Airport Arrival Charges
Airport Cargo Terminal Operators (CTO’s) have announced an increase in import airport destination charges from April 8th, 2018. The Airline Terminal Fee will increase to $ 0.51/kg and the Import Document Fee will increase to $ 53.00/shipment. GPSM will need to pass on these out of pocket expenses from above date, our web rates are being updated to reflect the new costs.
USA Trucking shortage
Following the mandatory introduction of Electronic Data Logging Devices (ELD’s) on all USA trucks, it is expected that trucking rates will increase and the number of available vehicles will be reduced. Already it is being reported that many more trucks are spending longer hours in rest stops since the ELD’s were introduced. It is now not possible for drivers to “fudge” their hours and rest stops must be taken after 11 hours. The following information was obtained from American Journal of Transportation:
“The ELD rules add another choke point for freight prices, a driver shortage, surging demand and rough weather already have pushed spot rates up 28 percent this year compared with a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Even longer-term contract rates, which are more stable than short-term spot prices, are expected to rise 12 percent this year, that would be the highest increase in more than a decade. Contract prices rose just 3.9 percent last year.
The ELD rules divided big trucking companies and independent owner-operators. Most large trucking companies adopted ELDs years ago to ensure that they complied with limits on hours and to eliminate the hassle of driver paperwork, but smaller and independent drivers resisted the change. The American Trucking Associations supported the regulations, saying they made highways safer, while the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association rallied against the requirement as another regulatory burden”.