Bulk Freight News & Industry Updates - Stay Ahead in Trucking

BRASILIA, BRAZIL The government of Brazil plans to privatize southern airports in the second quarter of 2019 and will have the Ferrograo and FIOL railway projects serving the central grain belt ready for bidding later this year or early in 2020, according to Reuters. Adalberto Santos de Vasconcelos, secretary for the Investment Partnerships Program, also told Reuters that Miner Vale S.A. and logistics company Rumo S.A. are expected to sign early renewal of rail concessions this year.

Bulk Loads LLC and CDL Legal LLC have reached an agreement to provide discounted legal benefits to Bulk Loads customers and subsidiaries including clients of their factoring company, Smart Freight Funding. CDL Legal provides legal coverage in the event of moving and non-moving violations. They also help fleets navigate CSA issues by reviewing inspection violations and filing DataQ challenges on behalf of fleets. CDL Legal boasts a 92% success rate getting tickets reduced or dismissed.

Shipment volume in U.S. trucking in December 2018 went south compared to December 2017 marking the first negative year-over-year change in two years. Analysts from the Cass Freight Index insist the dip is not cause for alarm and simply suggests the U.S. economy "may have reached its short-term expansion limit."

ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) Hauling freight and goods coast-to-coast takes a lot of diesel fuel. But thanks to advances in autonomous technology, the trucking industry hopes to change that.

In the absence of crucial government crop reports, they're tapping their wide networks and in-depth research to navigate markets. Thats bringing back memories of when information didnt travel as fast and they had a bigger advantage over rivals.

California will now require most businesses to offer employees retirement savings plans, which could prove burdensome for some trucking companies. Thats because motor carriers often experience a traditionally high driver turnover rate.

The Trucking Law segment is a new monthly feature on Overdrive, in which we pose commonly asked questions from truckers and owner-operators to legal experts. In this installment, attorney Paul Taylor addresses drivers right to refuse to drive in severe winter conditions.

Bunge Ltd. named a new acting chief executive and said three directors would step down as the agricultural company warned of lower-than-anticipated profits. Gregory Heckman, a grain industry executive who joined Bunges board in October, immediately succeeds departing chief executive Soren Schroder, the company said.

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Chalk up a victory, at least for now, for truckers in northeastern Colorado who would like to avoid the laborious process of going through the Fort Morgan port of entry every time they make a trip within a five-mile radius of that station.

BOISE Trucking companies soon may have three more options on Idaho highways while hauling heavy loads. The Idaho Transportation Departments Subcommittee on 129,000-pound truck routes made a recommendation Thursday to approve three new routes for trucks with up to 129,000 pounds of reducible loads.

The new year will bring new revenues from out-of-state medium and heavy-duty truck operators using the states roads....

REGINA, SASKATCHEWAN, CANADA Viterra launched a full range of online contracting options for farmers in Western Canada through myViterra. Customers with accounts can now create basis, flat priced and fixed futures contracts in a few easy steps, providing added convenience of contracting grain anywhere, anytime.

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. grain merchant Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM) has looked at buying rivals including Bunge Ltd. and dozens of other companies but decided the time is not right for monster acquisitions, the companys chief executive told Reuters.

In the trucking industry, it's a commonly repeated adage that "the shippers are the last to know" when it comes to freight market conditions. According to brokers we spoke to this week, shippers have finally realized how to take advantage of unusually loose trucking capacity, and they're trying to crash rates.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday sides with a long-haul truck driver who sued his employer for failing to pay him a minimum wage. It marks a rare win for workers at the high court.

Jason T. Coleman, 40, a co-founder of a Brinkley grain company that went bankrupt in 2014 while owing farmers millions of dollars, was found dead Tuesday.

CHICAGO (CBS) — Drivers who worked for a trucking company are without paychecks and work after their company never paid.

Trucking moves 71% of the freight in the United States. And if it were to suddenly cease, the effects would be more drastic than you might expect. In May 2018, truck drivers in Brazil went on strike for a week, and it "paralyzed" the country in unexpected ways. As gas stations ran out of fuel, for instance, public transit halted. "Without trucking, we would be naked, starving, and homeless," Mike Robbins, a longtime trucker and leader of trucker strike group Black Smoke Matters, told Business

FREEPORT The Stephenson County Farm Bureau, 210 W. Spring St., will host a seminar on motor vehicle laws for Illinois farmers at 1 p.m. Feb. 8. The two-hour seminar will discuss old and new trucking laws specifically for farmers and allow time for questions throughout. The presenters will be Kevin Rund and Kirby Wagner, specialists in farm transportation issues for the Illinois Farm Bureau. Take-home materials also will be provided. Members of any farm bureau are welcome, and particip

Larry Kahaner | Jan 11, 2019 Charles Claburn considers himself a reasonable man working in an unreasonable industry. He has driven over-the-road for 26 accident- and ticket-free years logging three million miles. He believes that some of the rules under which drivers operate are detrimental to the drivers, the industry and the public. His group Truckers Stand as One hopes to call attention to issues that they would like changed by calling for a nationwide non-driving day on April 12.

Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Chao swore in Raymond Martinez as administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on Feb. 28 of last year, and in short order, he waded into the middle of no small amount of truck driver discontent. He inherited the congressionally mandated installation of electronic logging devices in most heavy trucks and the driver animus that came with it. Martinez got a dose of that when he held the first of several listening sessions at the Mid-Amer

Thank God for Mississippi is a widely known dig across the southeast. Its an unfair remark about the states historical standing near the bottom across many important metrics like education, healthcare and income. While those are certainly three areas of opportunity for The Magnolia State, that shot paints in a kind of light that infers Mississippi lacks sophistication and relevance on a national scale, which simply isnt true. For one, Mi

WASHINGTON The European Union and United States have not yet agreed on the scope of trade negotiations, but the bloc will not include agriculture in the talks, its trade commissioner said on Wednesday. Cecilia Malmstrm told reporters the EU was willing to include all industrial goods, such as autos, in the discussions. "We have made very clear agriculture will not be included," she said, though the two sides had not yet agreed on that issue.

Not following Californias meal and rest break laws could leave motor carriers that opt to judiciously observe the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrations (FMCSA) recent decision open to added liability risk in pending or future civil lawsuits, according to legal experts. Those new risks were triggered by a petition filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in late December by the Teamsters union. The Teamsters want the court to reverse the federal agency&rsqu

Iowas smart truck parking system, which aims to connect truck drivers to safe, convenient parking options, has launched. Omaha-based eX Technology on Monday announced the launch of Trucks Park Here, Iowas Truck Parking Information Management System, TPIMS). The program began operations on Friday.

At 10:00 p.m. on December 3, 1973, a 37-year old trucker from Overland Park, Kansas named J.W. Edwards stopped his rig suddenly in the middle of Interstate I-80 near Blakeslee, Pennsylvania and picked up his CB radio microphone. The insurrection he was about to start, using his now-famous handle River Rat, would give Americas independent truckers their first national voice and, along the way, elevate them to folk-hero status.

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A new survey found that an increasing number of truck drivers are so frustrated with working with grocery retailers especially since the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) Mandate went into effect that they are simply refusing to pick up or drop off from their locations.

Leading the corporations is Apple (AAPL: NASDAQ), which announced its revenue for the end of 2018 would be lower than expected due to poor sales in China. This is the first time in 16 years that Apple has lowered its revenue expectations. The news prompted a selloff of Apple and other China-exposed stocks, including General Motors (GM: NYSE).

In December, orders for new Class-8 trucks the heavy trucks that haul the products of the goods-based economy across the US plunged by 43% from a year ago, to just 21,000 orders, the lowest since August 2017, and down by 60% from August 2018. The chart shows the percent change of Class-8 truck orders for each month compared to the same month a year earlier, which eliminates the effects of seasonality (data via transportation data provider FTR):

A video featuring a truckers blindside backing job has left the internet amazed and a little envious of the drivers trucking talent. The video was filmed by Quebec resident Francois Blouin, who was so impressed by the B-train trailer backing prowess of truck driver Jean-francois Tremblay that he just had to share.

Just under a year ago, the Black Smoke Matters (BSM) Facebook group was formed to bring about change for truck drivers. While the group developed a small following, with approximately 4,000 followers over that time, a couple of news stories after Christmas including one by FreightWaves around a planned trucker protest on April 12, 2019, more than doubled the groups membership to more than 10,000, and with it came a series of problems, unanswered questions, and open host

Earlier last summer, Scott Berger was standing in front of three whiteboards in his farm office. Each one was covered with color-coded lists of contracts, dates, prices and delivery locations. As he looked at the row of numbers, he thought, Last year I was begging the market to give me $4 for July corn. This year Im already at $4, why am I not selling?

The amount of edible food that goes to waste in America has reached appalling proportions. Each year, about 72 billion pounds of otherwise consumable foodstuffs never make it onto store shelves, according to estimates from Feeding America, a large hunger-relief group. Annually, that amounts to roughly 40 percent of all food in the US, the group said. Those figures dont include the volumes of food that spoil either at rest or in transit. Nor does it cover the mountains of scraps thrown

Cargill's net profit fell 20 percent and operating earnings 10 percent in the September-through-November quarter as trade volatility, the plunging stock market and shifting food demands put pressure on the agribusiness giant.

