Knight-Swift has strengthened its position as the largest truckload operator in the US through its agreement to purchase US Xpress Enterprises, which is approximately the seventh largest road freight provider. Knight-Swift has made an offer of US $808m for US Xpress on a ‘total enterprise’ basis and this has been accepted by the board of US Xpress. Like Knight-Swift, US Xpress is predominantly a ‘full-truck-load carrier’.
Political risk is a new factor which global high-tech manufacturers have to take into account when structuring their supply chains. For advanced sectors of the industry, legislation passed in the US and other Western markets has led to a ban on investment in China, the export of advanced technologies and services to China as well as the use of Chinese made electronic components in Western infrastructure.
There is an impending crisis related to China’s claims on Taiwan. The escalating tensions between Taiwan’s ally, the USA, and China which can, and already is, having an impact of trade flows. The breakdown of relations started with the tariffs imposed on China by President Trump and continued under President Biden.
On March the 2nd, a robotics startup called Figure, based in California’s Silicon Valley, unveiled its first product. It is a general purpose ‘humanoid’ robot that is designed to be deployed across a range of commercial and domestic environments alongside (or instead of) humans.
Even before the effects of the latest round of bank collapses, FedEx was sounding a note of economic pessimism. The Memphis express giant issued its third quarter results last week and they showed a modest retreat in profits and sales.
Available road freight capacity on the European market continues to rise, accompanied by a further decline in rates, according to the latest data by Transporeon.
Middle Eastern express and logistics company Aramex saw net profits drop by 27% y-o-y to AED 165.3m in 2022.
Austrian Post reports broadly flat growth in its revenues and profits for the calendar year ended 31st December 2022.
NYK’s sale of its air cargo business may be an omen. The leading Japanese logistics service provider, NYK Group, has agreed to sell its air cargo business, Nippon Cargo Airlines Co., Ltd. (NCA), to ANA Holdings Inc. which is the group that owns All Nippon Airlines. The price of the sale seems not to have been disclosed.
In 2022, Uber Freight generated revenues of US$6,947m up from US$2,132m in revenues in 2021, with revenue growth principally due to the acquisition of Transplace.
2023 was supposed to be a year that saw the global economy in general and logistics markets in particular return to some sort of normality. This has turned-out to be only partially true.
Last February, the European Parliament passed new legislation to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles and tackle climate change. The legislation virtually forbids the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles within the European Union as of 2035. Simply put, the newly approved law required carmakers to achieve a 100% cut in CO2 emissions by …
