Transportation TIP List: Week of January 25th, 2016

Transportation TIP List: Week of January 25th, 2016

Winter arrived for many over the weekend as the blizzard of 2016 pounded the East Coast – dropping over 30 inches in some places! As many are digging out of the snow, we’re digging into some trending transportation stories appearing on our radar. From tightening truck and rail safety rules to significant growth of Mexican manufacturing, this week’s TIP List has the stories you need to read.

• 6 States Issue Hours-of-Service Waivers for Emergency Loads in Wake of Winter Storm Jonas: North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia have issued temporary and limited hours-of-service exemptions for certain relief load haulers in the wake of the historic winter storm that impacted about a third of the U.S. population.

• Rail prospects build on Mexico’s manufacturing boom: With near-sourcing spurring a Mexican manufacturing boom and a strong dollar kicking U.S. imports into high gear, cross-border trade between the U.S. and Mexico is expected to rocket in 2016.

• Federal Regulators to Toughen Truck Safety Rules: Federal highway safety regulators are proposing new rules that would make it easier to find potentially unsafe trucking companies and order them off the road. Trucking companies could be declared unfit based on highway inspections of trucks rather than going through a longer and more complicated process that audits a company’s operations.

• Regulators Tighten Enforcement of Rail-Safety Rules: The Federal Railroad Administration issued 6,485 violations in fiscal 2015, up 23% from the previous year, amid worries over shipping crude oil and hazardous chemicals.

• No Reinstatement of Trucker Hours-of-Service Rules on the Horizon: U.S. truck driver hours-of-service rules suspended by Congress won’t be put back in place any time soon, and not without consultation with trucking “stakeholders”.

• More Than $175 Million in Truck Cargo Stolen in 2015: Out of a total of 881 incidents of cargo theft in 2015, the estimated total value of stolen cargo was more than $175 million with 49% of reported cargo theft incidents occurred between Friday and Sunday, and food and beverage items as the most stolen commodities.

• Looking Forward at the Oil and Gas Industry: The one given in this industry is that the analyst community is consistently wrong about where the price of oil is going in the near to mid-term. So let’s just step away from the current noise and focus on a non-controversial outcome… that oil will be much more valuable in the future than it is today.

What transportation trends appear on your TIP list radar this week?