SJ Consulting

Knight Transportation Inc. and Swift Transportation Co. have announced they are merging in an all-stock deal with a combined enterprise value of $6 billion, the combined entity will be called Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings Inc.

Changes considered by some as “absolutely inevitable” are coming to freight payment services as shippers seek to leverage data for more efficiency, and while innovative and data-driven companies insist there’s a better way, skeptics push back with plenty of experience under their belts.

Could the U.S. manufacturing economy be at the start of an extended slowdown or just a brief correction to draw down inventory, and if the economy is slowing, is the U.S. trucking industry on the verge of entering a profit-killing era of overcapacity as it was during the Great Recession of 2008-2010.

Shippers should expect rate increases in the 3 percent to 5 percent range, higher in some geographic lanes, depending on a shipper’s individual freight profile with its carriers.

As the premier source for strategic solutions in the transportation and logistics industries, SJ Consulting constantly invests in staff, technology, market intelligence gathering and new service offerings, such as our Industry Reports.

The world’s largest package delivery company forecast it will deliver more than 585 million packages in December 2014, up 11 percent from a year ago.

Dimensional “dim” pricing could aid carriers’ profitability but might be difficult to implement because of the variety of shipments that by definition move every day in LTL carriage.