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The day’s most important moves across every mode — air, rail, road, ocean and the trade that ties them together.
| ● On the Wire |
Wednesday, September 30 |
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The Northwest Seaport Alliance connects Pacific Northwest shippers to Asia with some of the shortest transit times on the West Coast, backed by deep-water berths and on-dock rail at both Seattle and Tacoma.
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Ocean
BY STUART CHIRLS · AMERICAN SHIPPER · SEPTEMBER 29, 2026
The Panama Canal Authority is raising daily transit slots and restoring full draft for its largest ships starting October 15, reversing months of drought-driven restrictions.
| THE TAKE — Restoring the 49-foot draft matters more than the extra transit slots: every foot of restriction costs a 10,000-TEU containership roughly 450 TEUs of capacity, so this move effectively hands carriers back real cargo-carrying room, not just more scheduling flexibility. The Authority’s own caution that the watershed remains in deficit is worth taking seriously — this looks like a tactical relief tied to a good rainfall stretch, not a structural fix, so East Coast-bound shippers should treat the improved capacity as conditional rather than locked in. |
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Air Cargo
Airbus’s new widebody freighter flew for the first time out of Toulouse, logging over four hours in the air as the manufacturer works toward certification and a late-2027 delivery target.
| THE TAKE — 103 orders from 14 customers before the plane has even finished flight testing shows how tight the widebody freighter market already is, with aging 747s and 777s retiring faster than replacements arrive. Airbus’s real edge over Boeing’s competing 777-8 freighter isn’t performance — the two are within 3% on fuel burn and operating cost — it’s simply getting to market first. Nine more months of testing before EASA certification is a tight runway if Airbus wants to protect that lead. |
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Warehousing & Distribution
Governor Newsom signed two bills tightening oversight of large cold-storage facilities in response to June’s Lineage warehouse fire in Los Angeles, which required a $100 million cleanup and destroyed 89 million pounds of food.
| THE TAKE — Requiring large cold-storage operators to carry contingency funds or insurance for community emergency response is a direct response to a real gap: Lineage’s $3.3 million community commitment came only after the fact, not as a pre-funded obligation. Industry warnings that this raises costs through the food and pharmaceutical supply chain aren’t wrong, but a $50,000-per-violation penalty is a modest deterrent against a fire that cost $100 million to clean up — the bigger compliance cost will likely come from insurance underwriters reacting to this incident, not the statute itself. |
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Trucking & Manufacturing
President Trump will tour Peterbilt’s Denton, Texas plant this week to highlight hiring gains the White House attributes to tariffs on imported trucks and truck parts.
| THE TAKE — The White House’s job-creation numbers for Peterbilt and PACCAR haven’t been independently verified, and the broader manufacturing picture undercuts the framing: the economy has added over 800,000 jobs since January 2025, but manufacturing employment itself is down 35,000 in that same span. Peterbilt’s 14.8% share of the Class 8 market makes it a convenient stage for the tariff message, but one plant’s hiring doesn’t settle whether the 25% truck tariff is a net positive for domestic manufacturing employment. |
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This week on American Shipper TV: what restored Panama Canal draft means for East Coast port competition heading into Q4. Watch the full segment →
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OCT 27–28, 2026 · THE SIGNAL, CHATTANOOGA, TN
FreightWaves’ flagship event blends rapid-fire tech demos and world-class speakers with the most legendary networking in logistics. Join 1,000+ freight and logistics experts, industry leaders, entrepreneurs and innovators for a definitive look at the year ahead. Come for the insights, stay for the celebration and leave with the connections that will define your 2027.
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American Shipper · The Daily — published weekdays
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