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<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">In a major decision with far-reaching implications, the Surface Transportation Board ordered BNSF Railway to pay an estimated $345 million in reparations and rate cuts to coal-burning utilities - its </div>

In a major decision with far-reaching implications, the Surface Transportation Board ordered BNSF Railway to pay an estimated $345 million in reparations and rate cuts to coal-burning utilities - its

<div class="phx-topic">In a major decision with far-reaching implications, the Surface Transportation Board ordered BNSF Railway to pay an estimated $345 million in reparations and rate cuts to coal-burning utilities - its largest award ever to a captive shipper.The Western Fuels Association and Basin Electric Power Cooperative had challenged BNSF rates to haul coal from Powder River Basin mines in Wyoming to their electricity plant in Moba Junction, Wyo.BNSF's rates were "unlawfully high," the board said in announcing its unanimous decision. It ordered BNSF to cut freight rates on that service by 60 percent, and reimburse the utilities for about $100 million in overcharges from 2004 through 2008. STB Chairman Charles D. Nottingham said the action "demonstrates the board's commitment to delivering strong regulatory oversight over the freight rail market when necessary to protect captive shippers from monopoly pricing."</div>

STB Orders Major BNSF Penalty

<div class="phx-topic abstract-wrapper">Illinois Central Corp. confirmed Tuesday that it will buy Kansas City Southern Railway for an estima</div>

Illinois Central Corp. confirmed Tuesday that it will buy Kansas City Southern Railway for an estima

<div class="phx-topic">Illinois Central Corp. confirmed Tuesday that it will buy Kansas City Southern Railway for an estimated $1.6 billion in stock and assumed debt.The deal, which had been anticipated on Wall Street, creates a large north- south rail system connecting New Orleans, Houston and Dallas in the south with Chicago, Kansas City, Mo., and Omaha, Neb., in the north. Combined, the two railroads had $1.1 billion in revenue in 1993. Illinois Central has 2,717 miles of track, compared with 2,733 for KCS.Kansas City Southern Industries Inc. said it will spin off to stockholders its financial services businesses, which include an 80 percent interest in Janus Capital Corp. and DST Systems Inc. As soon as the spinoff is complete, Kansas City Southern Industries will merge with Illinois Central.The acquisition is contingent on a favorable Internal Revenue Service ruling, negotiation of a definitive merger agreement and approval by shareholders of both companies.KCS shareholders will receive a tax-free distribution of approximately 21.2 million shares of Illinois Central's common stock and stock of the new company that will hold the KCS non-rail operations. The stock portion of the deal is valued at $700 million.Earlier reports that KCS might be sold for as much as $2.2 billion were unfounded, and several analysts said Tuesday that they are more comfortable with the deal at the current price.Illinois Central will assume $929 million of KCSI's debt and will provide $6 million to purchase its outstanding preferred stock. KCSI had $839 million in debt at the end of 1993.Illinois Central Railroad will be placed in trust pending Interstate Commerce Commission approval of the common control of the two railroads.The combined railroad network will serve 14 Midwestern and Southern states. The companies said there is no meaningful overlap in their existing route systems. KCS provides north-south service between Kansas City and Beaumont- Port Arthur, Texas/Lake Charles, while Illinois Central serves the Chicago to New Orleans corridor.When the merger of the holding companies takes place, E. Hunter Harrison, Illinois Central's current president and chief executive, will become president and chief executive of Kansas City Southern Railway while Illinois Central is placed under trusteeship. Assuming the ICC approves the merger of the railroads, he will then become chief executive of the combined railroad.In the interim, Gerald Mohan will serve as president and chief executive of Illinois Central Railroad with John McPherson as chief operating officer. Mr. Mohan currently is senior vice president of marketing for Illinois Central, and Mr. McPherson is the railroad's senior vice president of operations.Gilbert H. Lamphere will continue as chairman of Illinois Central Corp., which will be the parent of both railroads."We would not consider any acquisition just to get larger or for strategic reasons. We must enhance stockholder values on a stand-alone basis. We believe this transaction will substantially add to Illinois Central on a stand-alone basis," Mr. Lamphere said."KCS is going for less than its management wanted, and Illinois Central is at the high end of what it wanted to pay," said Scott D. Flower, a rail analyst with Kidder, Peabody &amp; Co. "Thus, you have a deal."Illinois Central is putting the railroad they know and have pretty defined plans for in trusteeship," Mr. Flower said. "My perception is that Hunter Harrison is going over to KCS to increase the independent efficiency of what is viewed as a more undermanaged franchise."Another analyst, who asked that his name not be used, was more blunt. "IC is going to send a SWAT team over to the KCS and try to drive the efficiencies there," he said.The Illinois Central acquisition of KCS is the second major railroad merger in less than a month. Burlington Northern Inc. and Santa Fe Pacific Corp. on June 30 announced plans to merge.KCS put its railroad up for sale earlier this year when it revealed a ''strategic review" that could include "redeployment of assets." Virtually every major railroad, including the CP Rail System unit of Canadian Pacific Ltd., examined KCS.Executives at several railroads said privately that KCS management wanted too much for the railroad. When BN and Santa Fe, which were considered potential buyers, reached their own deal, KCSI management was faced with a devalued asset, and the price began to fall, analysts said.Illinois Central was a money-loser until it was revived in the last five years. The company was spun off by Whitman Corp. in 1989 and went through a leveraged buyout and subsequent return to public ownership. More than 7,000 miles of lines, mostly east-west, were sold to regional and short-line operators as the company turned itself into a lean, 2,700-mile system.<h2>THE MERGER</h2>WHAT: Illinois Central buys Kansas City Southern Railway for $1.6 billion in stock and assumed debt.THE SIZE: Combined railroads had $1.1 billion revenue in 1993. Combined railroads operate 4.400 miles of road, have approximately 4,800 employees, and have 27,000 freight cars and more than 650 locomotives.WHEN: Merger of holding companies will take place early in 1995. Illinois Central Railroad will be placed in trusteeship until the Interstate Commerce Commission approves the merger. Illinois Central management, led by E. Hunter Harrison, will move over to Kansas City Southern as soon as the holding companies merge, and while the ICC considers the merger of the railroads.THE TRAFFIC: Merged rail system will be a major hauler of chemicals from the Gulf Coast to the Upper Midwest, of coal from Illinois and Wyoming to southern points, and of grain to the Southeast and for export.</div>

