Transport Canada remains committed to providing accurate, timely, relevant information, tools and services that support business objectives and meet requirements under all relevant policies and standards.”

Let’s hope TC has many more successful years ahead with their web site destined primarily to the general public but also to the T&L industry specialists.

Tags: transport canada, 10th anniversary, celebration, successful years, transport, logistics