Watkins & Shepard Trucking recently was awarded a $315,000 work force training grant from the Montana Department of Commerce to help pay for the training of 63 new truck drivers in Montana over the next year. The grant has reduced the cost of four-week training at Watkins & Shepard’s driving school from $4,000 to $1,000. Drivers only are required to put $250 down, and the remaining $750 is spread out over one year with weekly payments of $15.
TransCore is working with factoring services company Advance Business Capital to expand the selection of providers and integrated factoring services offered to freight brokers and carriers within TransCore’s Internet-based 3sixty Freight Match logistics service. The arrangement will allow TransCore customers more options to locate, arrange and finance loads risk-free on one online platform.
Transportation Intermediaries Association rolled out a program to benefit the brokerage-based third-party logistics industry, the Guaranteed Payment Program, which provides qualified TIA members with coverage beyond the standard requirement of $10,000 as set by the Department of Transportation. The program provides three levels of guarantee: $100,000, $25,000 and the standard $10,000.
First Advantage Corp.’s Transportation Services unit has enhanced its CompuNet credit report to search and retrieve information on brokers and carriers from the Depart-ment of Transportation when more data is needed to identify the company.
Goods valued at more than $866 billion crossed the U.S. border in trade with Canada and Mexico in 2006, 9.7 percent higher than the previous record set in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. BTS, a part of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, released the data Nov. 19 as part of the third annual update of the North American Transportation Statistics (NATS) online database.
Freight weighing nearly 475 million tons was transported through U.S. land borders, airports and seaports to and from locations in Canada and Mexico in 2006. U.S. merchandise trade with Canada and Mexico, its two largest trading partners, rose by more than $252 billion, or by 41.1 percent, between 2001 and 2006.
BTS’s third annual update of the NATS database contains the most comparable transportation-related data available from the United States, Canada and Mexico in a one-stop online resource. The NATS database is co-sponsored by BTS and the U.S. Census Bureau with the federal-level transportation and statistical agencies of Canada and Mexico.
