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.TOP NEWS
Bank of Canada's Macklem says recovery from pandemic at a very difficult stage
CBC.com
Canada's recovery from the pandemic is at a very difficult stage, as rising COVID-19 infections dampen growth in the near term and "could even deepen the economic hole," Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said on Tuesday.
Macklem told the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade that household spending had so far led the recovery but for that recovery to be sustainable, Canada would need to boost exports, productivity and business investment.
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StatsCan: Manufacturing sales edged up 0.3 percent in October
Bloomberg
Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales grew 0.3 per cent to $54.1 billion in October, led by the paper, and petroleum and coal industries.
The agency says the rise followed a revised increase of 2.2 per cent for September compared with an earlier reading of 1.5 per cent.
The growth in October came as paper manufacturing sales climbed 5.4 per cent to $2.4 billion on higher sales in the pulp, paper and paperboard mills industries.
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Senators: Will keep raising tax 'until we reach targets'
Blacklock's Reporter
The carbon tax will keep rising "until we reach our targets," cabinet's representative in the Senate said last night. "We will be seriously fighting climate change for the first time," said Senator Marc Gold (Que.), who had earlier promised the 12-cent a litre tax on gasoline would never go up.
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Quasar is an end-to-end supply chain optimization platform that enables the management and cost control of the supply chain for shippers. It’s a fully cloud enabled and digital platform designed to automate manual effort in tracking assets, as well as provide data and insights into how to optimize the supply chain from “order to cash.”
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.RAIL
Weekly rail traffic for the week ending December 12, 2020
AAR.org
The Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported U.S. rail traffic for the week ending December 12, 2020.
For this week, total U.S. weekly rail traffic was 546,209 carloads and intermodal units, up 4.9 percent compared with the same week last year.
Total carloads for the week ending December 12 were 238,193 carloads, down 2.2 percent compared with the same week in 2019, while U.S. weekly intermodal volume was 308,016 containers and trailers, up 11.1 percent compared to 2019.
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Biden to nominate Buttigieg as transportation secretary
Progressive Railroading
President-elect Joe Biden announced that he would nominate Pete Buttigieg to serve as the 19th U.S. secretary of transportation.
The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, Buttigieg, 38, was picked to lead the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) because the position "stands at the nexus of so many of the interlocking challenges and opportunities ahead of us," Biden said in a statement.
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New CN terminal deepens network reach in Twin Cities and Midwest
Dry Bulk
CN has announced the launch of its new inland distribution terminal in New Richmond, Wisconsin. The new multipurpose facility will include an automotive compound for finished vehicles, and an intermodal terminal to serve intermodal shippers and receivers in the metropolitan area of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Opening 1 March 2021, the New Richmond, Wisconsin, terminal will provide direct CN Intermodal service to the Twin Cities market.
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With eye on intermodal, railroads invest in autonomous trucking company
Trains
Two Class I railroads were among the companies to invest in the latest round of funding for one of the startup companies that is developing self-driving trucks.
Online technology publication TechCrunch has reported that Union Pacific and Canadian National both were among the investors in a $350 million round of funding for TuSimple. CN declined to comment, but UP has confirmed its investment.
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.TRUCKING
Massive numbers of trucks will be needed to move vaccines
Inside Logistics
As the world awaits the approval of COVID-19 vaccines, freight carriers are gearing up for an initial 2021 goal of transporting an average of 271 million ultracold and cold doses per month (nine million doses per day).
Early modeling by global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research shows that there will be at least 857 temperature-controlled trucks leaving Pfizer and Moderna manufacturing facilities or distribution centres each month.
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New prebate program makes shared truckload more attractive than ever
Freight Waves
Companies waste huge amounts of money each year shipping air. In fact, shared truckload innovator Flock Freight estimates that North American companies spend $7 billion annually on truckload (TL) freight that ships with varying amounts of unused space.
