News Briefs - Sept. 14
The Latest Headlines:
- Retail Sales Fall 0.3% in August
- Price of Crude Oil Rises Due to Hurricane Ivan
- FedEx Completes Purchase of Parcel Direct
- Postal Service Says Rates to Remain Steady Until 2006
- Price of Crude Oil Rises Due to Hurricane Ivan
Retail Sales Fall 0.3% in August
Retail sales fell 0.3% in August as automobile and clothing purchases declined, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.Excluding vehicles, sales rose 0.2%, after rising 0.3% a month earlier. Total sales rose a revised 0.8% in July.
Almost all trucking operations depend on the health of retail sales because such sales involve nearly every type of cargo.
Receipts at service stations rose 0.3% after a 0.4% fall in July. Transport Topics
Price of Crude Oil Rises Due to Hurricane Ivan
The price of crude oil futures in New York rose Tuesday as Hurricane Ivan forced BP Plc to curtail production and Royal Dutch/Shell Group to deepen cuts in the Gulf of Mexico, Bloomberg reported.Crude oil for October delivery rose 52 cents to $44.39 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, Bloomberg said. On Monday, the contract rose 2.5%.
Shell said it would reduce output by 444,800 barrels a day after evacuating workers from central and eastern areas of the Gulf. And although BP did not provided specifics, it told Bloomberg it curtailed some production and it evacuated about 1,900 of its 2,300 offshore workers in the Gulf.
U.S. oil production originating in the Gulf of Mexico is about 1.7 million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service's Web site. Transport Topics
FedEx Completes Purchase of Parcel Direct
FedEx Corp. said late Monday it had completed the $120 million acquisition of parcel consolidator Parcel Direct from Quad/Graphics.
he company said in a statement that Parcel Direct would operate as a subsidiary of FedEx Ground and be led by President and Chief Executive Officer Ward Strang. Strang has been with FedEx Ground for 16 years, the release said.
"This acquisition adds another proven solution to our portfolio and offers customers even greater choice for residential shipping," said Daniel Sullivan, president and chief executive officer of FedEx Ground.
edEx Corp. is ranked No. 2 on the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian trucking companies. Transport Topics
Postal Service Says Rates to Remain Steady Until 2006
Postmaster General John Potter on Tuesday reiterate his commitment to maintain current postage rates until 2006.The Postal Service also said in a statement that cost cutting has resulted in $8.3 billion in savings over the last three years.
And although first-class mail volumes had declined, the Postal Service has projected "a sound financial outlook for fiscal year 2005 with it essentially balancing a projected $68 billion budget," the release said.
The service forecasted to a 2.1 billion piece decline in first-class volume for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, while standard mail was expected to grow by nearly 3.8 billion pieces. Transport Topics
