Current Affairs
February 14, 2022
Tupelo Furniture Market
Back to Basics: Downsized Tupelo Furniture Market to have first event since 2020
- By DENNIS SEID Daily Journal
- Feb 13, 2022
- Comments
1 of 2
TUPELO • For the first time since 2020, the Tupelo Furniture Market is hosting an industry trade show. The Winter Market will be an abbreviated one, starting Wednesday and wrapping up Friday.
“We’re getting back to the basics,” said TFM Chairman V.M. Cleveland. “We’re not going to have the awards ceremonies or the free buffets or entertainment or anything like that. We’re just going to match up the vendors with the buyers and retailers and just do business like the way we started 35 years ago.”
The market’s last trade show was the summer market of 2020. It skipped all of last year over concerns with the pandemic, although High Point and Las Vegas had their markets. Cleveland said Tupelo wasn’t in a position to host a market, however.
“We really didn’t want people from 40-50 states exposed to COVID or bringing COVID here to us,” he said. “But the industry itself was part of the reason, because the delivery times for a lot of manufacturers went from 30 days to 60 days to 90 days to six months or more.”
The slow delivery times made hosting a market with something new to show difficult, if not impossible.
“What were we going to show?” he said. “You might be getting something by the time the second show came around if you were lucky, and most people didn’t want to take part in that. It was hard to justify a market. Vegas and High Point had markets, but they weren’t great.”
Supply chain disruptions did cause some manufacturers to push back delivery schedules. That affected smaller companies the most — the ones that most often show in Tupelo.
Still, it was a difficult decision to make for a market that had held consecutive twice-yearly markets since 1987.
“So we’ll do a little market this year because we have vendors who said they can ship, and this market is for them,” Cleveland said. “We’re not going to drag it out over the weekend – it’ll be a compact three days for the vendors who contacted us, and it’ll be all business.”
Debbie Henry, the market’s director of sales, said retailers and exhibitors alike expressed an interest in having a winter market.
“We knew in order to have something for them worth coming for, we had to have at least 50 vendors, which made sense,” she said. “We thought it would be difficult, but we have 75 with no problem at all, and we could have 100 by the time it opens.”
Henry said the market recruited companies that could ship product within weeks. It didn’t go after companies that couldn’t ship until a few months down the road.
“The beauty of this smaller market is that the vendors who are here can ship their products in the normal four to six weeks,” she said. “I think that will be a good draw for the market.”
February 14, 2022
Tupelo Furniture Market
Back to Basics: Downsized Tupelo Furniture Market to have first event since 2020
- By DENNIS SEID Daily Journal
- Feb 13, 2022
- Comments
1 of 2
TUPELO • For the first time since 2020, the Tupelo Furniture Market is hosting an industry trade show. The Winter Market will be an abbreviated one, starting Wednesday and wrapping up Friday.
“We’re getting back to the basics,” said TFM Chairman V.M. Cleveland. “We’re not going to have the awards ceremonies or the free buffets or entertainment or anything like that. We’re just going to match up the vendors with the buyers and retailers and just do business like the way we started 35 years ago.”
The market’s last trade show was the summer market of 2020. It skipped all of last year over concerns with the pandemic, although High Point and Las Vegas had their markets. Cleveland said Tupelo wasn’t in a position to host a market, however.
“We really didn’t want people from 40-50 states exposed to COVID or bringing COVID here to us,” he said. “But the industry itself was part of the reason, because the delivery times for a lot of manufacturers went from 30 days to 60 days to 90 days to six months or more.”
The slow delivery times made hosting a market with something new to show difficult, if not impossible.
“What were we going to show?” he said. “You might be getting something by the time the second show came around if you were lucky, and most people didn’t want to take part in that. It was hard to justify a market. Vegas and High Point had markets, but they weren’t great.”
Supply chain disruptions did cause some manufacturers to push back delivery schedules. That affected smaller companies the most — the ones that most often show in Tupelo.
Still, it was a difficult decision to make for a market that had held consecutive twice-yearly markets since 1987.
“So we’ll do a little market this year because we have vendors who said they can ship, and this market is for them,” Cleveland said. “We’re not going to drag it out over the weekend – it’ll be a compact three days for the vendors who contacted us, and it’ll be all business.”
Debbie Henry, the market’s director of sales, said retailers and exhibitors alike expressed an interest in having a winter market.
“We knew in order to have something for them worth coming for, we had to have at least 50 vendors, which made sense,” she said. “We thought it would be difficult, but we have 75 with no problem at all, and we could have 100 by the time it opens.”
