Holy Rollers, GM Test-Drives Cars at Detroit Church

The auto showroom is the place most people see new cars up close and personal, but GM is taking a unique approach to moving cars to where the potential customers are. The eye-catching headline out of the Detroit News was of a “ride-and-drive” mobile GM showroom that was set up outside a Baptist church in Detroit on Sunday with the pastor’s blessing, aiming to expose people to GM cars that might not make their way into a conventional showroom. Less theologically-questionable ride-and-drives have been done in California outside of coffee-houses and Korean restaurants, as GM experiments with alternative marketing methods.

Alternative marketing might become more of an issue as GM dealers close up shop; GM is looking at online marketing tools and other non-traditional ways of marketing cars. One alternative that is rather old-school comes from Japan, where cars are sold door-to-door much as life insurance or cosmetics are sold in the US. Busy people might not want to spend time going to a car dealership, but if the cars are at church or at their favorite watering hole, they might stop by to take a look.

This brings some possible extra work for car haulers; unless the cars are individually driven out to the locations, there might be work opportunity for car carriers to get the cars out to the remote locations. Unloading the hauler could be problematic in some settings, but it could also be a conversation piece that would draw attention to the event-“What the *$&#* is that car hauler doing in front of the church?”

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100418/AU...f-new-customers

New Asia-Europe Service Shelved, New Asia-Europe service on hold?

Plans of one overseas shipping company to begin a new Asia-Europe service have apparently been either put on hold or shelved for good. A few days ago the overseas shipping company involved in this affair, the Containership Company (TCC), had announced company plans to begin providing shipping services for customers in the Asia-Europe market, but more recently the firm has decided that the time isn’t right for this move and they would put the start of their second service on hold for now. The Containership Company has stated that it still has designs on business in the Asia-Europe market and this still isn’t out of the question. Apparently, the company is still in talks to charter more vessels for their plans for their Asia-Europe service, so the company could be just preparing better for the implementation of the second service. We’ll have to wait and see what happens in the future, to see if their plans continue to go forward though, and it’s always possible that they could drop these plans altogether.

This news probably isn’t that surprising to many watching the current situation in the shipping industry of the world, but it does kind of make you wonder what’s happening over at the Containership Company over the past few months. The firm does appear to be a little hesitant in many regards and backtracking is going to look a little suspicious to some customers that might have been looking forward the new service that the company had announced.

The timing of adding new shipping services is obviously very important to an overseas shipping company and they certainly want to be as sure of the demand for services as they can be, before beginning their plans. It could be that in a little while, the Containership Company will once again announce the start of the Asia-Europe service they originally announced, only it will be delayed a little, that’s all.

http://www.ifw-net.com/freightpubs/ifw/ind...20017768082.htm

Containers Providing Shelter for the Homeless

he container manufacturing sector of the freight carrier industry is an essential industry within the business of freight and the building of specialized container transports designed for the specific transport requirements of particular kinds of freight allows for the transport of many kinds of volatile and sensitive cargo around the world. Containers for the transport of pharmaceuticals, sensitive plants, and volatile chemicals are normal in the world of container manufacturing, but now a new use seems to have been found for the containers that normally protect valuable freight loads as they move around the planet.

We’re talking about a new idea that we first noticed being implemented in Vancouver a few months back. A few months back one trucking services firm came up with a novel way to help alleviate the problem with homeless people on the streets of Vancouver. They took one of their containers and transformed it into a home for homeless people to live in during the toughest times of their lives. This idea seems to be catching on as now Sea Box Inc has recently been working with a military engineer trying to help the people of Haiti recover from their recent problems. Sea Box Inc shipped a special container they built loaded with the essentials of life that the people of Haiti need right now, along with one of their ShelterPak packages which will allow the container to be converted into a habitable shelter for people in need.

The idea of using containers to provide shelter for people in need during crisis times seems to be a very useful idea and in both instances reports are that the idea has met with applause and in the case of the container used in Vancouver to house the homeless was very successful in the task. We have yet to see how useful this idea is in Haiti, but it seems like a very feasible idea for quickly getting everything people need to survive during times of crisis to the people fast and efficiently. If successful, we could certainly see container manufacturers come up with a product that could meet the future needs of organizations that are tasked with reacting in times of crisis around the world.

Finnish Ports Increase Rates After Strike

The cost of the Finnish stevedore strike increased this week for customers that need to transport containers to Finland as overseas shipping companies taking container freight to Finland announced new surcharges many say are a direct result of the strike action. There have been a lot of freight containers sitting in the ports of northern Europe during the two week strike and the end of the strike has meant all of these containers need to be transported to Finland. The logjam of containers has meant there have been delays in getting containers to destination in Finland and this has resulted in shipping transportation firms delivering the containers deciding to add a few new fees in order to cover their increased costs.

The increases probably aren’t a surprise for most shipping container transportation professionals that have been watching the two-week long strike and wondering what the final price of the strike would be for all involved. We can probably expect the price of transporting containers to Finland to stay high until the logjam of containers is taken care of and the numbers return to normal levels. Customers will just have to deal with the additional costs if they want to get their freight to destination and because of the present logjam there’s only so much capacity for moving containers to destinations in Finland. We might even expect to see more firms transporting containers to Finland to introduce surcharges and fees in order to try to cover the increases in their operating expenses.

