Indonesia experienced a reported 8.6 magnitude earthquake Wednesday morning, affecting
primarily the northern area of the country. While there has been no direct
effect on Crane Worldwide Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, or Thailand at this
time, there is a strong warning for a tsunami in the same areas as the
2004 tsunami.  The closest operation we have is in Penang, Malaysia and
our people are safe and in high grounds.

It is impossible to predict the future events but it is wise to prepare. At this time no ports
are closed or affected.  We will be able to support any requests from our Indonesia
or Singapore offices.  We will keep you posted of any changes.

SETCESP – Sindicato Das Empresas de
Transporte de Carga de São
Paulo e Regiao.

The Intercity Entity confirmed on Monday (6), on the first meeting of the year, that it will
take place on April 9 the truck traffic restrictions in some of the main ABC region. The Sao Paulo main
affected aereas are 40 km among Santo André, São Caetano do Sul, Diadema and São Bernardo do Campo which are used as alternative aereas today to avoid the Marginal Tiete and Pinheiros (see map below with new restricted aerea).

The restrictions had been changed from the original project. The restrictions on
the ABC region are from 06:30 to 08:30 am and from 17:00 to 20:00 pm from Monday to Friday.

CRANE WORLDWIDE LOGISTICS ACTION:

Upon communication of the first traffic restrcition on
Marginal Tiete, Crane Worldwide Logisitcs worked with our partners to use
alternative roads and continue to serve our clients on pick/deliveries during
restricted times. We used alternatively, a route via ABC to transport from
client to airport since this aerea had no time restriction for truck traffic.

With the second restriction to start on April 9th, the
alternative route will be affected on certains times of the day. Crane
Worldwide is working with our clients to allocate time window to pick up and
delivery to coordinate truck traffic and pick up / delivery on time.

Sample:

Normal route –  B
– Client Factory Sao Paulo  TO D-
Guarulhos (GRU) airport – via Marginal Tiete.

Alternative route: B – Client Factory Sao Paulo to C- Region ABC –
alternative route to D- (GRU) airport

NEW Restriction will be on Alternative Route
used today – B (client)  to C to D (GRU)

Source: : http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/1019934-marginal-tiete-tera-restricao-a-caminhoes-a-partir-de-hoje.shtml

There is a strike/road blockage by Jawaharlal Nehru Port Project affected people (PAP)
from Tuesday to Thursday – 27th to 29th March’2012 at Jawaharlal Nehru Port
area.

A report in the   Mumbai Mirror states that it will impact container traffic movement outside the port since
the subject agitation/road blockage have been supported by political parties
and is likely to affect the trade. Though the terminal union is not yet a part
of this agitation but possibilities are that it might impact the terminal operations
too but it is too early to predict now.

Shippers, forwarders and carriers seek to nail down solutions when cargo packing goes wrong
Anyone can relate to arriving home from the grocery store to discover the absent-minded bagger packed a dozen eggs beneath a 10-pound bag of potatoes.

But in breakbulk transportation, one slip in packing, crating, bracing or stowing a multibillion-dollar shipment will leave buyer, seller, forwarders and transportation vendors scrambling for answers.

China’s industrial advancements have meant a boom in breakbulk and heavy-lift shipments exported to the United States and throughout the world. With that growth has come industry-wide tales of shipments damaged because of poor practices, inferior materials used for packing and bracing, and involved parties grappling as they assess blame.

Meanwhile, proactive shippers, logistics providers and carriers search for solutions, whether it’s a hands-on approach, education or setting up shop in China.
While Chinese shipments have drawn the most vocal ire, industry leaders point out that no region is immune from substandard packing and the ensuing damages and costs.

Costs are often where trouble begins. “One of the key problems is that shippers/manufacturers see packing only as a cost factor. They don’t seem to see the advantage of seaworthy packing,” said Rickmers-Linie’s Wolfgang Harms, director/chief representative, China, and Henning Brauwers, manager of the carrier’s Shanghai operations center. “Seaworthy packing keeps the cargo inside in proper shape and to a large extent prevents the cargo from being damaged during precarriage, handling at the ports and, last but not least, while on board the ocean vessel.”

Attempts to shave costs with substandard packing can, ironically, put a huge bite on a company.
Packing project cargo correctly is “another form of insurance,” said Dan Greenberg, president of Houston-based Santini Export Packing Corp., which recently opened a packing operation in Shanghai. “Fifty percent of everything shipped won’t have a scratch on it if we do nothing at all. The problem is, in shipping a US$300 million generator system, you can’t afford those odds. If one US$8 million part gets damaged because they scrimped on packing, they could have to hold payment of the whole US$300 million.”

