Shipping

The Los Angeles Harbor Commission on Thursday unanimously approved a clean air plan requiring shipping companies to buy and maintain a modernized fleet of big rigs and employ thousands of independent truckers who currently operate under contract. A spokesman for the American Trucking Assn. derided the plan as a "scheme to unionize port drivers" and vowed that his group would sue the port.

Although the price of a first-class postage stamp is going up a penny May 12, small businesses will get a break for the first time on Express Mail and Priority Mail costs. That will help many companies, but business owners who do a lot of mailing say there are plenty of additional ways to cut expenses if you shop and ask around. The U.S. Postal Service, making itself more competitive with commercial shippers, is taking some steps away from what it calls a "one price fits all" policy that had customers paying the same price for all pieces of mail in certain classes of service.

Mexico's government is preparing to open bidding on the largest infrastructure project in the nation's history, a $4-billion seaport that could transform this farming village into a cargo hub to rival the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. If completed as planned by 2014, the port would be the linchpin of a new shipping route linking the Pacific Ocean to America's heartland.

The nation's top hauler of container rail freight, BNSF Railway Co., is parking miles of rail cars in Montana and elsewhere because there isn't enough freight to keep them rolling. Cars that often carry 40-foot containers of goods shipped from Asia stand like an iron fence between the Missouri River and this Montana burg known for world-class fly fishing. They stretch as far as Sandee Cardinal can see when she stands outside her home on the river's west bank between Helena and Great Falls.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers discovered 18,560 pairs of fake Nike sneakers inside two shipping containers that arrived from China. The ship's manifest listed the containers as holding drainage pipeline fittings, but when officers at the Port of Long Beach opened them Monday they found the shoes instead. "The average consumer who walks into a store I think would be fooled by them," said Bonnie Lemert, the federal agency's acting port director for the Los Angeles/Long Beach Seaport.

If you think gas is expensive, be thankful you're not a trucker. Filling up their 18-wheel, 80,000-pound leviathans can cost more than $1,300 these days. Because of short supply, the price of diesel has gone up more than twice as much as gasoline in the last year, reaching a U.S. all-time high this week of an average of $4.33 a gallon. With little hope of a near-term decline -- oil futures rose $2.17 to settle at a record $126.

Foreign ships that cooperate with Somalia's government gained authorization to enter Somali waters when fighting rampant piracy and armed robbery along its lawless coast. The U.N. Security Council's 15 members unanimously adopted a resolution intended to combat the attacks and the hijacking of vessels. More than a dozen pirate attacks have occurred this year alone, creating concerns for shipping along routes that connect the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea. The resolution is in part a response to requests for help from the Somali government and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

As a West Coast contract covering 26,000 dockworkers ran out Tuesday evening, concern rippled among U.S. retailers about a possible strike -- even though talks are continuing. "From our perspective, it's critical that these negotiations get resolved peacefully and that a new contract gets put in place as quickly as possible," said Jonathan Gold, who focuses on supply-chain and customs issues as a vice president of the National Retail Federation, a trade group.

An effort to ease daytime traffic at Southern California's major ports is working better than anyone imagined, shifting 40% of freight movements away from peak business hours, the program's manager will announce today. But some say the push to move cargo at night and on Saturdays doesn't go far enough to ease congestion and other ill effects on neighboring communities.

California regulators adopted the world's toughest pollution rules for oceangoing vessels Thursday, vowing to improve the health of coastal residents and opening a new front in a long battle with the international shipping industry. The rules, which take effect in 2009, would require ships within 24 nautical miles of California to burn low-sulfur diesel instead of the tar-like sludge known as bunker fuel.