Tribe Transportation to equip fleet with Aperia's Halo Tire inflation system
Spot Freight Availability Jumps, Capacity Tightens Over Past Week
The number of loads on the spot truckload freight market surged 7.6% during the week ending March 3 as rates appear poised to rebound, according to DAT Solutions, which operates the DAT network of load boards.
Truck posts declined 2% which helped push load-to-truck ratios higher from the previous week for all three trailer types.
- Vans: 7.0 loads per truck, up 5%
- Flatbeds: 79.9 loads per truck, up 13%
- Reefers: 10.6 loads per truck, up 15%
After seven weeks of declines, the national average spot van rate was unchanged at $2.14 per mile but rates rose on 66 of the top 100 van lanes. Van load posts increased 4% while truck posts declined 1%. The current van load-to-truck ratio is about three times higher than it was at this time last year.
The national average reefer rate fell 3 cents to $2.40 per mile but the number of available loads was 11% higher than the previous week and truck posts declined 3%. Reefer load counts are roughly equal to where they were in mid-January.
Flatbed rates rose 4 cents to an average of $2.39 per mile, an increase for the fourth straight week. Capacity continued to tighten and the load-to-truck ratio for flatbeds hit its highest point in years. Extremely strong markets include Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis, Green Bay, and Cleveland.
According to DAT, capacity may tighten in the weeks ahead with the end of the first quarter of the year coinciding with both Easter weekend and the April 1 end of the phase-in period for the electronic logging device mandate.
All reported rates include fuel surcharges. The national average diesel price during the reporting period dropped another 1.5 cents to $2.99 per gallon.
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Daimler’s Kary Schaefer Redefines What it Means to be Green
Daimler's Kary Schaefer explains why she thinks that green innovation “goes beyond reducing tailpipe emissions.” Photo: NTEA
">INDIANAPOLIS — As Kary Schaefer sees it, what's green for trucking shouldn't be narrowly defined. Rather, it should embrace any number of innovative advances that enhance efficiency. “I believe that green innovation goes beyond reducing tailpipe emissions – it's about creating a sustainable future; about providing a gateway to green,” she contended in her March 6 keynote address for the Green Truck Summit held here at the NTEA Work Truck Show.
Schaefer, Daimler Truck North America's general manager of marketing & strategy, said that, to her, “Green means increased uptime, lower operating cost, and enabling future investment in new equipment. It means improving efficiency and eliminating waste.” With that thinking in mind, she detailed “the big three” technology areas that fleets need to consider: active safety, connectivity, and propulsion.
She asked rhetorically why would active safety systems be regarded as “a green technology” before pointing out that “not only do these systems help prevent fatalities and accidents, they increase uptime and reduce cost. Many go beyond safety and provide a better environment for the driver by reducing workload, fatigue and stress.”
How safety saves
Making a business case for active safety, Schaefer pointed to a graph of internal data collected by Conway from a report by the National Transportation Safety Board on safety technology. The data compared trucks with and without active safety systems, specifically forward collision mitigation systems, electronic stability control, and lane departure warning systems
“Most significant is the reduction in rear end collisions, 71%, and crashes due to lane departures,” she noted. But at the time of the study, CMS on the market had evolved from just a warning system to providing active emergency braking on moving objects. “Now, through generations of innovation, CMS will ...Read the rest of this story
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President Donald Trump ran on a ticket of making America great again. While the consensus on that point is very much split, what's not deniable is the markets' response. Trump's pro-business agenda was credited for sparking an impressive rally. With enthusiasm overshooting rationality, however, high-dividend stocks are suddenly looking very attractive to investors.
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Bitcoin is plummeting after one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges suspended withdrawals
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said it had halted withdrawals Wednesday morning as it investigates "unauthorized market sells. Bitcoin plunged more than 10% Wednesday morning, as low as $9,600, after rumors began to swirl on Twitter and Reddit that major cryptocurrency exchange Binance had been hacked. Binance is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, with $1.77 billion worth of digital coins on its platform, according to CoinMarketCap.