Greenberg related an experience where a company was shipping 40 machines for a plant conversion project in Europe. “Twenty-one were damaged in transit,” he said. Beyond the cost of d “We knew one shipper that had an improperly packed cargo that was damaged en route,” said Jon Leong, Shanghai-based general manager of BDP Project Logistics. “They received a claim from the carrier as well as from other shippers whose cargo was also damaged as a result. We use this case study to show customers that a little bit of extra money spent packing correctly can save a lot of money and problems further down the track.”

While hardly nickel-and-dime, nettling costs can be incurred even if cargo itself isn’t damaged. A held voyage awaiting inspection or repacking can cost US$15,000 to US$30,000 a day, said Dennis Devlin, vice president of business development for Panprojects, a division of Panalpina. Identifying and repacking pieces from a loose shipment can easily top US$50,000, another executive said.

Then there are the sobering costs of injury or death from unsafe cargo, Devlin said. “All of the large industrial project forwarders place substantial emphasis on the safety and security of cargo, and the packing plan is essential to that.”
Yet often there’s a disconnect.

“The main problem is packing that is not done according to international shipping standards,” Leong said. For example, a packer may not use the type of wood necessary to support heavy equipment.
“Picture pressed wood or particle board in between big pieces of steel,” Devlin explained. “The board takes on moisture in transit from China to Europe or North America. The entire bundle is compromised, resulting in something that is dangerous to lift.

“I’ve seen stevedores walk off a job saying, ‘Until you can come up with a better solution for handling steel, we won’t do it because it’s not safe,’ ” he said.
“It’s not so much the quality of the wood, but the packer not knowing what kind of wood to use, especially for heavy equipment,” Leong agreed.

Additionally, there are stringent restrictions on wood packaging materials, especially from China to the U.S. Wood must be heat-treated and properly stamped, according to International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures. This adds a layer of compliance that everyone in the supply chain must be keenly aware of.
“Prior to loading, our staff does spot checks,” the Rickmers-Linie officials said. “So far, we have had no major problems being reported from our office in the U.S., which is the dominant destination area of vessels loading in China.”
Damage and repairing the equipment, the plant lost six months of production time while the machines were repaired.

“The most common (problem) we see is the lack of clear instructions given by the purchaser to the suppliers in China,” said Jeff LeBlanc, director of energy, Europe-Middle East-Africa and Asia-Pacific, for Crane Worldwide Logistics. “While suppliers may fulfill their obligation for packing as per their purchase contract, it is often the overseas purchaser who neglects to give specific instructions on type of packing, desiccate usage, side wall thickness, allowable clearance, allowable moisture in the wood content, etc.

“Trading companies or ‘purchasing houses’ are often used as a purchasing agent because the local supplier may not have an export license,” LeBlanc said. An overseas purchaser may list specific export packing requirements, but these are not always made clear to the supplier when a trading company issues the purchase order for the purchaser.

LeBlanc, who is located in Shanghai’s Changning District, said Crane Worldwide suggests customers include necessary packing instructions as a specific line item in the original purchase order they create for the trading company. “This way when the unit/cargoes are surveyed, a violation would be caught as an OS&D (over, short and damaged) issue and could be corrected and a proper metric provided back to the supplier for continuous improvement.”

Beyond costs, materials and communication, proper packing practices could simply be surrendered in a time crunch. Tight delivery dates and cost overruns can lead suppliers to cut back on packing, LeBlanc said. “The shipper or exporting entity may not have complete control … The overseas buyers need to be adamant in their packing instructions.”

“Cargo items received in the port often come from faraway places and thus can only be checked shortly before loading. Problems with packing are difficult to solve on such short notice,” Rickmers-Linie’s Harms and Brauwers said.
Other common problems are absence of proper markings such as the center of gravity and the location of lifting points or essential information such as weight, dimensions or consignee and consignor of the cargo unit, they said.

Packers have to be educated on the importance of standards. “This is a bigger obstacle than the quality of the materials used,” Leong said. “Shippers are fully aware of this risk, and they are starting to work with professional logistics providers and packers to ensure the right standards are applied.”

BDP Project Logistics’ engineering department keeps abreast of international packing standards, thus providing solutions based on technical calculations that ensure packing meets required standards, Leong said.