ILLINOIS CENTRAL CONFIRMS IT WILL BUY KC SOUTHERN

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The world of LTL is slow to embrace change. Business anachronisms permeate current supply chain processes. These vestiges of the way things used to work define the LTL freight transportation procurement process of many modern shippers.David Knuth, logistics specialist at IEWC, a global supplier of cable and wire based in Wisconsin, is happy to have modernized the RFP process, automating the entire LTL bidding procedure with Bid$ense, SMC³’s automated truckload and LTL freight transportation sourcing solution. But when prompted, he can still recall what once was.In his previous job, a large part of his duties were consumed by creating an intermodal bid package for carriers. In a spreadsheet, Knuth detailed the company’s volumes lane by lane, taking care to delete any errant keystrokes or misleading data. He would then email out the information to each carrier, taking time to respond to detailed technical questions about the spreadsheet data. Finally, he had to compile all the results, create an algorithm that would compare the carriers on each lane, and award the business.“It was a huge undertaking. It took about four months to do,” Knuth said of the old process. “It was almost a full-time job for that part of the year, every year.”In his new job at IEWC, he sat down with Bid$ense on day one and was amazed at the capabilities. Knuth had never before used a bid tool. SMC³’s latest versions of Bid$ense automate the process even further, taking truckload and LTL RFPs entirely online. The tool draws on RFP best-practices protocols to streamline the bidding communication process, enabling bidding carriers to respond accurately and promptly to shipper requests. The solution also does all the distribution work automatically, electronically submitting shipper bid data to carriers based on their actual service capabilities and performance records. Carriers are alerted with timely prompts for RFP deliverables, so shippers aren’t waiting by the phone for responses.Another benefit of automating the process is the data-cleansing assistance. When Knuth sent spreadsheets to carriers, data errors might cloud the bidding process; he might have to resend data or simply accept a price that did not truly reflect the costs of doing business. Data cleansing is incredibly beneficial, he said.The spreadsheet technique also made bidding analysis an onerous task. Since Bid$ense automates and streamlines the entire RFP process, intensive examination is now simple. SMC³ knows that each bid has more than one best outcome. With uniform responses from each carrier, shippers can quickly rank results and create an unlimited quantity of what-if scenarios to make the optimal procurement decision.Jesse Burnett of Central Garden &amp; Pet experiences many of the same benefits. Founded in 1980, Central Garden &amp; Pet has spent the last three decades growing from a small garden supply company to a provider of a range of products from dog chews and bird seed to soil supplements and natural insecticides. For much of its life, the company shipped these disparate goods via LTL and truckload carriers to retailers throughout the country, relying on each business unit to negotiate directly with their freight transportation providers. This arrangement worked fairly well for a small company, but as Central Garden &amp; Pet expanded, leadership decided to consolidate decision making.Burnett helped centralize the transportation decision making in 2015 with SMC³’s Bid$ense. Before Bid$ense, every business unit operated independently as far as negotiating with carriers.“There were a lot of different things just floating around,” he said. “We didn’t have master agreements in place; no national pricing at all. The pricing from carriers was just all over the place, depending on where you were.”The transformations he saw with Bid$ense were immediate. Burnett has been using the tool about every other year since its implementation at the company. Central Garden and Pet’s $19.6 million 2019 LTL bid saved the company just more than 9 percent when compared to its historical average. For Burnett, though, bid automation extends far beyond savings.“We knew that we weren’t getting the best pricing offer from our carriers just because nothing was centralized,” he continued. “We knew that if we combined everything from all these business units and paired it with one corporate offering, then it would drive some cost benefit with it.”When the company initially decided to centralize bid procurement, executives researched a number of different methodologies and technologies. In the end, though, Burnett found that Bid$ense was both widespread and well known, and that his carrier partners already knew how to use the application. Burnett also highlighted the data-cleansing process as a major benefit, saying the rigorous process ensures that carriers always return the best price.“It definitely has helped drive savings,” he said. “Any time you go out there and you drive that competitiveness with the carriers and they know they’re in a bid environment, it seems to sharpen their pencils.”Transportation procurement is an integral part of the modern supply chain. With Bid$ense, shippers can develop a strategic implementation plan that saves them time and money, but also helps them create strong relationships with their carrier partners. These carriers appreciate the solution’s data-cleansing process; when carriers receive a complete shipment history and future volume forecast, they don’t have to guess on pricing. Carriers that receive more data from shippers get a complete picture of that shipper’s freight, allowing them to accurately plan instead of simply preparing for the worst-case scenario. Clean data presented through an automated system can lead to both bigger shipment savings and a lasting partnership between carrier and customer.Whether customers are looking to streamline over-the-road transportation bidding by automating the RFP process or create an entirely new, centralized sourcing process, Bid$ense has the analytical horsepower to get the job done.SMC³ 2020 Customer Case Study