The Vienna Express Begins her Career, The Next Generation of Large Freight Vessel, car shipping, overseas shipping companies

There's a new generation of city-size freight vessels being designed for overseas shipping companies by ship builders around the world at the moment. Ships with engineering designs and ship components and systems designed to improve the environmental characteristics of the vessels that will be plying the trade routes in the years ahead. The next generation of super-sized freight vessels will have to be versatile in order to do the job of moving ocean freight. The freight industry has shown signs lately that it can shift quickly and the equipment international car shipping firms use to conduct car shipping services needs to be able to handle a variety of jobs. The vessels they use to move ocean freight also needs to be versatile enough in their abilities to be usable for a large and changing variety of strategies that might be employed at various times to do the job and meet problems that might arise in their business. This has been shown recently in the shifting to low-steaming strategies and the emergence of new fast-freight services to handle a niche service that appears to have been at least partially created by the implementation of the slow-steaming policy.

One overseas shipping company that just took delivery of a next generation freight vessel designed with the latest thoughts on making this generation more compatible with the environment and reducing the carbon propeller-print of the ocean freight industry is Hapag-Lloyd. The Vienna Express is over 8000 TEU and includes systems designed to help Hapag-Lloyd implement their current strategy of a controlled speed strategy on their routes. A vessel with a length of 335 metres and width across the deck of 42 metres, the Vienna Express's home port is currently the Port of Hamburg and flies a German flag when she's at sea.

Hapag-Lloyd currently has over 110 containerships in its fleet that are busy taking cargo of all size and shape to destinations around the world at all times of the day. The arrival of the Vienna Express is an event for sure, but Hapag-Lloyd invests in ships of this type on a regular basis in order to keep their business healthy and the level of their freight services current. In fact, investment in vessels and ships is probably the biggest bill firms like Hapag-Lloyd will pay in order to keep the ships moving to destination. This cost has certainly gone up with the changing environmental standards of ship building and freight movements in the world and it's likely to continue to increase as we head further into the century of the environment.

http://www.worldcargonews.com/htm/n20100225.671886.htm
http://www.hapag-lloyd.com/en/fleet/hapag_lloyd_vessels.html

IAA Has Web Site in Mandarin, Chinese Might Offset Allstate Loss, car haulers, cars move, car carriers

Here’s an interesting note on the international nature of the used car market; we’re now seeing a major used car auctioneer having its web-site done with a Chinese option. Since 30% of Insurance Auto Auctions’ cars move overseas already, having Chinese as an option opens things up to over a billion customers, including Singapore, Taiwan and a large minority in Malaysia. There must be a voice aspect to the web site, since it mentioned that it is Mandarin Chinese; the dialects of Chinese are written the same but pronounced differently.

Interestingly, the IAA site has Polish and Russian options. Poland is a major market for used cars from elsewhere, as was Russia before they slapped on tariffs on imported cars last year. The new Chinese page might be a way of offsetting the loss of the Russian market. Japanese isn’t one of their languages, since the Japanese are generally net exporters of used cars; the Russians, especially those on the Siberian Pacific coast, were big markets for second-hand Japanese cars.

This will mean that car haulers will be pointing west more often coming out of IAA auctions; this will give the car carriers bringing imports in from Asia vehicles to take back with them. It might not be enough to fill up things, but a partial load beats no loads at all for shippers.

Since IAA just lost the account to sell Allstate’s salvage cars, they’re likely looking to increase demand in order to get some of that lost market share back, and catering to the Chinese diaspora as well as folks in China proper is one way to do so.

Source: http://www.auto-mobi.info/index.php?option...16991&Itemid=50

Mean and Green, Porsche Shows off Plug-in 918 Hybrid

It seems that the vision of electric cars needing car hauling help getting across the country is going by the wayside, as we’re seeing a lot of plug-in hybrid packages hitting the showrooms and the exhibition halls of the auto shows. The Geneva Auto Show has VW showing off a Porsche 918 that packs a double-electric engine along with a V8 gas engine with 630 horses under the hood, When I saw that car, it looked like something that could go mano-a-mano with the Batcar with just a little extra tricking-out; when the Joker asked “Where does he get those wonderful toys?”, he must have commissioned Porsche to get a bad-boy toy of his own.

The Tesla Roadster is sporty, but this is green and mean. If people think of hybrids as politically correct and sissy, this might change their mind. Even if the 918 is out of most of our price range, the idea that the VW folks combined an off-the-hook muscle car with a plug-in electric feature will change how people think about electric cars. It will help VW in moving cars with plug-in options.

Concept cars don’t always make it into production, but this 918 could well be (OK, I’ll use the overused phrase) a game-changer. We may be getting to a critical mass where the electric car will supplant the straight gas car in a decade, where going to the gas station will be something you do for a road trip; that’s not good news for oil companies.

Source:http://www.detnews.com/article/20100302/OP...t-VW-conference