Cargo theft is nothing new. Each year, businesses lose billions of dollars worth of products through “shrinkage”, hijackings and products “falling off the back of trucks”. These costs ultimately are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, which means that cargo theft should be everybody’s concern. Here are ten tips you can … Read more
In the latest in a series of cost-cutting measures, Volvo’s construction equipment division announced that it is moving the product of its current line of backhoe loaders and motor graders to one of its Chinese subsidiaries. The move means more than 1,000 Volvo employees in the US, Poland and Brazil will lose their jobs through … Read more
Today is New Year’s Eve, a day when we reflect on the happenings of the past year and look forward to what’s coming in 2015. It’s been an exciting year in materials handling news. Labor negotiations between dock workers and ownership at West Coast ports continued to cause anxiety among carriers and retailers. The US … Read more
Does it seem as if freight trains are moving faster along railroad crossings in recent weeks? That’s because they are. According to Railroad Performance Measures — a website where intermodal carriers voluntarily submit weekly reports on the average velocity of their freight trains and other data — several of North America’s biggest railroads posted sharp increases in … Read more
A new proposal from the Washington think tank the Eno Foundation calls on Congress to get rid of the current system for funding federal highways and transportation infrastructure and instead pay for it out of the federal income tax. The Highway Trust Fund (HTF) currently uses the federal fuel tax to pay for maintenance and … Read more
Consumers love buying products online because of the convenience of push-button shopping. But the transaction becomes more complicated when items have to be returned because they are the wrong size, they don’t work, or the buyers simply don’t like them. FedEx, one of the leading package delivery companies serving the e-commerce customers, simplified the way … Read more
Fans are such a big part of our indoor environments that most of the time we hardly ever know they are there. Yet without fans to cool, ventilate and circulate fresh air and remove odors, many of the spaces where we live and work would be uninhabitable due to a buildup of noxious pollutants and … Read more
Using cave-in protective equipment when working in trenches deeper than five feet isn’t just a good idea. It’s the law. That’s what the owners of A. Lamp Concrete Contractors — a construction company in Morton Grove, Illinois — found out the hard way last week when they were fined $69,300 by the US Occupational Safety and … Read more
The BNSF railroad will spend nearly $500 million next year expanding its operations in the Northern region, the company announced. The railroad — which is the second largest freight railway system in the US after the Union Pacific — currently is experiencing its fastest growth in the North, where it services the agriculture, coal, crude … Read more
Mozambique — the relatively small East African nation of about 25 million people — is mostly known in the US and around the world for the bloody civil war that crippled the country for nearly two decades. But that conflict ended 20 years ago. Today, after a return to peace and political stability, Mozambique is … Read more