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Shippers save money, time with automated transportation bidding tools

If there’s one immutable truth in the world of logistics, it’s this: LTL is an inherently complex form of transportation. Tariffs, rates, DIM weights, transit times — it’s enough to confuse even seasoned logistics professionals. The solution to this knowledge gap has historically been on-the-job training or university supply chain education, but for a variety of reasons there is now a pressing need for third-party, remote LTL training that prepares logistics workers for transportation success. Global Scope Can Overlook Local Intricacies In the past, professionals looking to move into a supply chain career learned about the basics of supply chain from universities. However, many of these college supply chain programs are now global in scope, focusing on worldwide supply chain management instead of the intricacies of specialized domestic transportation. And even these programs, which used to be widespread, are becoming less common. LTL is not an industry of broad-brush strokes; supply chain professionals really need a pointillistic understanding of the logistics of LTL in order to excel in the industry. Accelerating Need for Dedicated LTL Education This lack of specified training put the onus on employers to prepare new hires with the LTL knowledge needed to do their jobs. Dedicated LTL study is a necessity, not a luxury. At the same time, changes in LTL and the broader supply chain world are accelerating. The reliance on e-commerce has ballooned since the start of the pandemic, and last-mile LTL shipments and related e-commerce strains on the supply chain won’t diminish once social distancing abates. That genie isn’t going back into the bottle. So supply chain employers need logistics workers that are fully versed in all aspects of the industry, ready to solve unique shipping and delivery problems based on their extensive supply chain knowledge But why care about LTL? It’s been reported that some shippers in today’s world are no longer concerned with what mode is used to ship their goods. A Multimodal Approach Ensures On-Time Delivery This mode agnosticism means supply chain stakeholders have to be well versed in all modes of transportation. As unforeseen weather events and other disruptions, such as protests, become more common, savvy logistics employees will need to be armed with familiarity of all modes, not just the most popular, to ensure that freight is delivered on time, without damage, and in the most financially expedient way possible. Offerings like SMC³’s LTL online education courses cover a wide range of topics from LTL basics and operations to more advanced concepts like pricing analytics and transportation law. The company also has plans to continually refresh content, adding new expert presenters and taking the feedback of students to make the courses even better as time goes on. Learn more about&nbsp;<a href="https://logisticstrainingcenter.com/smc3-courses/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">SMC³’s LTL Online Education program</a>&nbsp;and view the 2021 hybrid schedule, featuring live industry experts,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.smc3.com/onlinelearning2021/" rel="noreferrer" class="joc_admin__link">here.</a>

