IMO fires up scrap debate SHIP scrapping has been officially added to the International Maritime Organisation's copious agenda of safety promotion work - despite the reservations of some open register maritime nations.
It's a dirty job Working conditions for shipbreakers and the pollution caused by the industry has triggered pressure for.
Govan crisis as GEC bid fails KVAERNER said yesterday it will proceed with 250 redundancies at the Govan shipyard following the failure of GEC to make an acceptable offer.
Norwegian initiative hinges on acceptance of lower values The president of the Norwegian Shipbrokers' Association believes that the ultimate success of the Norwegian initiative on ship demolition, ratified by the International Maritime Organisation this week, will depend on shipowners' willingness to see scrap prices fall to help fund cleaning up the environment.
Ruling safeguards crew wages CREW wages take priority over mortgagee claims, even when seafarers are not directly employed by the defaulting owner, Britain's Court of Appeal has ruled.
Harwich Haven centre opened THE Princess Royal has officially opened Harwich Haven Authority's operations centre, built at a cost of '3m ($4.8m), and named the first of its four new pilot vessels.
United Parcel Service is positioning itself to become the dominant air cargo carrier in Latin America with the impending purchase of selected assets of Challenge Air Cargo, that region's largest dedicated cargo airline. The acquisition must receive Department of Transportation approval and UPS must also secure the transfer of takeoff and landing rights within Latin America from the individual governments.
Shipper attorney Andy Goldstein is casting stones at the Surface Transportation Board, accusing it of impeding competition. "The rail regulatory process is busted," he told the Association for Transportation Law, Logistics and Policy at its annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyo. "Shippers, for whom the STB is the exclusive source of regulatory relief, largely have lost faith in the ability of the agency or the laws it administers. Something is broken. It needs fixing."
The state of logistics is good and bad but not too ugly. Companies are still struggling to bring the inventory beast to heel, but at least they're sociable about it. A recent study of logistics costs revealed a bad case of the blahs as costs stagnated for the past three years. The good news is that there's still plenty of room for improvement as carriers and shippers find themselves more agreeable to working together instead of beating each other up over price.
Regional LTL carriers are linking up to go long haul. Truckload carriers increasingly are targeting the 500- to 1,000-mile short-haul sector. A national unionized LTL carrier spends $200 million for a nonunion breakbulk-free regional carrier. And nearly every trucking company using rail is pulling some of that freight and putting it back on the road as rail service gets dicey in some lanes. Truckers are smiling as they enter the peak-shipping season of the next four months.
Shippers complain about rail service, rail carriers say they're trying to improve it and Wall Street maintains more of it will be expected of the railroads if the industry is to grow. "What shippers are hoping for," said National Industrial Transportation League President Ed Emmett, "is that their railcars get delivered when (railroads) say they're going to get delivered. That's what the railroad industry has to understand."
Shippers mistrust them and the Federal Maritime Commission is wary of them but carriers insist on them. Discussion agreements have become part of the ocean shipping reform landscape and they will continue to influence the liner industry, said Tim Rhein, president and CEO, APL. "Shippers would rather we had no ability to talk to each other at all. I understand that. This is one of the trade-offs between shipper rights and carrier rights," Rhein said.
For the past decade, the airline industry and environmental groups have coexisted somewhat peaceably. That appears to be changing. It's beginning on a small, local level with concerned citizens banding together to complain about what they perceive as growing aircraft noise around their communities. All-cargo aircraft are an easy target because they operate during the hours that most people sleep.
What do shippers want from their carriers? What do they want from their carriers' technology? As it turns out, they want information and plenty of it. Carrier technology can be that magic button to improve a shipper's overall business processes. John Birt, vice president of international logistics for Pier 1 Imports, said visibility within the supply chain is a strategic advantage. Shippers are interested in technology that can provide line-item visibility, transportation optimization, automatic exception alerts and carrier bid optimization software, for example, to lower their costs and react better to marketplace changes.
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