A broad coalition of stakeholders has escalated its attacks against the U.S. Coast Guard, qualifying as “an aberrational exercise” the latter’s recent decision to impose a sharp increase in Great Lakes pilotage rates effective April 6, shortly after the 2016 commercial navigation season on the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence waterway opens on March 21.

The book, Long Haul Legacy by F. Martin Harmon (Atlantic Book Printing), tells the tale of long haul trucking in the U.S. This is a story that has been told more than once, but Harmon fills in some important details left out of many accounts on the unique evolution of trucking in the U.S. The subtitle “SMC3 and the Evolution of Motor Freight” is frequently missing from most accounts, and frankly the omission is as big as Superman without his cape.

The admission was stunning - the US Coast Guard saying it will not enforce the new international container weight rule has raised serious doubts as to whether the rule, scheduled to go into effect on July 1, can now be enforced.

David Williams, president and CEO of Safmarine a Maersk company told AJOT he is cautiously optimistic that the company's trade related to Africa and West Central Asia, will recover from the current slowdown and increase to 4% per annum by 2020.

Najim Shaikh, vice-president commercial import for MSC, sees Canada as a steady, reliable growth market for containerized cargo in the years ahead at key ports benefiting from substantial infrastructure and capacity investments as well as waterfront stability through labour agreements extending to 2018 in the cases of Montreal, Vancouver and Prince Rupert and until 2022 in Saint John.

Georgia’s governor and top ports executive each see the Peach State surpassing the Port of New York & New Jersey as having the No. 1 containerized cargo gateway on the U.S. East Coast, perhaps in as few as a dozen years.

In State of the Port speech, Oakland Port Director Chris Lytle says he expects no negative impact from the departure of stevedoring giant Ports America from the Port of Oakland.

The administrator of the Panama Canal Authority – refuting a statement earlier this week by his second in command – says the expanded waterway should be ready for inauguration in June, following delays costing the authority more than a half billion dollars in revenue.

Panama Canal officials are looking to offer volume-based incentives to containership operators as part of plans to encourage full use of the expanded waterway after it opens – an event now eyed for “early the second part of this year.”

U.S. Coast Guard sparks storm with proposed drastic hike in pilotage rates