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Filling the Supply Chain Education Gap with LTL Education Courses

In 1995, we began operations with a clear vision: to grow alongside Mexico and connect the world through our terminals. Our priority has always been to deliver excellence in service, foster economic development, and strengthen our communities. We firmly believe that progress is not only measured in tons of cargo moved, but in the opportunities we create. _______________________________________________________________ This year marks a significant milestone: SSA Marine Mexico celebrates 30 years of presence in the country, having established itself from day one as the leading port operator nationwide. Over the past three decades, we have built a legacy of reliability, innovation, and commitment to Mexico’s growth. Our journey has been defined by continuous evolution and a steadfast dedication to our mission. SSA Marine México currently operates in six of the country’s most important ports: Cozumel, Lazaro Cardenas, Manzanillo, Progreso, Tuxpan, and Veracruz. Additionally, we have signed a concession to operate a new multipurpose terminal in Guaymas, Sonora, expanding our footprint to the north of the country. We serve a wide range of segments including containers, general cargo, automobiles, cruise ships, hydrocarbons, and asphalt. As part of this ongoing commitment, SSA Marine Mexico continues to strengthen its infrastructure and capabilities. International trade remains a key driver of global economic growth, and we are proud to support this momentum. Through our continuous improvement strategy, we invest in cutting-edge technology and equipment to deliver more efficient and competitive services, contributing to the success of Mexican businesses. •	Manzanillo, Colima- Specialized Container Terminal I: On October 13, we celebrated the arrival of two new STS (Ship To Shore) Super Post Panamax dockside cranes. This $21.2 million USD investment significantly boosts our operational capacity, streamlining cargo reception and delivery processes. In line with our modernization efforts, we will also retire four of our oldest cranes, paving the way for a more sustainable and technologically advanced fleet that meets the evolving demands of international trade. With these upgrades, SSA Marine México now operates a total of 16 cranes along our 1,350-meter dock, reaffirming our position as a national benchmark in port <span class="joc_admin__inline-image joc_admin__inline-image-aspect-ratio-4_3 joc_admin__inline-image-position-left joc_admin__inline-image-size-large" data-figure-size="large" data-figure-position="left" data-figure-aspect-ratio="4:3"><img src="/content-assets/1760982635607_Manzanillo.jpg" alt="Image provided by SSA Marine" class="joc_admin__inline-image-inherit"> •	As for the Multipurpose Terminal and Specialized Facility, also in Manzanillo, Colima, improvement and conditioning works are planned, along with the acquisition of four E-RTG (Electric Rubber-Tyred Gantry) cranes to enhance operational efficiency and sustainability. •	At our Automobile and General Cargo Terminal in the port of Veracruz, we continue to lead with specialized value-added services that support our clients’ growth. Recent investments include a new washing cabin and a general cargo warehouse, increasing indoor storage capacity by 67%. •	Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan – Specialized Automobile Terminal: we are working on the development of an additional 4-hectare storage space within our bonded area and a 10-hectare Vehicle Distribution Center (VDC). These enhancements, along with ongoing personnel and system improvements, will reinforce our leadership in automotive handling across the Mexican Pacific coast.<span class="joc_admin__inline-image joc_admin__inline-image-aspect-ratio-4_3 joc_admin__inline-image-position-left joc_admin__inline-image-size-large" data-figure-size="large" data-figure-position="left" data-figure-aspect-ratio="4:3"><img src="/content-assets/1760982742240_Lazaro.jpg" alt="Image provided by SSA Marine" class="joc_admin__inline-image-inherit"> Through these strategic investments, SSA Marine Mexico reaffirms its commitment to the sustained growth of Mexico’s foreign trade. By expanding capacity, modernizing infrastructure, and diversifying services, we continue to strengthen the country’s competitiveness in global logistics. Today, we celebrate three decades of dedication, innovation, and leadership, with deep gratitude to our employees, clients, and partners for being part of this incredible journey. LINK: https://www.ssamarine.mx/<span class="joc_admin__inline-image joc_admin__inline-image-aspect-ratio-16_9 joc_admin__inline-image-position-left joc_admin__inline-image-size-small" data-figure-size="small" data-figure-position="left" data-figure-aspect-ratio="16:9"><img src="/content-assets/1760982787360_SSA%20Marine%20Mexico%20logo%20150pxW.png" alt="" class="joc_admin__inline-image-inherit">

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SSA Marine Mexico: 30 years growing together.

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STB Orders Major BNSF Penalty

ILLINOIS CENTRAL CONFIRMS IT WILL BUY KC SOUTHERN