Check Call: US caught in the middle of North American supply chain problems

August 27, 2024

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It has been a challenging time for our neighbors to the north and south. Canada had a rail lockout for about eight hours before the government intervened, and Mexico saw an increase in violent cargo theft.

Looking at Mexico first, the top trading partner with the U.S. has seen some extra challenges amid the nearshoring boom. Noi Mahoney writes, “During the first half of 2024, Mexico reported 5,140 cargo thefts, averaging about 57 a day. The main tactic used by criminals in Mexico is the interception of cargo trucks while they are in transit, accounting for 72% of the cases during the first half of 2024. About 84% of cargo thefts in Mexico also involved some form of violence.”

There is cargo theft for Canadian cross-border freight, but 93% occurs in the province of Ontario, with a heavy focus on the greater Toronto area. Unfortunately Mexico doesn’t have localized trends like Canada.

Cargo theft is also a concern in the U.S. The American Transportation Research Institute launched a survey to try to understand it all. The survey will help better quantify cargo theft types, frequency, geography and commodities targeted, the nonprofit research organization said.

Canada’s entire rail network had a bit of a situation this past week. Members from the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference issued a 72-hour strike notice to go into effect last Thursday. Then Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City issued a lockout notice also to go into effect Thursday. This comes as union contract negotiations broke down.

Thursday afternoon, Canadian Labor Minister Steven MacKinnon ended the lockout, ordering all parties to binding arbitration to resolve the standoff. As of Monday, all parties were back to work cleaning up the delays that came as a result of the less-than-24-hour work stoppage.

Scott Shannon, vice president, Canada, for C.H. Robinson, was quoted in Stuart Chirls’ article: “From our experience with previous rail strikes in Canada, we expect it to take up to a week for each railroad to be fully reset and running smoothly again. It will take much longer to catch up with shipments that have gotten backlogged.”

The workers have been working without a contract in place since the beginning of the year, and this is far from over as both parties work together to get something in place. For the meantime, it seems that a huge mess was narrowly averted.

SONAR TRAC Market Dashboard

TRAC Tuesday. This week’s TRAC lane heads out west to go from Denver to Salt Lake City. The average rate per mile is $2.26, right on par with the national average of $2.28 per mile. Outbound tender rejections are at 3.4% in Denver, down 21 basis points week over week. Salt Lake City has an OTRI of 1.73%, which is what shippers are looking for when it comes to carrier contract compliance. With outbound tender rejections in both cities remaining stable and under 4% rejections, it would take a significant disruption to cause volatility for spot rates on this lane.

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Who’s with whom? The Panama Canal might be making some changes. After historic drought levels, canal officials are looking to implement changes that would prevent a repeat of conditions in 2023, which saw the worst drought since 1950.

The Panama Canal currently connects 180 maritime routes that reach 1,920 ports in 170 countries around the world, through which nearly 3% of global maritime trade passes, according to the Panama Canal Authority (ACP).

Currently, to help mitigate future droughts, the ACP has proposed the $1.6 billion Rio Indio Reservoir project. According to Noi Mahoney, the project would “dam the nearby Indio River. After damming the river, the project would drill a 5-mile mountain tunnel connecting the newly constructed reservoir to Gatun Lake, which supplies water to the canal.

“The Rio Indio Reservoir project, which could take five years or more to complete, could allow up to 15 additional ship transits per day through the canal. But the project has faced criticism from local farmers and communities whose land risks being flooded by the construction of the reservoir.”