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We want to wish all trucker's out there and their families a Merry Christmas and a very successful New year! Stay Safe! Here's a poem by an Unknown Author which we think is appropriate for Trucker's and specially the ones on the road this Christmas When God Made Truck Drivers When the Lord was creating Truck Drivers, he was into his sixth day of overtime when an angel appeared and said, "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." And the Lord said, "Have you read the spec on this order?" " A truck driver has to be able to drive 10-12 hours per day, through any type of weather, on any type of road, know the highway traffic laws of 48 states and 10 provinces, he has to be ready and able to unload 40,000 lbs of cargo after driving thru the night, sleep in areas of cities and towns that the police refuse to patrol." " He has to be able to live in his truck 24 hours a day 7 days a week for weeks on end, offer...

The transportation sector is certainly doing its part and continues to maintain course with its contribution to the recovery of our economy. Freight for-hire shipment continues to rise for the third consecutive month - 0.8% in September from August, and according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ (BTS) Freight Transportation Services Index (TSI), reaching its highest all-time level.  Full BTS report

Is the transportation sector bracing for higher energy costs? Stricter emission regulations may be one of the causes and industry experts are concern that uncertainties on energy policies may hinder the recovery of the global economy.  The concerns of the U.S transportation sector with higher energy prices due to government regulations are well founded but we expect that the US and EU regulatory agencies will continue to work together to cap costs or start implementing policies to help reduce energy prices in order to avoid  a much greater crisis that would affect the average consumer and the global recovery.

The experts are optimistic about the U.S. transportation sector for 2014, trucking is the leader on freight transport in the United States and in 2012 having had its best year since the recession and with unemployment dropping to the 7% range and deficit gradually decreasing, we can expect truckers and carriers to continue with increased profitability and growth.  We welcome the input of our blog participants on this issue and comments on their own personal outlook of the industry.

It has been the industry standard for trucking factors to fund their customers only after receiving original invoices, some factors however, realized that funding off copies would expedite the funding process for the trucker, as well as giving the trucker a more convenient method to submit invoices. The factors that are funding off copies may require the debtor's acceptance, and the trucker must submit the originals as soon as possible. This is obviously a more efficient process, which allows for quicker funding and conveniences to the trucker who is always running on a very tight schedule. However,  when submitting the original invoice to the factoring company it is important to keep in mind that it matches the copy originally sent to the factor, otherwise, it could affect your factoring costs and lose the funding off copies privileges.

What is freight factoring? Freight factoring is simply the purchase of freight bills/accounts receivables, an essential financial tool for trucking and transportation companies.  Freight factoring eases the company's financial tension by funding their net 30-60 and even 90 day freight bills/invoices now - not when they're due. With factoring, you focus on what you do best; getting and delivering your loads, sales, customer service and growth, and the freight factor focuses on what they do best, factoring/funding your invoices, and assuring that your steady cash flow continues. With freight factoring, the strengths are in your receivables and the ability of the carrier or brokerage to generate eligible sales - not time in business or financial condition. And, with freight factoring you are not creating debt. Freight factoring releases cash to bring your business plans to life; grab new opportunities; invest in new equipment, meet payroll and other expenses, or simply negot...

Our Military Veterans and their families currently have an opportunity to be trained for jobs in the transportation industry. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced on Wednesday that there are grants available totaling almost $1 million which were awarded to six colleges across the country as part of their grant program.  The colleges are: Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen, Wash. ($131,041) Long Beach Community College District, in Long Beach, Calif. ($211,733) Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College in Orangeburg, S.C. ($150,000) Lone Star College in Woodlands, Texas ($184,260) Century College in White Bear Lake, Minn. ($120,000) Joliet Junior College in Joliet, Ill. ($176,427) There is a high demand for commercial trucking jobs which is continuing to grow, and in fact, an additional 300,000 jobs are expected by 2020. To learn more about this and other opportunities available to our Veteran's visit http://www.dot.gov/ve...

