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Cornerstone Systems Now Employee Owned
ESOP's Are Growing Trend
 | | Cornerstone Systems Corporate HQ Office Memphis, Tennessee |
Cornerstone Systems is now an employee owned company after the company's founder, Chairman/CEO, and principal shareholder Rick Rodell sold stock to the company's newly established Employee Stock Ownership Plan ("ESOP").
The ESOP will not change company operations. Rodell and Cornerstone President /CCO Tim Clay will continue to lead the company. This news makes Cornerstone part of a growing trend. According to the National Center for Employee Ownership, there are 11,000 ESOP's in the U.S. with over 13 million employees sharing ownership in their company.
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Transportation Industry News
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Industry News |
FMCSA Tells ATA No Delay On HOS Enforcement -
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said it will not delay enforcement of the latest changes to the hours-of-service rules for truck drivers, saying that American Trucking Associations did not demonstrate enough harm to the industry and law enforcement to merit such a delay. "Mere uncertainty over the possible outcome of the litigation, which you recognize is a matter over which the parties differ, does not create likelihood that the industry or the enforcement community will suffer harm due to wasted training resources or confusion," FMCSA wrote in a letter to ATA, which the agency provided to Transport Topics. ATA had asked FMCSA in a Jan. 25 letter to hold off enforcing the rule until three months after ATA's pending lawsuit is decided.
Truck Tonnage Rises to Record High in January -
Truck tonnage rose 6.5% in January from the same month last year to a record high reading, American Trucking Associations said. The jump to a reading of 125.2 was the biggest year-over-year gain in more than a year, ATA said in its monthly seasonally adjusted for-hire truck tonnage report released Tuesday.
Month-to-month, tonnage rose 2.9% after a revised 2.4% increase in December that was smaller than the 2.8% gain originally reported. The January increase is the biggest year-over-year gain since December 2011, when the index had hit its previous record high reading of 124.4. The not seasonally adjusted index - which represents tonnage actually hauled by fleets - rose 10.7% in January from the previous month to a reading of 122.4.
AAR: Rail load traffic updates for U.S., Canada, Mexico -
The AAR reported mixed U.S. traffic results for the week ending Feb. 16. Carloads dipped 1.2 percent to 278,596 units while intermodal volume climbed 13.6 percent to 251,078 units compared with traffic from the same week last year. Total U.S. traffic rose 5.3 percent to 529,674 carloads. Meanwhile, Canadian railroads reported weekly carloads totaling 79,336, up 1.5 percent and intermodal units totaling 53,927, up 5.7 percent year over year. For the week ending Feb. 16, Mexican railroads reported an 11.5 percent rise in carloads to 15,919 units and a 1.3 percent gain in intermodal volume to 10,601 units. Through 2013's first seven weeks, 13 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads handled 2,521,998 carloads, down 3.2 percent, and 2,083,670 containers and trailers, up 6.1 percent compared with the same 2012 period.
President Obama announces plans in State of the Union address to repair the nation's ailing infrastructure -
A summary of the plan showed three major themes. The first element of the plan is a "fix it first" policy that calls for investing $50 billion in transportation infrastructure, subject to Congressional approval. Fully $40 billion of that amount would be directed to work on the highways, bridges, transit systems and airports "most in need of repair," according to the document. There are 70,000 bridges classified as "structurally deficient" in the United States, and while that does not mean that all of them are unsafe, it does suggest an urgency in the kinds of repairs that could keep them from becoming unsafe. The White House estimates that 80 percent of those bridges could be brought up to date under the program. The second part of the plan would draw on private investment from across the nation and around the world for federal, state and local projects. It revives the president's call for creation of a National Infrastructure Bank, which could bring public and private financing together to plan projects. The proposal would also allow issuing new America Fast Forward bonds to follow up on the Build America Bonds program from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The third portion of the plan would work to eliminate red tape in permits and review for infrastructure projects. This effort would build on a White House initiative to speed up plans for projects like harbor deepening and surface transportation. The administration has said modernizing the process of permits and review can "create better outcomes for communities and the environment." The goal of the plan is not just to make the nation safer, according to the proposal, but to create jobs "that cannot be outsourced."
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Positive Economic News - Good for Business
 Both Consumer Confidence and New Home Sales Up
Consumer confidence rose for the first time in four months in February, the New York-based Conference Board said Tuesday. The group's monthly index rose to a reading of 69.6 from a revised 58.4 in January, lower than originally reported. Economists had forecast a reading of 62, Bloomberg News reported. An improvement in confidence may increase consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of the economy.
New home sales increased 15.6% in January to the highest level since July 2008, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Sales rose to a 437,000 annual rate from a revised 378,000, which was higher than originally reported, Commerce said. The January rate was below economists' median forecast of 380,000, Bloomberg News reported. Purchases jumped 45.2% in the West and 27.6% in the Northeast and rose 11.1% in the Midwest and 3.2% in the South. Rising home sales can mean more business for flatbed trucking companies, which haul building materials, and for dry van freight carriers, which haul household appliances and furniture.
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Fuel Prices - Sixth Straight Weekly Increase
The Energy Information Administration reports U.S. On-Highway Diesel Fuel Prices (dollars per gallon) every week.
02/26/13 Date Released
4.159 Average Retail Price
-0.002 (Up) Change From Week Ago
-0.108 (Up) Change From Year Ago
 Diesel edged up 0.2 cent to $4.159 a gallon, its sixth straight weekly increase, while gasoline rose for a 10th week, the Department of Energy said. Gasoline rose 3.7 cents to $3.784 a gallon, DOE said Monday following its weekly survey of filling stations. Gas has jumped 53 cents in the past 10 weeks.  The diesel price tops last week's as the highest since August 2008, when it was at $4.207, DOE records showed. Monday's diesel increase is the smallest in the past six - in the previous three weeks, trucking's main fuel had jumped 23 cents. Diesel is now 10.8 cents over the same week last year, compared with last week's price, which was 19.7 cents over the same week a year ago. Gasoline is now 6.3 cents higher than a year ago.
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Newsletter Sources: Cornerstone Systems, Transport Topics, Journal of Commerce, Progressive Railroading, TIA, New York Times, CNN, U.S. Energy Information Administration
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