[ronwagn]

Some of you might be interested in converting your truck to CNG or LNG natural gas. More and more new trucks are now available also. I have a shared Google page of natural gas stories. You could cut your fuel prices by one third.


http://ronwagnersrants.blogspot.com Natural gas is the future of energy. It is replacing dirty, dangerous, expensive coal and nuclear plants. It is producing the electricity for electric cars. It will directly fuel cars,pickup trucks, vans, buses, long haul trucks, dump trucks, locomotives, aircraft, ships etc. It will keep us out of more useless wars, where we shed our blood and money. It is lowering our carbon emissions. Here are over 800 recent links for you:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nba ... TYFMQ/edit

[Tanada]

Ronwgn it is okay to talk about your blog when posting to other topics but please refrain from putting a link in every post. If you want to advertise your blog contact management and buy an ad, the website is for sharing information, not spam.

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Glut of Vehicles, Uneven Demand Put Trucking Profits in the Crosshairs

More cargo is moving through U.S. ports and on the nation’s highways, but whether the added volumes will boost trucking profits is another matter.

A test could come as soon as Monday, when J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., JBHT -0.25% one of the biggest U.S. freight carriers, is expected to announce its first-quarter earnings. J.B. Hunt operates a large trucking fleet and is the leading provider of “intermodal” services, which involves arranging for trucks and trains to move freight around the country.

Often those journeys start at the docks, where imports have been surging in the past few weeks, including a 26% year-over-year jump in March at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif. But trucking companies tell a different story in the interior, where a glut of trucks and uneven demand are holding down the rates carriers charge retailers, manufacturers and other shippers.

Get the latest news and analysis on logistics and supply-chain issues via a daily newsletter, at WSJ.com/Logistics.

Shippers ramped up activity in March, according to the online freight marketplace DAT Solutions LLC. Loads available for shipment on the spot truckload market, where companies book freight transportation on a daily basis, were up 46% last month compared with February and 92% year-over-year. But spot rates for dry vans, the most common type of tractor-trailers used for consumer goods, were up only 7.2% year-over-year, according to DAT.

Swift Transportation Co. , a large trucking company, lowered earnings guidance for the first quarter on April 10, citing soft demand. Swift said the company was “cautiously optimistic about the back half of 2017” but that it expected the difficult operating environment to persist into the second quarter. That same day the company said it would merge with Knight Transportation Inc. ​

Hub Group Inc., HUBG -1.10% a J.B. Hunt rival, slashed its profits forecast, also on April 10, causing its stock to tumble about 15% the next day. Hub attributed the shift to “extraordinarily aggressive intermodal pricing” and excess capacity in the truck market.

Analysts at Citi and Cowen & Co. lowered 2017 earnings estimates for J.B. Hunt after Hub’s announcement, citing pricing pressures for truckload and intermodal carriers. Analysts have an average forecast of 85 cents a share for the first quarter, according to FactSet. At the end of last year, the average forecast was for profit of 90 cents a share.

“Clearly, we’re in a soft patch,” said Citi analyst Christian Wetherbee. “The truck market has been under a good amount of pressure in the past two years.”

Many trucking companies have pulled trucks from service over the past year, in a bid to tighten up capacity and gain better leverage on pricing. J.B. Hunt, on the other hand, added trucks last year to its “dedicated” segment, where the company’s big rigs perform repeat business for specific customers. The firm has pared back its truckload fleet, which serves shippers who fill entire trailers with freight.

[Tanada]

I just read through the whole thread as a refresher. When Diesel was over $4/gallon from 2012-2014 I saw a big increase in rail cargo traffic and a commensurate drop in semi OTR cargo on the expressways. Then in mid 2014 Diesel prices started dropping months before the whole 'price crash' of WTI from $80/bbl to $60/bbl in November-December.

IIRC at the time the biggest price influence on Diesel was that the refiners were selling to buyers who were exporting the Diesel overseas where they were making a tidy profit on it. Then about mid year the Frackers were producing so much new oil that the refiners were able to not only satisfy the exporters who paid very well, but local demand both at a lower price. That darned old supply/demand dynamic drove prices down months before KSA announced they were going after market share instead of price.

For the last 18 months the price of Diesel at truckstops here in northwest Ohio has been relatively cheap, and rail traffic dropped off as a result. Now we have a new housing boom going on here and truck traffic is back up around where it was in 2007, maybe even higher.

Based on this article the 'glut' in truck capacity is partly due to the fracking rate being so much lower in 2016, lots of trucks that were hauling sand and chemicals and sometimes water were able to switch to other business when fracking contracts dried up.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') year ago, U.S. shippers worried about a truck “capacity crunch” as the economy expanded rapidly, freight demand increased and the driver pool appeared ready to dry up.

Today, those same shippers are enjoying a “capacity calm.” Truck capacity may not be abundant, but it is adequate, shippers said at the JOC Inland Distribution Conference last week.

“We haven’t had trouble getting equipment,” Candace Holowicki, director of global transportation and logistics at industrial manufacturer TriMas Corp., said at the conference in Memphis.

That’s partly because TriMas has U.S. distribution operations in areas where the energy boom has gone bust, freeing up truck capacity that had been dedicated to oil and gas, she said.

“Capacity is adequate out there,” said Bradley Parkhurst, transportation sourcing leader at Owens Corning.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
') The concept of "platooning" involves electronically connected trucks running close to each other. It is a much more innovative idea than that of self-driven private cars and it has the potential of revolutionizing road transport by drastically reducing costs. (image from scania.com). Self-driving cars (or "automated vehicles," AVs) are all the rage in the debate. In most cases, we have a lot of hype and little evidence but it is also true that such cars are not impossible. So, what can we say about this idea? I often say that technological progress is subjected to the golden rule that it generates more problems than it solves. So, not unsurprisingly, the way AVs are normally proposed today, they would solve no important existing problem but would bring new ones. In most AVs schemes, you are still supposed to own a car, use it .