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The 2M and O3 alliances likely will first lock horns in the Asia-Mediterranean trade, with planned increases in capacity threatening to unleash a rate war, according to analyst Alphaliner.

Port executives at West Coast landlord ports say that when it comes to fixing congestion resulting from big ships and carrier alliances, the buck stops with them.

New export orders saw China factory output increasing in September as the mainland manufacturing sector continued to expand, reaching a two-month high and raising expectations that inventory building could see export growth into the fourth quarter.

China’s logistics industry is expected to show double-digit growth over the next five years, continuing a trend of 21 percent compound annual growth since 1991 and driven by rising online shopping and a growing trend of outsourcing non-core activities.

TOTE Shipholdings and Saltchuk Resources have secured a $324.6 million Maritime Administration loan guarantee for construction of two container ships that will be fueled by liquefied natural gas.

U.S. diesel prices slipped 0.6 percent or 2.3 cents to $3.778 per gallon on Sept. 22, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which brought the price to its lowest level since July 16, 2012.

A bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives would prevent the publication of safety scores for trucking and bus companies and revamp the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s CSA scoring system.

The average amount intermodal providers charged customers for shipping a U.S. intermodal unit declined last month on a year-over-year basis, the first time since January 2013.

Near-shoring of manufacturing from China to Mexico, tight U.S. transportation capacity and competition from Amazon as a logistics provider were prominent topics in an annual survey of 27 third-party logistics CEOs sponsored by Penske Logistics and released today.

Air and ocean freight are expected to see “good” trade volume growth through the third and fourth quarters of 2014, especially in air freight, given a strong peak season outlook and a number of high-profile tech product launches, according to a new survey from the investment firm Stifel Nicolaus.

The European Shippers Council attacked the proposed 2M vessel-sharing agreement in a letter sent last week to the Federal Maritime Commission but is unlikely to convince the U.S. regulatory agency to reject the agreement involving the world’s two largest container lines.

U.S. containerized trade increased 2.6 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2014, with just three carriers — Maersk Line, Mediterranean Shipping Co. and Evergreen Line — accounting for 28.4 percent of all trade.

Florida East Coast Railway has acquired 500 new 53-foot containers and 100 chassis, as well as 50 refrigerated trailers to cater to customers in the perishables market. All of the units will be in service by mid-October.

Joseph P. Ruddy has been appointed chief innovation officer at the Port of Virginia, and Shawn Tibbets will succeed him as chief operations officer.

Even as air freight space out of China is has tightened because of the launch of the Apple iPhone 6, the typical air freight surges associated with major electronics product launches are not what they used to be.

Class I railroads plan to add locomotives and train crews to their networks in an effort to improve service in the "strongest fall peak in recent years."

Kerry Logistics aims to tap growing trade between Asia and Oceania, and between Australia and New Zealand through a joint venture with a New Zealand-based global freight forwarding company.

Container lines will continue to expand their share of the refrigerated cargo market, but specialized reefer carriers can survive if they diversify and pick their niches carefully, Drewry Maritime Research says in its annual analysis of the reefer shipping market.

The southern Italian port of Taranto, once a leading transhipment hub, faces an uncertain future after losing its last long-haul intercontinental service in the latest shake up in the fiercely competitive Mediterranean container market.

The savings to be gained from a container line getting more miles to the gallon are immense, as Singapore's NOL Group can attest with $1.2 billion in cuts, and half of that came from bunker and network savings at its APL liner division.

Shanghai may be the busiest container port in the world, but almost half the boxes that cross its wharves every year are first carried down the mighty Yangtze River from manufacturing hubs deep inland.

U.S. ports are under increasing pressure to modernize their facilities to handle larger vessels and keep their existing infrastructure up to par. Fortunately, for some ports, Uncle Sam is giving them a boost via Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program.

The Dubai Maritime City Authority has announced plans to establish a maritime arbitration center.

New Jersey Senate committee has approved a bill to withdraw the state from the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor.

Issues at the Los Angeles-Long Beach were on JOC.com readers’ minds this week, along with mega-alliances and growth in the trucking industry.

Demand for automotive logistics services is forecast to grow this year by 6 percent in Europe and 5 percent in North America, according to a new report by industry research and analysis firm Transport Intelligence.

Spot freight rates on the key Asia-north Europe trade are reported to have slumped to just $750 per 20-foot container, down more than $1,000 since the beginning of the year.

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection is considering new regulations that would put provincial authorities in charge of approving wastepaper imports that the ministry now regulates.

The volume of intermodal units moving on U.S. railroads last week reached a record high for the railroad industry, according to the Association of American Railroads, furthering signs that the peak season is starting for intermodal shippers as the ocean peak recedes.

The percent of import containers arriving at the Los Angeles-Long Beach gateway that were transloaded into domestic containers for onward rail transport into the interior U.S. continued to increase last year and is forecast to continue rising in 2014.

Westbound trans-Pacific carriers expect container availability to increase in the next three weeks at most key U.S. intermodal hubs, according to a weekly U.S. Department of Agriculture survey.

India and China signed 16 memorandums of understanding, including a five-year trade and economic cooperation plan, in a major attempt to address the growing trade imbalance between the two countries.

Norfolk Southern Railway doesn’t expect rail service to start getting back to normal levels until the end of March 2015, with most customers not seeing any improvement until November 2014.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has ordered Ken’s Trucking company, based in Grand Ridge, Florida, to immediately shut down following a federal investigation that revealed numerous violations of safety regulations.

The Teamsters union and safety advocates from the Highway and Auto Safety, Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways have filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in attempt to force the agencies to issue a rule outlining training standards for entry-level truck drivers.

Having reached a tentative agreement Aug. 26 on the crucial issue of medical benefits, negotiators for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Association have spent the past month discussing operational issues at marine terminals.

Florida East Coast Railway launched at 53-foot domestic container service two weeks ago, giving North Carolina shippers a new option to ship goods to South Florida for either domestic consumption or to transload for export.

The Labor Department has awarded $10,225,183 to help 19 states crack down on companies that misclassify workers as independent contractors or fail to report wages that support unemployment insurance.

DFDS, one of Europe’s largest short sea-shipping and logistics operators, this week announced plans to close a second route in response to tougher environmental regulations that will sharply increase the cost of ships’ fuel from 2015.

Maersk Line CEO Soren Skou on Friday discussed the proposed “2M’ vessel-sharing agreement with China’s Ministry of Commerce, as the carrier works to avoid a repeat of the rejection that it received from Chinese regulators for its proposed P3 alliance in June.