How will a new president change transportation?
Project44 and FourKites are moving forward with a defamation lawsuit stemming from emails sent from a FourKites-linked IP address. Project44 is seeking $80,000 and legal fees.
Fresh off a cyberattack, changes could be coming to Forward Air; a group of investors is looking to take an activist role in the company to “enhance shareholder value.”
Andrew Cox says allowing the investors to take a bigger stake could be a good move, as Forward Air has been outperformed by LTL competitors SAIA and Old Dominion.
Israeli container line operator ZIM has filed an IPO request for the fourth time since 2004. American Shipper reports there has not been a successful sipping IPO since 2015, but ZIM could be likely to break that streak.
More than 160 Volkswagen cars were damaged after a train carrying them was derailed and attacked by armed thieves. According to authorities, the thieves cut the tracks about 80 miles south of Volkswagen’s assembly plant in Puebla, Mexico.
Zach Strickland joins the show to discuss the changes in capacity post-holiday, talking about the slowdown in freight from the West Coast and the way that rail loads are impacting full truckload shipments.
Sherman Barnes, head of sales and marketing for Trio Trucking, joins Michael Vincent and Kevin Hill to talk about how his company is seeing the new year shake out.
Barnes says that Trio Trucking hasn’t seen the massive slowdown of freight that is typical for January and that “finding drivers is difficult right now.”
He thinks that capacity will remain tight due to the shortage of drivers, stemming from the limitations on driver schools but also from the fact that people just aren’t applying: People don’t want to be truck drivers.
Barnes brings up the changing administration as a limiting factor for market optimism in the coming year, saying that despite how legislation or taxation changes, people are cautiously optimistic about spending more money in 2021.
FreightWaves Washington Correspondent John Gallagher echoes the importance of politics in the logistics world, and tells Hill and Vincent cautious optimism is needed when looking at new Cabinet nominations, legislative goals and policy issues.
Gallagher says that goals of emissions reductions, highway capacity changes and infrastructure support could go either way depending on the outcome of the Georgia runoff elections and what items get put on the “wish list” of whoever wins.
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