As Florida braced for landfall by Hurricane Dorian on Tuesday, officials were freezing or diverting the flow of goods and people across the state on highways, ports, railroads, and airports. The impact is on track to disrupt the movement of freight up the heavily populated eastern seaboard through the busy back-to-school week.
Logistics facilities across the southeast U.S. played a long waiting game over the Labor Day weekend as the hurricane nearly stalled its slow northern march from the Caribbean Sea into the North Atlantic Ocean. The storm ground its way slowly over the Bahamas on Monday, flooding the low island region with storm surge waters and high winds.
Unsure of forecasts of where the hurricane might make landfall on the mainland U.S., both Port Everglades—located just north of Miami—and the Port of Jacksonville on the far northern edge of Florida are currently closed by the U.S. Coast Guard until further notice.
Both sites are shuttered under "Hurricane Port Condition ZULU," where a port's terminals remain closed to all commercial traffic for the duration of the storm threat, until it is cleared to reopen by the Coast Guard. At the Port of Jacksonville, all offices and facilities will remain closed Tuesday and Wednesday, in alignment with the City of Jacksonville's municipal office closures.
Coast Guard storm conditions begin with Whiskey, when gale force winds are expected to arrive at the port within 72 hours. As a storm nears its target, the status changes to X-Ray (expected within 48 hours), Yankee (predicted within 24 hours), and Zulu (impending within 12 hours), with increasingly tight restrictions on the movement of oceangoing ships and barges, on cargo operations, and finally with full port closure.
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Accordingly, the Georgia Ports Authority said its facilities at Savannah and Brunswick will be closed on Tuesday. And in South Carolina, the SC Ports Authority's marine terminals in Charleston and Georgetown will be closed on Wednesday and Thursday.
But ports located further north on the east coast were still in more of a wait-and-see mode. While North Carolina Ports had originally planned on Sept. 1 to close its ports of Wilmington and of Morehead City completely on Wednesday, it later delayed that closure based on the storm's unexpectedly slow progress north.
One benefit of the storm's slow progress is that it is giving authorities more time to lay plans for evacuations and to re-route vehicles away from danger zones. To aid in that process, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has lifted its restrictions on the number of hours that truckers are allowed to drive their vehicles in the region, saying the looser regulations would help provide vital supplies and transportation services to disaster areas under emergency declarations.
However, many local transportation offices remain closed in the face of the threat, including the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FDHSMV)'s announcement it had closed its state offices in several Florida counties on Tuesday for non-essential personnel. The Tallahassee-based Florida Trucking Association is sharing information and updates on these closures of ports and services through an emergency site dedicated to the storm.
As residents and transportation professionals evacuate their homes or move goods out of the storm's predicted path, the spike in travel could trigger ancillary challenges such as fuel shortages. On its storm site, the FDHSMV shared advice to cope with that issue, offering fuel tips such as: Once you reach a quarter full, start looking for gas stations near you to fill up; and Download the GasBuddy app to locate fuel stations with available gas near you.
Some freight fleets are putting contingency plans into play, including truckload and logistics provider Schneider Transportation Management. Green Bay, Wisc.-basedSchneider said today it is working with customers and drivers with shipments into and out of the potentially impacted areas, following a top priority of ensuring the safety and well-being of associates and of protecting customers' freight. The company has positioned drivers to be ready as soon as conditions safely permit to help facilitate the shipment of weather-related freight, such as emergency loads to the affected areas.
Meanwhile, businesses in other parts of the country were pitching in on Tuesday to help alleviate that hurdle. The Taylor, Mich.-based Atlas Oil Co. said it had deployed more than 100 emergency fueling assets, drivers, and mobile tanks from terminals around the country, drawing on its diversified supply points and nationwide logistics network to ensure organizations affected by Hurricane Dorian have access to critical fuel supply.
According to the company, Atlas is currently staging assets including custom StormProof trucks, off-road fueling vehicles, and transport trailers, which will serve as mobile gas stations throughout the region. "Our team of emergency fueling experts began tracking the storm a week in advance and are keeping a close eye on its development as it makes its way across the Atlantic," Atlas' director of emergency services, Jayme Oyen, said in a release. "Our driver team is strategically placed throughout the region, ready to respond to mission critical facilities and our contracted fuel assurance customers."
New Jersey is home to the most congested freight bottleneck in the country for the seventh straight year, according to research from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), released today.
