COMPETITION WATCH: Wheels Group closes MSM deal

TORONTO, Ont. -- Wheels Group has closed its acquisition of MSM Transportation.

The deal was originally announced Aug. 23 and closed this week.

“This acquisition provides solid growth opportunities by further enhancing and broadening the service capabilities of Wheels,” said Doug Tozer, CEO of Wheels. “The increased scale, added transportation lanes and new expertise resulting from the business combination will provide tangible advantages for customers of both Wheels and MSM.”

Tozer added: “We thank Bob Murray and Mike McCarron, the founders of MSM, for their leadership, and welcome John Abate, vice-president and general manager of Wheels MSM, who will lead the operations of the acquired business going forward. We are excited to welcome MSM’s employees and customers to Wheels.”

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New Orleans Cargo Operations Shut as Isaac Closes In on City

Cargo operations around New Orleans have ground to a halt as Hurricane Isaac moves in on the city, and American Trucking Associations urged truck drivers and motorists to take appropriate precautions ahead of the storm.

Isaac was upgraded to a hurricane from a tropical storm about noon Eastern time Tuesday and forecasters expected it to make landfall near New Orleans by early Wednesday, the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

While not as big a storm as Katrina, which was a stronger Category 3 hurricane at landfall, Isaac is a large, slow-moving system that forecasters said could dump a foot or more of rain in the region.

“We advise all drivers, commercial and commuter alike, make good travel decisions,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a statement. “No trip, and no delivery, is worth putting yourself or others in harm’s way.”

FedEx Corp. suspended service in a Louisiana parish that is under mandatory evacuation orders and anticipated delays in air-freight service in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, Bloomberg reported.

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Construction Closes Several Lanes of Traffic on Bridge Linking Indiana and Louisville, Ky.

By Kari Travis, Special to Transport Topics

This story appears in the July 2 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Construction on the Interstate 65 John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge connecting southern Indiana and Louisville, Ky., has shut down several traffic lanes in each direction.

The Ohio River crossing supports nearly 136,000 vehicles per day, with an estimated 17,500 of them commercial trucks. The bridge, which has four northbound lanes but only three southbound lanes, will be reduced to two lanes in both directions through at least the end of July, said Andrea Clifford, a spokeswoman with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet.

Repairs to the bridge will include a new deck surface, expansion joint replacements, concrete patches and waterproof asphalt driving surface.

“For many months, we have fielded complaints about the rough, pitted surface of the Kennedy Bridge,” Matt Bullock, the engineer assigned to the project, said in a statement. “These repairs were originally scheduled for this past spring, but the emergency closure of the I-64 Sherman Minton Bridge forced us to reschedule.”

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Oil Closes Over $100 as Stock Markets Soar

Larry Smith/Trans Pixs

Oil closed over $100 a barrel Wednesday for just the second time since June on an improved economic picture and soaring stock markets, Bloomberg reported.

Benchmark light sweet crude futures rose 57 cents to finish the New York Mercantile Exchange trading day at $100.36 a barrel, Bloomberg said.

Oil had last finished over $100 on Nov. 16, for just the first time since June. Prices held over $100 in early trading Thursday, Bloomberg reported.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped almost 500 points Wednesday, a 4.2% gain, its biggest gain in since March 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Oil inventories jumped by 3.9 million barrels last week, the Department of Energy reported Wednesday — well over the 50,000-barrel gain that had been forecast by analysts, Bloomberg said.

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