Is trucking and transportation ready for ObamaCare? The fact is that many of us do not know much about ObamaCare, but here are a few points that should help us understand the basics: To help us understand the different health insurance choices, health insurance companies are required to provide us with an easy-to-understand summary on the health plan’s benefits and coverages. Open enrollment begins on October 1, 2013 CHECKLIST FOR SMALL BUSINESSES If you’re a small business owner, you’ll be able to offer your employees new health plan choices through the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP). 7 Things You Can Do To Get Ready Now 1. Make sure you understand how insurance works. For example, you’ll want to understand the difference between premiums and out-of-pocket costs, like deductibles and copayments. You’ll want to compare these details to help determine which plans are right for you and your employees. Click for more about how it works. 2. Learn...

The Sequester, which should be not be taken lightly by the trucking / transportation industry is referred to by the White House as "Harmful automatic budget cuts — known as the sequester — threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs, and cut vital services for children, seniors, people with mental illness and our men and women in uniform. These cuts will make it harder to grow our economy and create jobs by affecting our ability to invest in important priorities like education, research and innovation, public safety, and military readiness." President Obama and both parties in Congress have been working together for the last few years to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion looking into spending cuts and tax rate increases. But after all these years of discussions and negotiations, they could not agree on a plan to reduce the deficit, and in 2011 Congress passed a law saying that "if they couldn't agree on a plan to reduce our deficit by $4 trillion — includi...

The US Department of Transportation has certainly kept up with enforcement -- in the last few days it has shut down two bus companies, one Illinois based and the other a Mexican based operating in the U.S., both because of their drivers and vehicles posing an imminent hazard to public safety.  And in the last few weeks it has either fined or shut down a number of other carriers.  Public safety and regulatory compliance are priorities, why risk being shut down? If revenues are tight, talk to a financial expert that specializes in helping trucking and transportation companies, there should be financial options to help carriers keep up their fleet and operation in full compliance.  If you are a carrier that needs help and would like us to find someone that can possible assist, please send us an email . PLEASE SUPPORT THE VICTIMS OF THE OKLAHOMA DISASTER - CLICK

The Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported last Wednesday on the February report on U.S.-NAFTA Freight Flows by All Modes of Transportation,  and of the $88.4 billion of transported freight in February 2013 between (NAFTA) partners, trucks transported the most at 59.1%. rail transport came in second at 15.3%, then Vessel at 9.7%, with Pipeline at 7.7%. Other and Unknown at 4.6% and Air transport last at 3.6%. Click to read the full report .

How is the trucking community reacting to the current economic environment?  Irrespective of financial market conditions including the decline in gold prices, trucking continues to recover and in fact expand in many sectors, as an example, Inautonews.com recently reported on the heavy truck manufacturing industry, although still recovering, is on the right track with orders staying above 20,000 a month.

Starting a trucking company can be very challenging, more so than most other businesses, on this week's posting we are including a couple of helpful links that may help with the formation of a trucking business. How to Calculate Startup Costs for a Trucking Company http://smallbusiness.chron.com/calculate-startup-costs-trucking-company-10176.html Grants to Start a Trucking Company http://smallbusiness.chron.com/grants-start-trucking-company-30793.html

Last week the jobless numbers gave us a roller-coaster ride which ended the stock market's 4-day high, ending the week at a slight loss. The trucking industry however, should continue sustaining itself and with the gradual growth of our economy truck driving and transportation jobs should not be affected.

The transportation sector appears to be carrying its own, and even though we are seeing fluctuation in the DOW transportation index, we think it will maintain gradual growth. Our economy should also continue with its slow recovery, however, we do need to keep and eye on job creation, only 88,000 Jobs in March were created compared to 268,000 the previous month, and even though the unemployment rate came down to 7.6%, that seems to be as a direct result of 500,000 of the unemployed actually giving up and dropping out of the job market, certainly not good news! We also have to be concern with the economic situation in Europe, if it does not stabilizes, we can see a reversal of our recovery due to a trickle down effect.

Are truckers seeing an increase in loads?  The economic picture is suggesting just that, and with the expansion of the manufacturing sector and diesel fuel cost still declining, the trucking and transportation industry is on forward motion. There is plenty of money to fund economic expansion and increased loads, trucking factors are making it easier for truckers to get cash quickly on their loads with loosen funding criteria and fuel advances.   Let us know what you think?

U.S. Truck-For-Hire Tonnage Up 0.6% in February. The American Trucking Association's latest figures on US truck tonnage shows an increase for the fourth month in a row for a total 4-month gained of 7.7% total tonnage.  In February showing an increase of 0.6% and 1% in January. Optimism is high and we expect positive trends in transportation to continue.

