The big story has been weather this week, and Michael Vincent and Kevin Hill learn about the lingering impacts of back-to-back winter storms on this episode of Midday Market Update.
With the weather taking out major freight markets across the South, Werner Enterprises Vice Chairman Derek Leathers said his company will see a 3- to 4-cent hit to first-quarter earnings thanks to multiple winter storms. FreightWaves’ Todd Maiden reports Leathers believes trucking has major structural issues to address before capacity loosens up and the storms only add to those problems.
Tightness remains at the West Coast ports, with 62 vessels at anchor in San Pedro Bay on Wednesday afternoon. Port of LA Executive Director Gene Seroka said if nothing is done, the backups could last until summer.
Zach Strickland touched on a jump in tender rejections and the drop in tender volumes during this week’s episode of Freightonomics, and today said freight volumes are down 6.1% week-over-week and rejections are up 4.1%, pushing them back above 25%.
FreightWaves Editor at Large John Kingston also joins the show with an update on how the weather is impacting diesel prices since Texas refineries have dropped offline. He said prices are up for 15 consecutive weeks and expects the weather to make it 16 weeks when numbers are released.
With refineries shut down, Kingston said millions of barrels of diesel are not being refined, which is leading to the hikes in price.
Hill and Vincent host Bill Catania, founder and CEO of OneRail, to discuss how business-to-business delivery is changing in the current market. Catania said his company is focused on fixing major disruptions in the final-mile movement of freight.
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