Expectations of quality must be clearly defined, LeBlanc said. “We initially established a packing operation because our customers required a higher level of quality than was being offered by many of their suppliers. While some of the suppliers were doing professional packing, the majority were using inadequate material that at times could create dangerous situations. The standards for acceptable packing is interpreted differently between differently countries and entities.”

LeBlanc’s company developed a packing team when it arrived in China. In addition to packing at their China warehouse, the team travels to surrounding cities and ports to do offsite packing.

Rickmers-Linie has extended its long-held Europe cargo seminars to include China. The first in China was held in 2011 in Shanghai, and further seminars are planned for 2012 in Beijing and Qingdao.

Santini’s Greenberg started his own packing operation in Shanghai in March 2011 and has three steady clients there (story, page 18). He envisions eventually expanding into other Chinese markets.
Beyond bringing outside expertise to China, Panalpina’s Devlin sees an opportunity for inspectors or an agency in China — either outside or internal — to inspect and review packages before cargo is shipped. Such oversight could be made during fabrication of packing materials to ensure customers’ requirements are met.

Problems packing complex project and breakbulk shipments are certainly not exclusive to China.

“Packing problems occur everywhere,” Leong said. In the U.S., suppliers often understand what is necessary to pack cargo for domestic shipment but do not know how to pack cargo so that it’s seaworthy.
Once freight is moved from plant to port of origin, forwarders or third parties often repack for export. The same issues of cost and expertise that plague Chinese packing occur in U.S. ports, Greenberg said, noting wryly that the source of repacking could be “Three Guys and a Nail Gun.”

In contrast, “European suppliers generally pack the cargo themselves and do a good job of it, Devlin said, because of their “export mentality.”

Devlin also notes that the same initiative that turned China into a leading exporter is likely to sort out the country’s packing issues, with or without outside efforts to improve the situation.
Already, “packaging for tanks and vessels, as well as the construction of shipping saddles, if specified, is often superior to what one would find in western Europe or here in the U.S., because of the abundance of steel and availability of welders,” Devlin said. “They’re building well-constructed steel shipping saddles, and most packaging is quite good.

“My take on it is the China market is maturing. The practice of having expatriate employees is decreasing significantly. China’s market is being driven by the Chinese engineering companies as much as or more than Western engineering companies.

“But regardless of who’s doing the work, a thoughtful, well-written and properly communicated execution plan regarding packaging and safety is important,” he said.

WASHINGTON– Import cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to increase 10 percent in March compared with the same month last year, and year-over-year gains should continue through mid-summer, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released today by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

“Retailers are still watching all the economic indicators very carefully, but there are enough signs of improvement that stores are carefully stocking up,” NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said. “Retailers only import more if they expect to sell more, so these numbers are a sign that optimism is growing.”

U.S. ports followed by Global Port Tracker handled 1.22 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units in January, the latest month for which after-the-fact numbers are available. That was up 4.4 percent from December and 1.3 percent from January 2011. One TEU is one 20-foot cargo container or its equivalent.

February, historically the slowest month of the year, was estimated at 1.05 million TEU, down 4.2 percent from a year ago, and March is forecast at 1.2 million TEU, up 10 percent from last year. April is forecast at 1.26 million TEU, up 3.6 percent; May at 1.28 million TEU, the same as last year; June at 1.3 million TEU, up 4.2 percent; and July at 1.36 million TEU, up 2.8 percent.

The total for 2011 was 14.8 million TEU, up 0.4 percent from 2010’s 14.75 million TEU. The first half of 2012 should total 7.32 million TEU, up 2.4 percent from the same period last year. NRF continues to project 2012 retail sales will grow 3.4 percent to $2.53 trillion.

Despite the increases, ship owners have more vessels in service than cargo to fill them and are experimenting with “rate restoration” strategies that could impact retailers and other shippers, Hackett Associates founder Ben Hackett said.

“The maritime industry is in a quandary,” Hackett said. “As long as this imbalance exists, there will be volatility in the freight rates.”

Global Port Tracker, which is produced for NRF by the consulting firm Hackett Associates, covers the U.S. ports of Long Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma on the West Coast; New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston and Savannah on the East Coast, and Houston on the Gulf Coast. The report is free to NRF retail members, and subscription information is available at www.nrf.com/PortTracker or by calling (202) 783-7971. Subscription information for non-members can be found at www.globalportracker.com.

