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State of Logistics 2016: Pursue mutual benefit Signs of economic improvements are evident but there is a way to go FTR Shippers Conditions Index notes rate and supply trouble may be coming in 2017 Cranes going higher at Port of Oakland’s largest marine terminal Robotic Industries Association announces winners of Engelberger Robotics Awards More News Regardless of how one comes to a conclusion regarding the state of the economy, specifically, the freight economy, in this case, one thing it seems most everyone can come to some sort of general agreement on is that things appear to be looking up. Now, that is far from breaking news, but it merits attention all the same, considering that watching the economy is indeed a definitive part of what we are all doing on a daily basis. And based on what we have seen lately, things are ostensibly trending in the right economic direction. Two things that signal what will, or could, be a shift to the more positive (freight) economic side are the most recent editions of the Cass Freight Index Report from Cass Information Systems and the monthly truck tonnage index from the American Trucking Associations (ATA). In the case of the Cass report, its thesis of a freight recovery having begun in earnest is very telling, not to mention encouraging. But this is not an overnight development at all. The report, whose most recent data comes from January, noted that freight shipments saw a 2.7 percent annual increase in October 2016. While that uptick is decent enough on the surface, what really drives its significance home is that the October gain represented the first time shipments headed up annually in the previous 20 months. While November dipped slightly with a 0.3 percent annual decline in shipments, December was strong, up […]