ATRI’s annual list of the Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks aims to highlight the nation’s most congested highways and help local, state, and federal governments target funding to areas most in need of relief. The data show ways to reduce chokepoints, lower emissions, and drive economic growth, according to the researchers.
The 2025 Top Truck Bottleneck List measures the level of truck-involved congestion at more than 325 locations on the national highway system. The analysis is based on an extensive database of freight truck GPS data and uses several customized software applications and analysis methods, along with terabytes of data from trucking operations, to produce a congestion impact ranking for each location. The bottleneck locations detailed in the latest ATRI list represent the top 100 congested locations, although ATRI continuously monitors more than 325 freight-critical locations, the group said.
For the seventh straight year, the intersection of I-95 and State Route 4 near the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey, is the top freight bottleneck in the country. The remaining top 10 bottlenecks include: Chicago, I-294 at I-290/I-88; Houston, I-45 at I-69/US 59; Atlanta, I-285 at I-85 (North); Nashville: I-24/I-40 at I-440 (East); Atlanta: I-75 at I-285 (North); Los Angeles, SR 60 at SR 57; Cincinnati, I-71 at I-75; Houston, I-10 at I-45; and Atlanta, I-20 at I-285 (West).
ATRI’s analysis, which utilized data from 2024, found that traffic conditions continue to deteriorate from recent years, partly due to work zones resulting from increased infrastructure investment. Average rush hour truck speeds were 34.2 miles per hour (MPH), down 3% from the previous year. Among the top 10 locations, average rush hour truck speeds were 29.7 MPH.
In addition to squandering time and money, these delays also waste fuel—with trucks burning an estimated 6.4 billion gallons of diesel fuel and producing more than 65 million metric tons of additional carbon emissions while stuck in traffic jams, according to ATRI.
On a positive note, ATRI said its analysis helps quantify the value of infrastructure investment, pointing to improvements at Chicago’s Jane Byrne Interchange as an example. Once the number one truck bottleneck in the country for three years in a row, the recently constructed interchange saw rush hour truck speeds improve by nearly 25% after construction was completed, according to the report.
“Delays inflicted on truckers by congestion are the equivalent of 436,000 drivers sitting idle for an entire year,” ATRI President and COO Rebecca Brewster said in a statement announcing the findings. “These metrics are getting worse, but the good news is that states do not need to accept the status quo. Illinois was once home to the top bottleneck in the country, but following a sustained effort to expand capacity, the Jane Byrne Interchange in Chicago no longer ranks in the top 10. This data gives policymakers a road map to reduce chokepoints, lower emissions, and drive economic growth.”
It’s getting a little easier to find warehouse space in the U.S., as the frantic construction pace of recent years declined to pre-pandemic levels in the fourth quarter of 2024, in line with rising vacancies, according to a report from real estate firm Colliers.
Those trends played out as the gap between new building supply and tenants’ demand narrowed during 2024, the firm said in its “U.S. Industrial Market Outlook Report / Q4 2024.” By the numbers, developers delivered 400 million square feet for the year, 34% below the record 607 million square feet completed in 2023. And net absorption, a key measure of demand, declined by 27%, to 168 million square feet.
Consequently, the U.S. industrial vacancy rate rose by 126 basis points, to 6.8%, as construction activity normalized at year-end to pre-pandemic levels of below 300 million square feet. With supply and demand nearing equilibrium in 2025, the vacancy rate is expected to peak at around 7% before starting to fall again.
Thanks to those market conditions, renters of warehouse space should begin to see some relief from the steep rent hikes they’re seen in recent years. According to Colliers, rent growth decelerated in 2024 after nine consecutive quarters of year-over-year increases surpassing 10%. Average warehouse and distribution rents rose by 5% to $10.12/SF triple net, and rents in some markets actually declined following a period of unprecedented growth when increases often exceeded 25% year-over-year. As the market adjusts, rents are projected to stabilize in 2025, rising between 2% and 5%, in line with historical averages.
In 2024, there were 125 new occupancies of 500,000 square feet or more, led by third-party logistics (3PL) providers, followed by manufacturing companies. Demand peaked in the fourth quarter at 53 million square feet, while the first quarter had the lowest activity at 28 million square feet — the lowest quarterly tally since 2012.
