Latest News From Transportation

With tight trucks in May and the likelihood of further escalation before the Fourth of July, sources said the rising spot market for trucks is pushing costs higher for shippers and placing a premium on straight loads.

Produce truck rates are up 70% or more compared with a year ago, and industry sources don’t think relief is coming anytime soon.

Iowa Gov. Terry E. Branstad signed a proclamation that allows farmers to transport overweight loads of corn, soybeans, hay, straw, silage and stover. The proclamation is in effect from Sept. 25 to November 25.

Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon is set to sign a bill that would raise the weight limit for trucks carrying farm products and another dairy industry bill.

The river is freezing about a month early because of the cold snap, slowing transportation down.

Rehabbing a stretch of railroad will open up grain-shipping opportunities for farmers who currently must use trucks to transport their grain to more distant railways.

Record crops and transportation bottlenecks are straining the nation’s grain storage system that it hasn’t seen in nearly a decade.

The Missouri Department of Transportation says private and for-hire motor carriers will be able to haul corn, soybeans and other grains at heavier than normal weights.

As U.S. farmers begin the biggest corn and soybean harvests ever, the bins at Elburn Cooperative Co. in Illinois remain almost empty. It simply costs too much to send Midwest crops by barge to New Orleans export terminals.

Minnesota farmers will face several challenges in shipping and storing what's expected to be the state's second largest corn crop in history.

Nebraska drivers and farmers are being reminded to be careful during harvest because large equipment and trucks will be entering and leaving fields.

Falling crude oil prices carry both good and bad connotations for the dairy industry.

Canadian National Railway Co. said the federal government should lower a grain shipment minimum because farmers haven’t been sending enough of the crop to allow the railroad to comply with the order.

Shipping companies probably will miss out on exports from the record U.S. grain harvest because the shale-oil boom is clogging up rail lines to ports.

Farmers in Mississippi's Delta region fear harvest efforts will be hampered by road closures and bridges that can't hold heavy trucks.

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp says farmers have been "tremendously patient" about rail delays, "but that patience is wearing thin."

The state now has the final piece of funding needed to rehab a stretch of railway that will open up grain-shipping opportunities for farmers in south-central South Dakota, officials announced this week.

Minnesota officials and propane suppliers say they're better prepared to avoid repeating the shortages that hit much of the Midwest last winter.

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple opened a federal hearing in Fargo about rail service delays in the upper Plains by reading a letter from a grain elevator that said Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. was 525 cars behind in its service.

Container ships sailing across the northern Pacific are carrying more cargo and are setting course for British Columbia to avoid delays from a possible strike by U.S. West Coast longshoremen.

Gov. Mark Dayton is urging the federal government to step in on railroad delays hitting Minnesota grain farmers.

The ripening corn and soybean fields stretch for miles in every direction from Dennis Wentworth’s farm in Downs, Illinois.

A scale-tipping harvest, a lack of bin space from last year and a shortage of rail cars have some farmers, and some elevators, pouring wheat on the ground because there's no place to put it.

BNSF Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. struggled with "greater-than-normal" demand from shippers of coal, oil and Midwest crops, USDA said last week.

Since farmers' profits are dropping this year alongside crop prices, bridge-infrastructure needs have come into sharper focus.

The company posted a 12 percent drop in fiscal fourth- quarter profit as its trading and processing business continued to feel the effects of drought in the U.S. and a shortage of railcars.

Commissioners say they are "confused and troubled" by reports that more than half of the grain hoppers from both railroads are offline.

Rail congestion and large bounties of crops have some worried about grain storage space as South Dakota's harvest gets underway.

North Dakota's congressional delegation is pressing Canadian Pacific Railway to provide details of its backlog of grain shipments, saying farmers need detailed information with fall harvest fast approaching.

Fair Oaks milk trucks no longer use diesel. Instead, they head to dairy manufacturing plants to fill up.