The Daily Dash is a quick look at what’s happening in the freight ecosystem. In today’s edition, we highlight two key adjustments to the highway bill, an analysis of jobs in the trucking industry and more.
The High Five
1. The Democrats’ version of the highway bill retains many of the truck-centric policies of last year’s version with two notable add-ons: guidance on truck brokers and dispatch services and a policy for using truckers’ electronic logging devices for government research. John Gallagher from Washington
2. Seasonally adjusted figures reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a drop in employment between April and May. This occurred even as virtually every trucking company under the sun has a Help Wanted sign out, along with a package of pay increases, bonuses and other incentives. John Kingston’s analysis
3. Cool Mountain Transport, an Idaho-based trucking company, recently announced it is increasing driver pay from 50 cents to 62 cents per mile. It is the largest pay increase in the company’s history, according to CEO Tork Fulton. Noi Mahoney’s story
4. OneRail has expanded its final-mile delivery offerings to include an additional 1 million couriers as part of its Logistics Partner Network. OneRail coordinates rate shopping and the execution of shipments across all final-mile shipping modes, completely automating dispatch and tracking. Brian Straight’s Modern Shipper story
5. Weekly comparisons are near meaningless around any national holiday, but just prior to Memorial Day, OTVI hit a year-to-date high north of 16,000. Only amid the last-minute freight rush in the weeks leading up to Christmas 2020 was OTVI ever higher. DHL Supply Chain Pricing Power Index
Five more to check out
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Federal medical stockpile still rebuilding inventory as pandemic subsides