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An Electronic Logging Device (ELD) manufacturer that enticed truckers to buy with the promise of no monthly fees is closing down its operation. ZED Connect announced on their companys website that they are phasing out their Cummins-backed ZED ELD product. ZED Connect touted their product as the Zero Monthly Fee ELD.

The law, which entered the state legislature in February 2018, will automatically allow farmers and truck drivers to apply for a free permit from the Department of Transportation to carry up to 10 percent more than the gross vehicle weight on a state route.

(Bloomberg) -- More grain volatility is on the way as a lack of U.S. federal data sends the market hunting for crop information to trade on. Thats according to Steve Georgy, the president of agriculture broker and advisor Allendale Inc. A partial government shutdown means most key reports -- including figures on export sales -- released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been halted. Given the thin holiday trading, last week the dearth of information sent investors to the sideline

The labor market has continued getting tighter for many industries across the U.S. in the last few years. At the end of 2017, there was a shortage of 51,000 truck drivers. That number is expected to increase by the end of 2018.

When Zipline Logistics asked employees from 150 trucking companies around the country this fall what companies they refuse to work with, one type of retailer kept getting mentioned above the others: grocery stores.

In response to Mason Cooper’s letter suggesting increased rail usage to decrease truck traffic on I-81, I suggest that he read the 2010 Feasibility Plan for Maximum Truck to Rail Diversion in Virginia. He can find it on the Internet.

A group calling itself Black Smoke Matters is trying to organize a shutdown of truckers on April 12, 2019, to protest a variety of conditions affecting drivers, including hours of service and training levels.

A veteran trucker who had to retire because of illness received an amazing Christmas surprise from his son and his former trucking company. In a moving Facebook post shared on December 23, Jim Shrock shared the story of how a group of truckers came together to honor his father John Shrock, who is near to the end of his fight with cancer.

Foremost Transport-leased owner-operator Rudy Yakym Jr., toting RVs west from his Northern Indiana home base and hauling a variety of vehicles back on a dovetail step deck, ran into a problem last year following the turn to electronic logging devices.

U.S. companies are so inundated with inventory that some are renting truck trailers to use for storage space, parking them on warehouse lots or behind storefronts to hold goods until a surge in imports is cleared from crowded distribution hubs.

CEDAR RAPIDS Federal prosecutors say thousands of businesses and individuals across the country potentially fell victim to a large-scale scheme in which soybeans and corn were falsely sold nationwide as organic. According to documents filed over the past week by the U.S. Attorneys Office in Cedar Rapids, Missouri businessman Randy Constant and three associates defrauded potentially tens of thousands of victims when the victims purchased a product

Backups and congestion on land and along the nations waterfronts due to a lack of customs clearance personnel could be where carriers and shippers see the most immediate effect of a long-term federal government shutdown.

Throughout the past year, Bulk Logistics Trends and Bulk Transporter ran regular updates on increasingly tight capacity in the tank truck industry and trucking as a whole. Some of the latest reports indicated that capacity was maxed out. Carriers reported that they were turning down some loads.

The Seattle-based company said today that more than 1 billion items were shipped for free over the holidays by U.S. customers using its Prime service. That was part of what the company called a record-breaking holiday season across its worldwide system. The secretive Amazon did not disclose global volume figures, and did not define the term items in the context of its statement.

Queens, New York-based trucker Aziz Akhrorov was sentenced to time served, a $1,000 fine and a $100 special court assessment after pleading guilty to conspiring to unlawfully produce CDLs.

Facing competition from hi-tech startups, two of the world's biggest trading houses are seeking U.S. approval to create a joint digital network designed to let farmers manage their data online.

Bryan Jones is a third-generation St. Johns County farmer who says his mission is to use agriculture as a tool to give back to his community. I feel called to give back in thanks for the blessings I have had, the 35-year-old husband and father explained recently, discussing his life against a background of farm equipment on the family-owned Riverdale Potato Farm Inc.

Though trucking was in his blood, Dance pursued another passion. He wore a badge for about seven years as an officer for several local law enforcement agencies.

Spurred on by the disruption of first movers like Tesla, the electric vehicle revolution is spreading at an extremely rapid pace. With the arrival of vehicles like the Tesla Semi, the EV movement is set to spread to even larger markets. Amidst the Semis impending disruption, industry veterans are beginning to get excited about the all-electric long-haulers arrival.

Low prices and a surplus of wheat have moved farmers away from the Kansas staple for the past two years.

On Saturday December 22, in Bonnyville, Alberta, about two hundred trucks met at the Co-op Cardlock and drove through town to the Bonnyville and District Centennial Centre to send a message to Justin Trudeau they want Bill C-69 and other pipeline killing regulations repealed so they can get back to work.

