J.B. Hunt expands transloading operations in Seattle, Laredo

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Trucking news and briefs for Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022:

J.B. Hunt expanding transload services to Texas, Washington

J.B. Hunt Transport Services (CCJ Top 250, No. 3) announced Monday an expansion of its transload strategy that includes new operations in Laredo, Texas, and Seattle to solve for customers’ needs and provide quick access to outbound rail and highway transport.

The company’s transloading service footprint now encompasses four of the largest ocean ports and the largest land port of entry into the U.S. All four facilities are located within close proximity to port and/or rail terminals and offer seamless access to J.B. Hunt’s 53-foot intermodal container fleet and highway services, including the company’s J.B. Hunt 360box drop-and-hook trailer program.

“The complexities of international shipping continue to impact how our customers bring freight into the domestic supply chain,” said Darren Field, president of intermodal and executive vice president at J.B. Hunt. “By growing the reach of our transload service and managing the drayage and loading processes for our customers, we can provide new levels of process oversight and visibility into their freight activity, particularly the critical first mile segment.”

Both new operations will enable J.B. Hunt to transfer customers’ international freight to equipment for domestic transport using the company’s transportation assets and capacity solutions. In addition to services already offered in the Northeast and Southern California, J.B. Hunt recently began operations at a facility at the southern border and plans to open a facility in the Pacific Northwest by November.

The Tacoma, Washington-based facility will service freight arriving at the Seattle and Tacoma ports and help relieve constraints resulting from the increase of international shipping demand. The operation will also complement a direct container-only joint service BNSF launched in August between its Tacoma South facility and Chicago. The two companies announced a joint initiative earlier this year to relieve intermodal capacity constraints.

The Laredo operation is one of the first transloading facilities available after crossing the border to enter the U.S. The location will provide a direct opportunity to growing nearshoring operations in Mexico while continuing support for inbound and outbound cross-border traffic. Freight entering and exiting the U.S. often requires transloading services because of regulation requirements, carrier and driver availability, and domestic capacity demand.

J.B. Hunt opened its first company-owned transload facility in November 2021 to assist shippers in the New York metro area with port drayage, transloading and inland linehaul solutions. The company expanded its transload footprint in July with a new facility and operations in Commerce, California, to support international cargo in the Los Angeles and Long Beach areas.

J.B. Hunt operates one of the largest company-owned fleets in North America with approximately 111,000 intermodal containers, 20,000 tractors and 40,000 trailers.

CAB data integrated into TSIQ underwriting platform

Commercial insurance underwriting technology company Two Sigma Insurance Quantified (TSIQ) has announced a partnership with Central Analysis Bureau (CAB), a sister company of CCJ and provider of risk assessment tools and data for the transportation insurance industry.

Through the agreement, CAB’s entire industry-standard commercial trucking dataset will be embedded directly into SubmissionIQ, TSIQ’s underwriting workbench. TSIQ clients will be able to automatically verify, enrich or replace application data and perform additional analytics at the individual risk and portfolio levels by combining submission data with the CAB dataset.  

CAB’s proprietary system for rating, tracking and analyzing the financial and safety strength of motor carriers has been developed over the company’s 80-year history and will now be accessible in SubmissionIQ through a dedicated API connection.

“TSIQ has unmatched data and analytics capabilities, which they are making available to the commercial P&C industry via their SubmissionIQ platform,” said CAB Chief Operating Officer Shuie Yankelewitz. “SubmissionIQ is one of the only underwriting workbench technologies that has a tailored approach for commercial trucking. We are excited to make CAB data available to their growing client base and look forward to furthering our joint mission of promoting safer practices within the transportation space through our partnership.”

CAB data available through the connection will include Basic Scores such as Unsafe Driving, Hours of Service, Driver Fitness and Vehicle Maintenance, and Safety Scores such as Insured Vehicle Out of Service Rates (OOS), Insured Driver OOS and Insured Hazmat OOS.

United Natural Foods expands in Northeast

United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) has opened a 125,000 square foot refrigerated distribution center in Londonderry, New Hampshire, expanding the company’s overall capacity and ability to deliver products to support customer growth across the Northeast.

The addition of the Londonderry facility will help UNFI expand its refrigerated capacity, relieve pressure at its Chesterfield, NH and Dayville, CT distribution centers, and help facilitate customer growth across the New England market, including the culinary business of one of its largest customers. UNFI continues to expand and optimize its distribution center network in its efforts to create an optimized, expansive, and high-quality food supply network, delivering for customers a robust national, regional, and local supplier portfolio. The facility completed its first outbound shipments to UNFI customers on Monday, October 3.

“The New England region is a vital and thriving marketplace and the opening of our new Londonderry facility acts as a complement to our other regional distribution centers enhancing our ability to deliver improved service levels for our customers,” said Mark Bushway, UNFI’s Chief Supply Chain Officer. “Londonderry strengthens our supply chain and helps deliver UNFI’s differentiated value proposition that helps our customers grow and thrive.”

Yokohama increasing tire prices

Citing a “continued rise in costs associated with operations,” Yokohama Tire Corporation announced Tuesday it will increase its commercial truck tire prices in the U.S.

The increase will take effect Nov. 1.