The situation in Cyprus still has the DOW concerned, it is likely that the Cyprus Central Bank will come up with some sort of bailout plan, we don't expect it will have ramifications in the U.S. trucking and transportation industry, but we need to keep an eye on how the other Eurozone nations will react to it.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration posted the weekly numbers and we're happy to report them. Diesel prices continue to decline from $4.159 a gallon on Feb 25, 2013 to $4.088 a week later on Mar 11th, and down 0.35 from a year ago. These numbers suggest a positive outlook for US trucking and transportation companies, and with the uncertainties in the Europe economy and below market expectations from China, crude oil prices may continue to decline.

Job numbers are out and are better than expected, the private sector up by 246,000 in Feb v. 146,000 in Jan, non-farm up by 236,000, and the unemployment rate down to 7.7 in Feb v. 7.9% in Jan. Business is back on track and the trucking and transportation industry is ready to meet the demand, as well as trucking factors with plenty of money to fund increased loads and industry growth!

Marketwire reported recently on a trucking industry resurgence over the past few months, and in January, the highest on record for "For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index" which increased by 2.9% to 125.2. We are excited about the trend and with fuel costs remaining stable and possibly declining in the near future, we are optimistic and look forward to a great year for the trucking industry.

All these examples do NOT imply that diesel is cheap; it just illustrates how outrageous some prices are.... You will be really shocked by the last one! Compared with Diesel...... Think a gallon of diesel is expensive? This makes one think, and also puts things in perspective. Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 ... $10.32 per gallon Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 ..........$9.52 per gallon Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 ..... $10.17 per gallon Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 ......... $10.00 per gallon Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 ...... $33.60 per gallon Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 ... $178.13 per gallon Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 .. $123.20 per gallon Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 ....... . $25.42 per gallon Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 .....$84.48 per gallon And this is the REAL KICKER... Ever wonder why printers are so cheap? So they have you hooked for the ink. Someone calculated the cost of the INK at a retail store (you won't believe it....but it is true........) $5,200 a gal. (five thousand two ...

More and more banks are getting into factoring, and it may seem as if banks are giving factors a run for their money, but the fact remains that they are an FDIC regulated institution with tight restrictions, and therefore cannot be as competitive as a factor in many situations.  It is likely that if you go to your local banking branch and ask the manager about their factoring services, the branch manager would not know what you are talking about. Why waste time with tight restrictions? If you need factoring, going to a factor should be the best bet. But like everything else, shop around and once you have the best quote, work with it, factors want your business, and they will try to beat the other guys offer. Factors offer a simple qualifying process and quick funding.

Based on a report by the Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute, the trucking industry as a whole shared costs for wasted fuel and time of about $27 billion in 2011 due to traffic jams, which is about 2.9 billion gallons of fuel wasted. The cities most congested are Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, New York, Newark, Boston, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia and Seattle. We need to keep tabs on what actions if any the Department of Transportation is taking to easy congestion on the nation's highways?

Congratulations to the Baltimore Ravens! However, hats off to the 49ers, amazing come back, the game could have gone either way, it felt almost certain that the 49ers inside the Raven's 5 yards with less than 2 minutes to play had the game, if not for the controversial play 49ers QB Kaepernick pass to Michael Crabtree and the scramble with Raven's Jimmy Smith.  Any thoughts?

Super Bowl Sunday! East v. West, or in this case bother (John Harbaugh - Ravens) verses bother (Jim Harbaugh - 49ers), a SportsNation poll picked the 49ers by 54% to beat the Ravens.  Let's have a little fun with our own poll, Ravens or 49ers?

What is the trucking community's perspective on Women in Combat?

This was sent via our Facebook page, its hilarious, but also makes you wonder, can it be that simple?    THE VELOCITY OF MONEY (Author Unknown) It is a slow day in the East Texas town of Madisonville . It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich tourist from the East is driving through town. He enters the only hotel in the sleepy town and lays a hundred dollar bill on the desk stating he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night. As soon as the man walks up the stairs, the hotel proprietor takes the hundred dollar bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to pay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer then takes the $100 and heads off to pay his debt to the supplier of feed and fuel. The guy at the Farmer’s Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay...