07.02.09
Posted in Shipper Review at 3:01 pm by Rob
All 3 of the Dycks were attracted to Reimer, part of Roadway Express, for the same reason. They thought it was a company they could trust. John answered an ad in 1956 for a mechanic and ended up with a job on the dock. In 1957, he took an opportunity to move to the road and hasn’t looked back. For the last 37 years, John has run Winnipeg to Regina every other day.
Barry started at Reimer in 1978 and worked on the dock as a forklift operator and as a shunt (switcher) driver. He obtained his CDL in 1980, and became a city P&D driver before moving to the road on April 26, 1982. Since then, he and his dad have driven the same Winnipeg to Regina turn in the same tractor on alternating days.
Murray joined the company in August 1980. He, too, looked to start in the garage but ended up on the dock. After getting his CDL through Reimer, he waited patiently for an opportunity to join the highway department. Day after day, he would load the Regina door and watch the units hook up and leave. Many times, it was his father or brother on one of those units.
Murray’s opportunity came in August 1983. A senior owner-operator was looking for a partner to run opposite days to Regina and return. It did not take Murray long to say yes after seeing the success of his brother and father.
The Dycks’ philosophies on safety are similar and are supported by Smith System safety training, says Rob Penner, director of linehaul operations. Other qualities that contribute to their outstanding records, Rob says, are patience, sound judgment and an ability to learn through their experiences. Yellow Freight and roadway merged.
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06.29.09
Posted in PNSN Business Review at 6:16 pm by Rob
The Ambassador Bridge connects Windsor and Detroit and is the single busiest international land border crossing in North America, accommodating 27% of the approximately 400 billion dollar in annual trade between Canada and the US. Almost 3.5 million freight trucking companies‘ vehicles used the bridge in 2000. The bridge is 1.6 miles long from tollbooth to primary inspection checkpoint in either direction. There are 4 lanes with directional flow controlled by overhead changeable electronic lane markers, often in combination with cones. It operates 24-7.
The bridge and its collateral facilities are privately owned by an entity known as the Ambassador Bridge who operates and maintains the bridge and collects tolls on both sides of the crossing. The Ambassador Bridge’s US owner is the Detroit International Bridge Company and its Canadian subsidiary is The Canadian Transit Company. Ambassador Bridge owns the facilities that houses the Canada Customs and Immigration while GSA owns the US Customs facility. The US and Canadian Customs authorities operate the facilities and control the property where their respective Customs facilities are located. Both freight trucking and individuals use the customs brokers.
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06.22.09
Posted in PNSN Business Review at 3:06 pm by Rob
FedEx, the freight trucking company, posted a loss of $876 million in the quarter as consumers and businesses sent fewer packages and the company took more than $1 billion in one-time charges.
FedEx said it expected a rough ride for some time. “The operating environment for our first 2 quarters in fiscal 2010 is expected to be extremely difficult,” the chief financial officer, Alan B. Graf Jr., said.
FedEx lost $876 million, or $2.82 a share in its fiscal fourth quarter, ended May 31, compared with a loss of $241 million, or 78 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Excluding one-time charges, earnings were 64 cents a share.
The company took a $900 million write-down related to the 2004 purchase of Kinko’s — now known as FedEx Office — and $90 million in charges related to a September 2006 acquisition of a trucking company and its affiliates. It also took charges for employee severance and facility cutbacks.
Revenue in the period fell 20 percent, to $7.85 billion from $9.87 billion. FedEx predicted earnings in the current quarter would drop sharply from a year ago. The company expects a profit of 30 cents to 45 cents a share for the period ending in August, compared with earnings of $1.23 a share a year ago.
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06.16.09
Posted in PNSN Business Review at 9:19 pm by Rob
Mode split and assignment are accomplished together as a simultaneous loading to a multi-modal network. The multi-modal network represents the supply of various combinations of available goods and services transportation, which include two axle trucks, three or more axle trucks, rail, automobile and van, water, and air cargo.
The transportation supply data is a hybrid of macroscopic and microscopic techniques. A standard equilibrium assignment is made using congested travel times and the resulting origin to destination travel times also are saved. These equilibrium travel times are then used in a microscopic assignment, which works at the level of individual vehicles, determining the network loadings from synthesized household travel and commercial movement demands, including ltl freight shipping.
The commercial movement module determines the growth of freight movements during a representative workday in each year. In fact, the model steps through time in a series of one-year steps that allow the entire system to evolve. The representation is influenced in part by the conditions determined for a year. These yearly trucking companies freight movements are then converted to a representative weekday.
