FASA

The National Transportation Safety Board hopes to recover the voyage data recorder and use it in the agency’s investigation into why the TOTE Maritime general cargo vessel sank last fall, claiming the lives of 33 crew members on board.

The government said it will take more active steps to help the nation’s shipping and shipbuilding industries, suffering from oversupply and slowing demand, to reduce debt and weather a global slump.

At $56.9 billion, the March deficit in goods was the smallest since February 2015 and lower than the median forecast of $62.8 billion, based on estimates from economists in a Bloomberg survey.

Canadian National Railway increased net income 13 percent year-over-year to C$792 million (U.S. $627.53 million) in the first quarter of 2016 earnings on revenues that fell 4 percent to C$2.96 billion compared to the same 2015 period.

Shipment volumes grew 1.4 percent during the month, but expenditures declined 1 percent from February, according to the latest Cass Freight Index Report.

The seasonally adjusted For-Hire Truck Tonnage Index equaled 137.6 for the month, down 4.5 percent from an all-time high of 144 in February but up 2.2 percent compared with March 2015, according to the American Trucking Associations.

Jim Newsome, director of the South Carolina Ports Authority, is arguing for weighing containers at terminals to meet new international safety rules, but the Port of Long Beach says using on-site scales for that purpose is too much of a challenge.

Meanwhile, the ocean carrier alliance members reconfirmed their current cooperation scheme on east-west trades until the end of March 2017.