In its economic outlook for the future, Colliers said the U.S. economy remains strong by most measures; with low unemployment, consumer spending surpassing expectations, positive GDP growth, and signs of improvement in manufacturing. However businesses still face challenges including persistent inflation, the lowest hiring rate since 2010, and uncertainties surrounding tariffs, migration, and policies introduced by the new Trump Administration.
As U.S. businesses count down the days until the expiration of the Trump Administration’s monthlong pause of tariffs on Canada and Mexico, a report from Uber Freight says the tariffs will likely be avoided through an extended agreement, since the potential for damaging consequences would be so severe for all parties.
If the tariffs occurred, they could push U.S. inflation higher, adding $1,000 to $1,200 to the average person's cost of living. And relief from interest rates would likely not come to the rescue, since inflation is already above the Fed's target, delaying further rate cuts.
A potential impact of the tariffs in the long run might be to boost domestic freight by giving local manufacturers an edge. However, the magnitude and sudden implementation of these tariffs means we likely won't see such benefits for a while, and the immediate damage will be more significant in the meantime, Uber Freight said in its “2025 Q1 Market update & outlook.”
That market volatility comes even as tough times continue in the freight market. In the U.S. full truckload sector, the cost per loaded mile currently exceeds spot rates significantly, which will likely push rate increases.
However, in the first quarter of 2025, spot rates are now falling, as they usually do in February following the winter peak. According to Uber Freight, this situation arose after truck operating costs rose 2 cents/mile in 2023 despite a 9-cent diesel price decline, thanks to increases in insurance (+13%), truck and trailer costs (+9%), and driver wages (+8%). Costs then fell 2 cents/mile in 2024, resulting in stable costs over the past two years.
Fortunately, Uber Freight predicts that the freight cycle could soon begin to turn, as signs of a recovery are emerging despite weak current demand. A measure of manufacturing growth called the ISM PMI edged up to 50.9 in December, surpassing the expansion threshold for the first time in 26 months.
Accordingly, new orders and production increased while employment stabilized. That means the U.S. manufacturing economy appears to be expanding after a prolonged period of contraction, signaling a positive outlook for freight demand, Uber Freight said.
The surge comes as the U.S. imposed a new 10% tariff on Chinese goods as of February 4, while pausing a more aggressive 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada until March, Descartes said in its “February Global Shipping Report.”
So far, ports are handling the surge well, with overall port transit time delays not significantly lengthening at the top 10 U.S. ports, despite elevated volumes for a seventh consecutive month. But the future may look more cloudy; businesses with global supply chains are coping with heightened uncertainty as they eye the new U.S. tariffs on China, continuing trade policy tensions, and ongoing geopolitical instability in the Middle East, Descartes said.
“The impact of new and potential tariffs, coupled with a late Chinese Lunar New Year (January 29 – February 12), may have contributed to higher U.S. container imports in January,” Jackson Wood, Director, Industry Strategy at Descartes, said in a release. “These trade policy developments add significant uncertainty to global supply chains, increasing concerns about rising import costs and supply chain disruptions. As trade tensions escalate, businesses and consumers alike may face the risk of higher prices and prolonged market volatility.”
New York-based Cofactr will now integrate Factor.io’s capabilities into its unified platform, a supply chain and logistics management tool that streamlines production, processes, and policies for critical hardware manufacturers. The combined platform will give users complete visibility into the status of every part in their Bill of Materials (BOM), across the end-to-end direct material management process, the firm said.
Those capabilities are particularly crucial for Cofactr’s core customer base, which include manufacturers in high-compliance, highly regulated sectors such as defense, aerospace, robotics, and medtech.
“Whether an organization is supplying U.S. government agencies with critical hardware or working to meet ambitious product goals in an emerging space, they’re all looking for new ways to optimize old processes that stand between them and their need to iterate at breakneck speeds,” Matthew Haber, CEO and Co-founder of Cofactr, said in a release. “Through this acquisition, we’re giving them another way to do that with acute visibility into their full bill of materials across the many suppliers they work with, directly through our platform.”
“Poor data quality in the supply chain has always been a root cause of delays that create unnecessary costs and interfere with an organization’s speed to market. For manufacturers, especially those in regulated industries, manually cross-checking hundreds of supplier communications against ERP information while navigating other complex processes and policies is a recipe for disaster,” Shultz said. “With Cofactr, we’re now working with the best in the industry to scale our ability to eliminate time-consuming tasks and increase process efficiencies so manufacturers can instead focus on building their products.”