Executive Briefing - Feb. 16
- I-95 Lane In Fla. to Be Closed for Big Race
- Sysco to Acquire HRI of Canada
- Navistar Loses 58 Cents/Shr
- Economy: Producer Prices Jump; Home Starts Rise
- Rail Freight Traffic Slips in New Year
- Mexico Economy Slows in 4Q
- Job Cuts: Nortel Axes 10,000
- Frozen Food Express Has 4Q Upturn
- L.A. Port Neighbors Express Truck Pollution Concern
I-95 Lane In Fla. to Be Closed for Big Race
While the race drivers at this weekend's Daytona 500 will be hurtling along on the track, truckers and other motorists driving I-95 in the area can expect slowdowns because of a lane closing the Florida Department of Transportation says will help keep traffic moving.One lane of southbound I-95 near Greenland Road will be shut down for large parts of three days, in order to help prevent dangerous backups on the I-295 ramp onto I-95, the Florida DOT said.
The lane closure will be 9:30-5:00 on Friday, 6:30-1:00 Saturday and 6:30-11:00 Sunday, but if massive congestion develops the highway patrol has authority to reopen the lane. Transport Topics
Sysco to Acquire HRI of Canada
Giant Houston-based foodservice marketer and distributor Sysco Corp. (SYY) announced Friday the signing of a letter of intent to acquire Canadian wholesale foodservice distributor HRI Supply Ltd.
Charles H. Cotros, Sysco's chairman and chief executive officer, said HRI distributes some 6,000 products to 1,500 customers. HRI is based in Kelowna, British Columbia. Transport Topics
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Navistar Loses 58 Cents/Shr
Commercial truck and engine maker Navistar International (NAV) reported a first-quarter loss of 58 cents per diluted common share, which the company noted was still better than Wall Street analysts' forecasts for a 61-cent loss in the quar-ter that ended Jan. 31.
The Chicago-based company also lowered its fiscal 2001 forecast for total truck demand in the United States and Canada to 280,000 units from 321,600 it had predicted last December.
Navistar now sees heavy truck demand of 144,000 units from an earlier projection of 181,600, but sees medium-duty truck demand unchanged at 108,000 units. Transport Topics
(Click here for the full press release.)
Economy: Producer Prices Jump; Home Starts Rise
The U.S. Labor Department on Friday reported a nasty surprise, saying that wholesale prices for finished goods jumped by a large 1.1% last month when economists generally looked for a 0.3% gain. It was the largest monthly rise since September 1990.That could complicate efforts by the Federal Reserve to make further sharp cuts in interest rates to bolster a flagging U.S. economy, because a big part of the Fed's job is fighting inflation.
The leap in the producer price index was driven partly by higher prices for energy and cigarettes, but even the so-called core PPI index without foods and energy rose 0.7%.
The Commerce Department, meanwhile, said housing construction starts rose 5.3% in January to the highest annualized level since last April. But it also revised December starts downward. This bump in home building helps current trucking shipments of materials and points toward future furniture loads, and partly reflects recent declines in interest rates. Transport Topics
Rail Freight Traffic Slips in New Year
Further reflecting the slowdown in economic activity in the manufacturing sector, U.S. and Canadian rail carloadings fell 3.1% in January from the same month in 2000, the Association of American Railroads reported.In a rarity, intermodal traffic fell, dropping seven-tenths of a percent compared with January 2000, the report said. Containers were up 3.7%, but trailers were down 11.3%.
Container traffic can include imports as well as domestically produced goods, but trailer traffic on rails is virtually all domestic goods. There has been a long trend to shift truck shipments away from trailers to the more efficient intermodal containers, but the size of January's trailer decline also reflects underlying weakness in domestic loads.
"Auto and steel companies have slashed production, the housing market is slowing and agricultural prices remain low. All this means that shippers don't have as much need for transportation service, and it's showing in the rail traffic figures," AAR Vice President Craig F. Rockey said in a statement released with the figures.Transport Topics
Mexico Economy Slows in 4Q
The slowdown hitting the U.S. economy is also starting to be felt in Mexico, as that country's economic growth in the fourth quarter came in slower than expected at 5.1%, the Associated Press reported. Mexico's economic growth pace had been 7.5% in the third quarter.Even the slower yearend quarter helped Mexico record a full-year growth rate of 6.9%, well above a government target of 4.5%. But AP said economists had projected even stronger growth last year.
Since Mexico is a huge U.S. trading partner, is part of the North American Free Trade Agreement and shares a long border with the United States, it's growth is a major concern to U.S. economic and foreign policy.
As an indicator of the importance of that relationship, U.S. President Bush was making his first foreign trip as president on Friday to visit Mexico's President Vicente Fox. Transport Topics
Job Cuts: Nortel Axes 10,000
The cutbacks continue in North America's manufacturing sector, CBS MarketWatch reported, with Toronto-based Nortel Networks (NT) saying it would eliminate up to 10,000 jobs this year. Of those, 4,000 were already announced in January.Nortel, which makes fiber optics and computer networking equipment, also cut its first-quarter financial performance estimates and company officials said the U.S. business downturn is worse than they had thought.
The Nortel news adds to problems facing the trucking industry, as it suggests further weakness in shipments ahead for such high-technology equipment producers, and underscores that the broader economic slump continues to spread. Transport Topics
Frozen Food Express Has 4Q Upturn
Despite the negative impact of high fuel costs, Frozen Food Express Industries reported fourth-quarter net income of $67,000 versus a net loss of $13.5 million for the same three months of 1999.The Dallas-based company, the largest publicly owned refrigerated carrier of perishable goods in North America, also reported a loss of $1.2 million on revenue of $392.4 million for the entire year, compared with a loss of $12.1 million on revenue of $372.1 million for 1999.
Noting that diesel prices reached a high in the last quarter of 2000, Stoney M. Stubbs, FFE's chairman and chief executive officer, said freight shippers "tell us that the higher cost of fuel, and the resulting surcharges added to their freight bills, have increased their transportation costs to the point that they cannot afford to pay a freight rate increase." Transport Topics
(Click here for the full press release.)
L.A. Port Neighbors Express Truck Pollution Concern
Residents of two communities near the Port of Los Angeles say ships and trucks are major sources of pollution, a survey conducted for the port found.The port has proposed a new container terminal development in the Wilmington-San Pedro area, and the survey found "significant" opposition even when mitigation measures were described, port officials announced Thursday.
Although residents of those communities said the two top perceptions of the port was its importance to the regional economy and the provision of jobs; the third item was the ship and truck pollution.
Wilmington, Calif., residents said crime, air pollution, and the risk of explosions, fires and the release of toxic chemicals from industrial operations in the port area were the three top concerns expressed when asked what they liked least about their communities.Transport Topics