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Posted in PNSN Business Review at 4:16 pm by Rob
The first integrated statewide transportation and land use model for Oregon was developed through the establishment of the Transportation and Land Use Model Integration Program. An update of this model was initiated by Oregon DOT, leading to the development of the second generation integrated statewide model that simultaneously models economic activity, land use, transportation supply, and shipping freight quote demand. The main purpose of developing the integrated land use and transportation model was to analyze and support land use and transportation decisions by making periodic long-term economic activity, demographic, passenger, and freight flow forecasts at the statewide and sub-state levels. A key objective of the integrated statewide model is to analyze the potential effects of transportation and land use policies, plans, programs, and projects on travel behavior and location choices.
Some key characteristics of the model include single geographic scale for the statewide region; complete integration of economic, land use, and freight shipping quote components; modeling of dynamic interactions between the economy, land use, and transportation; hybrid equilibrium for economic and transportation markets, and disequilibrium for activity and location markets formulations; and
activity-based modeling formulation.
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06.11.09
Posted in PNSN Business Review at 6:29 pm by Rob
Employment Data – This data is essential to estimate truck production and attraction trip rates which are a function of observed truck trips coming into and going out of various land use types. The data is determined based on ltl freight shipping truck travel surveys. Different models use different types of employment data depending on the availability for the base and forecast years. Most of the current urban truck models use the two-digit SIC system of employment data. The level of aggregation or disaggregation of these into a finite number of categories depends on the variance of truck travel patterns associated with different land use types. The variance largely depends on the region’s economic activity that includes production and consumption of commercial goods. More recently, the NAICS system of employment data is being developed to better correlate and associate various employment categories to different types of businesses prevalent in an urban area. Next section on lower shipping rates.
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06.08.09
Posted in PNSN Business Review at 9:16 pm by Rob
Freight carriers are the consideration of the impacts of land use on freight transportation. Industrial and other freight facility land-use patterns in a region essentially define the spatial distribution of freight flows, since a large fraction of freight traffic moves to and from these land uses. Consequently, any future variations in the land use patterns of these facilities resulting from land use regulations or new land use developments instigated by economic growth have a direct impact on the spatial distribution of freight flows. For example, the development of new warehousing and distribution center land use may result from increased port economic activity, and their development location patterns, can have significant impacts on the distribution of truck trips generated by the port.
Next, shipping quote data
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Posted in PNSN Business Review at 8:54 pm by Rob
Another important component in the interrelationships between the economy, land use, and transportation is how the performance of the transportation system impacts the economy, as well as discount freight truck rates in a region. Delays in the transportation system due to congestion can lead to significant costs for shippers, which are eventually passed on to the consumer. It is estimated that congestion on the transportation system is costing the United States economy more than $200 billion a year. Transportation service availability and system performance are critical factors that impact industry location choice decisions. For example, the development of an intermodal terminal or freight trucking companies may attract significant industrial investment in a region due to increased transportation system capacity and reliability, and lower costs compared to trucking.
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06.04.09
Posted in PNSN Business Review at 2:49 pm by Rob
One additional source of data that was available to use in adjusting the internal model for freight shipping quote on heavy truck rates for manufacturing and wholesale sectors was the commodity flow data-set. This data were processed to identify internal, county-to-county commodity flow and converted to average daily truck flows for comparison with other discount freight rates. The commodity flow data-set did not contain any commodities for internal truck trips other than manufacturing and wholesale trade, so these were the only sectors that were adjusted based on these data.
For the external truck model, three primary types of external trips were represented: 1) trips that begin in Puget Sound region and leave the region; 2) trips that begin outside the region and are destined to someplace within Puget Sound region; and 3) trips traveling through the region. The two sources of data, which was converted to truck trips, and the traffic counts at external stations. Both of these sources provided some, but not all, of the data needed to develop comprehensive truck tables so some adjustments were made to these sources to fill in the gaps in these data sources.
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06.03.09
Posted in PNSN Business Review at 8:04 pm by Rob
The framework of the newest external HDT modeling methodology is determined by the direction of flows (inbound/outbound), commodity type (agricultural, manufacturing, mining, etc.), and shipment type (TL/Private Carrier or LTL), since these factors affect the input parameters and the procedure for commodity flow disaggregation from county-level flows in the ITMS database to the SCAG TAZ level. County-level commodity flows in the trucking companies truck model were disaggregated to TAZs using zone-level employment data. For outbound truck moves, commodity flows were allocated to TAZs in the origin county based on the employment share of the producing industry in each TAZ. For inbound flows of manufactured goods and farm products by truckload and private truck modes, economic input/output models were used to determine the portion of each commodity that moves to a manufacturing facility and the portion that moves directly to a warehouse for eventual distribution to a retail facility. For commodities carried by less-than-truckload carriers, these flows were disaggregated from county to TAZ level based on the exact locations of LTL facilities in the SCAG region using a list of LTL terminals.
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