So, one option for drivers has been to use an Automated On-Board Recording Device (AOBRD) like the one from GeoSpace Labs, which provides modern technological features without the restrictions and reporting requirements of the full blown ELD.

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The Tesla Semi, the automaker's heavy-duty electric truck that was unveiled a year ago, is expected to go into production in 2019 and has secured orders from a number of major companies, such as Pepsi, Walmart, and Albertsons.

After years of arguing over California's right to regulate meal and rest breaks (MRB) for truck drivers, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has ruled the state can't dictate the work rules for truck drivers.

Thousands of presents could be stuck at depots this Christmas after truck drivers from a major freight company were told their employer had gone into liquidation. Drivers from Redstar Transport have been told to return their hauls to the nearest facility, and interstate workers have been told to return home. The Transport Workers Union is pushing the federal government to offer some compensation for the workers who will not receive their pay this Christmas.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinas agriculture ministry said on Friday that the government of Baojing County in the southern province of Hunan has lifted swine fever restrictions. Baojing, in the western part of the province, reported Chinas 50th case of the deadly disease in November. The outbreak killed four pigs, prompting a ban on the transportation of live hogs and pork products to and from the affected area. After the completion of a culling program in the affected area and six w

Livestock and insect haulers are currently exempt from the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) mandate. Livestock haulers have been given one exemption after another, but now the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has announced that they are exempt from ELD requirements until further notice.

The 2019 outlook is generally rosy for motor carriers that haul machinery. That was what The Machinery Haulers Association, a small but growing group of specialized open-deck carriers, heard when they met in early December in Rock Island, Illinois, for the associations winter meeting.

CDL Legal provides legal coverage in the event of moving and non-moving violations. They also help fleets navigate CSA issues by reviewing inspection violations and filing DataQ challenges on behalf of fleets. CDL Legal boasts a 92% success rate getting tickets reduced or dismissed. The combination of fighting tickets and CSA violations can make a significant difference when it comes time to renew your insurance policy for the fleets that partner with us, says Scott Shacklett, CEO

A Missouri farmer and businessman ripped off consumers nationwide by falsely marketing more than $140 million worth of corn, soybeans and wheat as certified organic grains, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

SUPERIOR, Wis. Originally anticipated to burn for days, a historic grain elevator that caught fire Monday was cleared by firefighters by 9 a.m. Tuesday. I think because it had been deconstructed to the stage it was at, it actually went down a little more quickly than we anticipated, Superior Fire Chief Steve Panger said. The remains of the Globe Elevators at 2 Banks Ave. burn after catching fire Monday afternoon in Superior. The structure was built of old-growth timber which contains no added ch

Last week the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against one of the nations largest trucking companies for allegedly duping the Department of Defense out of millions of dollars for years. On Friday, December 14, the U.S. government filed suit in the U.S. District Court in Buffalo, New York, against YRC Freight Inc., Roadway Express Inc., and Yellow Transportation Inc., all owned by YRC Worldwide, after officials say that they were systematically overcharged. The lawsuit alleges that YRC knowi

December 17, 2018 Bulk Loads and CDL Legal have reached an agreement to provide discounted legal benefits to Bulk Loads customers and subsidiaries including clients of their factoring company, Smart Freight Funding. CDL Legal provides legal coverage in the event of moving and non-moving violations. They also help fleets navigate CSA issues by reviewing inspection violations and filing DataQ challenges on behalf of fleets. CDL Legal boasts a 92% success rate getting tickets reduced or dismissed.

Transfix entrepreneurs Jonathan Salama and Drew McElroyHARRY FELLOWS Take a look at XPO Logistics (XPO), a $17 billion (revenues) firm that is, I surmise, destined to either crush or buy out Transfix, the doughty little enterprise featured in the December 31 Forbes Magazine. There are two reasons why, in the business of moving goods, spoils go to the big guys. One is a matter of queuing theory: The more trucks and customers that are attached to a system, the more efficient it is. The other is th

Are you frustrated with the unknown of when you're getting paid or when the check is coming in? Well look no further. Smart Freight Funding offers factoring services to carriers & brokers with next day direct payments to help alleviate their capital constraints on turnaround for invoiced payments. Smart Freights biggest advantage over the competition is the fact that we do not require a long-term factoring service contract. You can choose to do a portion of your loads, or all of th

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ST. LOUIS Add grain elevator operators to those in the world of agriculture facing uncertainty. Storage issues are among many factors affecting the industry.

In November, according to transportation data provider FTR, orders for new Class-8 trucks the heavy trucks that haul the products of the goods-based economy across the US plunged nearly 50% from July and August, 35% from October, and 15% from November 2017, to 27,500 orders, the lowest all year.

The Department of Justice said on Dec. 14 that it is suing subsidaries of YRC Worldwide for allegedly overcharging the Department of Defense.