News Briefs - Nov. 8
The Latest Headlines:
- Zollars Says Pacific Port Freight Moving from Rail to Truck
- Central Freight Lines Posts Loss for Third Quarter
- Lundberg Survey: Average Gasoline Prices Drop to $2.01
- Study Shows Washington Truck Tollway May Work
- Heritage Completes Logistics Acquisition
- Central Freight Lines Posts Loss for Third Quarter
Zollars Says Pacific Port Freight Moving from Rail to Truck
Yellow Roadway Corp.’s Chief Executive Officer William Zollars said that customers of the less-than-truckload giant are moving shipments to trucks from railroads to avoid congestion in and around Western ports.Zollars made the statement Nov. 5 on the cable financial news channel CNBC.
“Most of our customers have taken alternative means,” Zollars told the channel. “We are putting things on the road that used to be on the rail.” He said “we are quite a distance” from solving the rail bottleneck.
Yellow Roadway is ranked No. 3 on the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian trucking companies. Transport Topics
Central Freight Lines Posts Loss for Third Quarter
Central Freight Lines said Nov. 5 it had a loss of $7.9 million or 43 cents per share, in the third quarter of 2004.The Waco, Texas, company said it generated operating revenues of $98.5 million during the quarter ended Oct. 2. In the previous year, Central Freight Lines said it had net income of $5.1 million or 43 cents per share, and revenues of $101.2 million.
For the year-to-date, the company said it had suffered a net loss of $11.6 million or 65 cents per share on revenues of $301.1 million versus net income of $6.2 million or 52 cents per share, on revenues of $300.2 million in the same period last year.
Central Freight is ranked No. 47 on the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian trucking companies. Transport Topics
Lundberg Survey: Average Gasoline Prices Drop to $2.01
The average price of gasoline fell about three cents over the past two weeks to $2.01 a gallon, a major industry survey said on Sunday.Trilby Lundberg told Bloomberg News that the decline was the result of crude oil supplies increasing.
“Gasoline prices are likely to fall further as crude oil supplies improve,” she told Bloomberg.
U.S. crude oil inventories have increased a total of 7.5% over six straight weekly gains. The price of crude oil closed last week at $49.61 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Study Shows Washington Truck Tollway May Work
A study released by the Washington state Legislature said that a 100-mile, three-lane truck tollway between Chehalis, Wash., and Interstate 90 could work, the Associated Press reported Monday.The study originally looked at a plan proposed by state Sen. Dan Swecker to create a 710-foot wide “commerce corridor” for cars, trucks, trains and utility lines. The report said such a project was not feasible, but a truck tollway, paid for by and reserved for truck traffic could work.
Chehalis is about 30 miles south of Olympia, Wash.
Opponents of the tollway plan said that the main north-south corridor in the region, Interstate 5, has enough capacity to handle truck traffic, making a toll road unnecessary.
Public hearings on the plan are scheduled for later this month. Transport Topics
Heritage Completes Logistics Acquisition
Private investment firm Heritage Partners Inc. said it completed acquisition of the package logistics business of R.R. Donnelley Logistics, a unit of R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., which it had announced in August.Heritage said it would combine the services of Donnelley and with business-to-home deliveries provider American Package Express, of which Heritage is the majority stockholder. Transport Topics