For standard TL trailers, the average space utilization when a truck is not completely full comes in at just 66% per shipment, according to Flock Freight. That is the equivalent of moving five out of every 100 trucks completely empty. The traditional request-for-proposal (RFP) process is responsible for much of this wasted money and space.
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.AIR
Cargo carriers pick up where airline passengers dropped off
Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business
It's no secret that airlines and airplane manufacturers have been clobbered by the coronavirus pandemic.
International flights traditionally flown by jumbo jets are particularly hard hit. Borders are closed and people aren't flying.
There is a small silver-lining. Just as restaurants started take-out service to survive, airlines are filling planes with freight.
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Lufthansa Cargo and Compensaid enable CO2-neutral cargo flights
The Loadstar
Air freight customers can have the CO2 emissions of their shipments calculated during the booking process
Since November, Lufthansa Cargo customers can easily check the CO2 emissions of their shipment’s transport during the booking process. This is made possible by the new online booking portal eBooking, which Lufthansa Cargo launched in November.
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Michigan airports support airlift of Pfizer vaccine
American Shipper
Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan, could play an active role in the U.S. and worldwide distribution of COVID-19 vaccine because it is the closest commercial airport to Pfizer Inc.'s Kalamazoo manufacturing plant.
On Sunday, an Airbus A300 cargo jet operated by FedEx Express left Ford airport for the 90- minute flight to FedEx's global air hub in Memphis, Tennessee, carrying the first air shipment of the life-saving vaccine. FedEx has a facility at the airport and operates scheduled flights between Grand Rapids and its Memphis hub.
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.MARINE
DHL report highlights 'potentially disruptive impact' of COVID vaccine distribution on supply chains
Lloyd's Loading List
Shippers from across a broad range of industrial verticals, from technology and automotive to engineering and medical devices, who rely on the continuous availability of air cargo capacity for their day-to-day procurement and logistics operations, face the challenge of anticipating the potentially disruptive impact on their supply chains from the distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, according to a new report by DHL’s supply chain risk management platform, Resilience 360.
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New container trade review highlights rising costs and declining service
The Loadstar
Container shipping lines are making better margins than ever, according to new research, which suggests that while customers face escalating freight rates, carrier operating costs have been declining.
The Container Shipping Market Quarterly Review, published by UK consultant MDS Transmodal in conjunction with the Global Shippers Forum (GSF), is a new container market monitor which assesses the state of the market by eight indicators: trade volumes; shipping capacity; capacity utilisation; carrier costs and revenues; market competitiveness; port connectivity; service performance; and CO2 emissions.
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Container shortage crisis arrives for India
The Maritime Executive
After China, the U.S., the E.U. and Australia, the next country to be badly hit because of containers (either surplus or deficit) in the pandemic era is India. The reason: low imports and, obviously, China.
The pandemic has ravaged the Indian economy inside out. The country recorded a 24 percent contraction in GDP in the second quarter of 2020, the biggest drop among all major G20 countries. However, in the next quarter, the economy ramped up quickly as lockdown restrictions eased nationwide.
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Honda pauses UK production, highlighting challenges at British ports
The Maritime Executive
For weeks there have been reports of the challenges that British ports were experiencing as the Brexit deadline approaches. While government officials say it is on track and these challenges were anticipated, there are reports of delays as the volumes mount, stockpiling, and a rush to get goods and materials across the border before the new regimes become effective on January 1, 2021.
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UK congestion issues 'cascading' beyond container ports
Lloyd's Loading List
Ikea has become the latest major importer to admit that its supply chains in the UK are suffering due to a mixture of surging demand and hold-ups at ports and terminals.
And some of the issues that were initially reported at the UK's largest container port, Port of Felixstowe, are "cascading" beyond container ports to other UK ports, which are experiencing "a perfect storm" of demand growth related to the Covid pandemic, the pre-Christmas peak, and the end of the UK's Brexit transition period from EU customs rules.
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