As the world’s largest retail trade association and the voice of retail worldwide, NRF represents retailers of all types and sizes, including chain restaurants and industry partners, from the United States and more than 45 countries abroad. Retailers operate more than 3.6 million U.S. establishments that support one in four U.S. jobs – 42 million working Americans. Contributing $2.5 trillion to annual GDP, retail is a daily barometer for the nation’s economy. NRF’s Retail Means Jobs campaign emphasizes the economic importance of retail and encourages policymakers to support a Jobs, Innovation and Consumer Value Agenda aimed at boosting economic growth and job creation. www.nrf.com

Hackett Associates provides expert consulting, research and advisory services to the international maritime industry, government agencies and international institutions.

“There are a lot of areas on the Front Range where there
is very poor visibility,” she said.

The largest snow total Friday morning was 18 inches in
Pinecliff west of Denver.

Jim Kalina of the National Weather Service said another
foot of snow was expected in some areas along the Front Range before the storm
moves out on Saturday. A blizzard warning was issued through Saturday for
northeastern Colorado where sustained winds of up to 30 mph could bring
visibility to zero and make travel all but impossible.

Cities in the Front Range urban corridor from Colorado
Springs in the south to Fort Collins and Greeley in the north were under a
winter storm warning.

The storm warnings prompted shoppers to stock up on
supplies, while Colorado lawmakers canceled legislative work on Friday.

Hundreds of flights have already been canceled at DIA
today and Forward Air is closing at noon please expect delays relating to
freight movement as a result.

Josh Kuntz will be working remotely and available via
cell 720 837 8235 as required.

CWW Seattle                                             office    206-659-4111

Curtis Allan, Operations Supervisor          cell         206-930-7040

Frank Feighner, District Director               cell         205-255-0047

AIRLINES/AIRPORT

Sea Tac Airport is operating today, but carriers have cancelled selected flights.

I highly recommend calling carrier directly for confirmation of flight details.

Noted airlines that have cancelled selected flights: Alaska Air, United, Continental, Southwest, American

OCEAN PORTS

Port of Tacoma has closed due to inclement weather

Port of Seattle has not declared closure, but may be operating on limited schedule.

The minimum and maximum fees of $25 and $485 respectfully did not change.

Effective November 5, 2011, Customs & Border Protection changed their software to allow the broker to submit the new MPF rate for summaries that have a duty computation date of October 1, 2011 and later.

For entries filed on or after October 1, 2011 and before the system changes on November 5, 2011, Customs will bill the importer for any increases that equal more than $20.

If you have any questions, please contact Dee Jones, Vice President of Trade Services at dee.jones@craneww.com or your local Crane Worldwide representative.

scott.taylor@craneww.com

9/16/2011-14:07 CST

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 Crane Worldwide Logistics Releases Industry Leading iPhone Application

June 20, 2011- Houston, TX- Crane Worldwide Logistics, a full service air, ocean, trucking, customs brokerage, and logistics company, is proud to announce the development and launch of a new iPhone application designed to put control of their customer’s supply chain at their fingertips in a user friendly format. Simply enter your shipping information and receive the up to the minute shipment status of your air or ocean shipments. The CraneMobile track and trace milestones provide important shipment details, such as “Confirmed on Board”, “Customs Release”, and “Delivered” allowing for full transparency to the shipments in a customer’s global supply chain.

CraneMobile also allows its customers to take advantage of the Crane Worldwide Alerts! system.  The mobile alerts system, an industry first, informs customers via push notifications about dynamic world events that could impact their shipments.  When an event takes place, such as a volcanic eruption or a labor shutdown, which could cause delays to a customer’s supply chain, they will receive a short message highlighting the event.   To learn more, simply touch the link and you will be directed to the full story. 

Crane Worldwide Logistics is excited to bring this new level of service to its customers. President John Magee said “We understand that visibility is a priority to our customers. We are excited to be able to give them a new way to access our industry leading IT systems. Our customers are dynamic organizations and we’re excited to be moving forward alongside them.” To download CraneMobile visit the iTunes store.

ABOUT CRANE WORLDWIDE

Founded in 2008, Crane Worldwide Logistics combines a wealth of industry experience with cutting edge technology to enhance their customer’s competitiveness in an ever changing global arena. Guided by their five value propositions; People, Account Management, Compliance & Quality Programs, Information Technology, and Service, Crane Worldwide is dedicated to becoming the industry’s premier global provider of customized transportation and logistics services by delivering innovative, efficient and cost effective solutions. Crane Worldwide’s solutions create strategic value and a competitive edge for their global customers while providing a challenging and rewarding work environment for their greatest asset, Crane Worldwide employees. For more information about Crane Worldwide, please visit http://www.craneww.com