Freight Economy

For October, the most recent month for which data is available, the SCI reading rose to 0.3, after September’s -0.5.

High-value cargo and volatile trade conditions are reshaping freight management, demanding a shift from reactive tracking to proactive, data-driven control.

Following comments made by Chairman Jay Powell in late August, suggesting that the Federal Reserve was possibly open to reducing the target rate for its federal funds rate, the Federal Reserve today decided to lower the rate, which comes from its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), to 4.0%-to-4.25%.

Logistics Management (LM) Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently spoke with Matt Muenster, Chief Economist for Green Bay, Wisc.-based Breakthrough, an innovator in transportation management, dedicated to creating transparent and fair strategies for the world’s leading shippers. Muenster provided Berman with an overview of trade and tariffs, the industrial economy, and Peak Season, among other topics. 

As was widely expected, the Federal Reserve said yesterday that it will not make any changes to its federal funds rate, which comes from the Federal Reserve Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), announcing that it again decided to leave the target range for the federal funds rate at 4.25%-to-4.5%.

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently spoke with Doug Waggoner, CEO of Chicago-based Echo Global Logistics about various topics, including: the state of the freight economy, tariffs and the trade war, trucking capacity, and AI, among others.

As United States-driven tariff-related actions continue to dominate the narrative in supply chain and freight transportation circles, leading to a new “Trade War,” it is not an understatement to say it has brought with it a sense of economic uncertainty, and unease regarding macroeconomic conditions.

In this podcast Armada Corporate Intelligence Managing Director Keith Prather addressed various topics, including: the current state of the freight economy; tariffs and their impact on the supply chain; inventories and imports; and 2025 Peak Season prospects. 

In this podcast, Bingham discussed the impact of tariffs on the supply chain, in terms of how it impacts shippers and freight flows, among other topics.

There are multiple ways to view and assess what constitutes a healthy economy. While the data and indicators tell a part of the story, they do not present the entire picture. This has been clear for some time. However, it appears we are closer to a soft landing and a path to sustained growth than we have been in a while, providing at least some cautious economic optimism, which is certainly preferable to the alternative.

In this podcast, Jeff Berman, Group News Editor for Logistics Management and the Peerless Media Supply Chain Group, interviews Matt Muenster, Chief Economist for Green Bay, Wisc.-based Breakthrough, an innovator in transportation management, dedicated to creating transparent and fair strategies for the world’s leading shippers.

In this podcast, Jeff Berman, Group News Editor for Logistics Management and the Peerless Media Supply Chain Group, interviews Walter Kemmsies, principal of The Kemmsies Group.

Addressing U.S.-bound imports, Bernstein explained that a lot of what is coming in and what is going out are intermediate, meaning they are inputs into the overall production process, not finished goods.

At a time when freight demand remains depressed, coupled with excess truckload capacity and pricing remaining firmly in shippers’ favor, one can point to any number of economic metrics to come up with opinions, or estimations, as to what is driving market conditions. To be clear, though, the metric leading that list still is very likely inflation, as it has been a major talking point in freight transportation and logistics circles for nearly two years, going back to when the...

In this podcast, Jeff Berman, Group News Editor for Logistics Management and the Peerless Media Supply Chain Group, interviews Ben Gordon, founder and managing partner of Palm Beach, Florida-based Cambridge Capital, and managing partner of Ben Gordon Strategic Advisors.