Henry said the market recruited companies that could ship product within weeks. It didn’t go after companies that couldn’t ship until a few months down the road.
“The beauty of this smaller market is that the vendors who are here can ship their products in the normal four to six weeks,” she said. “I think that will be a good draw for the market.”
February 10, 2022
Biggest Bottlenecks
Driving to the GW Bridge? It’s the worst bottleneck again
American Transportation Research Institute says Texas has the most bottlenecks in US
John Kingston Follow on Twitter Wednesday, February 9, 2022 3 minutes read
Listen to this article 0:00 / 5:44 BeyondWords
Once again, the worst truck bottleneck in the country is as a driver approaches the George Washington Bridge (GWB) from the New Jersey side.
For the third consecutive year, the American Transportation Research Institute found the intersection between state Route 4 and Interstate 95 in New Jersey, just before eastbound traffic crosses the bridge into New York, is the biggest bottleneck in the U.S. ATRI, the research arm of the American Trucking Associations, released its annual list Wednesday.
ATRI uses truck GPS data from the previous year to come up with its findings. It said it uses data from more than 1 million freight trucks and has set up a series of benchmarks to reach its conclusions on the most congested bottlenecks. There are 100 bottlenecks on the list.
Once again, there is only one city with two bottlenecks in the top 10: Atlanta. The intersection between Interstate 285, the loop around Atlanta, and Interstate 85 on the northeast side of the city was fourth on the list — it was third in the 2020 survey — and the intersection between Interstates 20 and 285 on the west side of Atlanta was fifth.
The junction in Cincinnati between Interstates 71 and 75 was second on the list for a second consecutive year. That exchange goes by the name, similar to other intersections around the country, of Spaghetti Junction, given its many elevated ramps that cross each other at varying heights.
ATRI said the rebound of traffic in 2021 had resulted in average rush hour truck speeds of 38.6 miles per hour, which was down more than 11% from the prior year as traffic recovered from the low levels of the pandemic.
The Department of Transportation recently reported that total miles driven in November were more than in 2019, the first time since the pandemic began that vehicle miles traveled were greater than corresponding pre-pandemic levels. In November 2021, vehicle miles traveled in the U.S. totaled 267.5 billion. In November 2019, it was 260.3 billion miles.
Other highlights of the ATRI reports:
– Houston’s downtown intersection between Interstates 45 and 69, which is also state Route 59, moved up to third from fifth last year. Another significant move, albeit downward, came for the intersection between Interstates 75 and 24 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the only top 10 bottleneck not in one of the country’s biggest cities. It was 10th this year; last year it was seventh.
– While Atlanta may be the only city with two top 10 bottlenecks, Southern California has two on the top 100. In Los Angeles, the intersection between state Routes 60 and 57 in Diamond Bar, a city in eastern Los Angeles County, is on the list, as is the intersection in San Bernardino between Interstates 10 and 15.
– The George Washington Bridge approach was the only New York-area intersection in the top 10. The intersection between I-95 and Interstate 287 in Rye, New York, dropped off the top 10. It was ninth last year. It is down to 17th in the most recent survey.
– Chicago’s Interstate 290/90/94 intersection was sixth in both the 2021 and 2022 surveys.
– The states with the most bottlenecks on the top 100 list were Texas, 14; Georgia and Tennessee, nine; California, eight; Washington, seven; and Connecticut and New York, six. Texas’ ranking led to a statement being released by the Texas Trucking Association. “Texas is used to being ranked No. 1, but this is one list we are not proud to be on top of,” the association’s president and CEO, John D. Esparza, said. “Bottlenecks around the state continue to waste time and money, further damaging the already fragile supply chain. With the newly available federal resources for infrastructure projects, there is no excuse — these bottlenecks must be addressed. A reliable and stable transportation network is essential to our economy — just like the trucking industry.”
– Thirty states have at least one bottleneck on the list. Florida, where residents complain frequently about their traffic, has only one intersection on the list: Interstates 4 and 275 in Tampa at 69th. Boston’s traffic may be legendary as well, but it only came in with a 99th place spot, for Interstate 93 at SR 3. The Washington, D.C., area had a 92nd place finish for the intersection between I-95 and the beltway, known more formally as I-495. The 70th worst bottleneck intersection in Stafford, Virginia, on I-95 is on the more far-flung suburban outskirts of the D.C. suburbs in the Old Dominion State.
February 10, 2022
Biggest Bottlenecks
Driving to the GW Bridge? It’s the worst bottleneck again
American Transportation Research Institute says Texas has the most bottlenecks in US
John Kingston Follow on Twitter Wednesday, February 9, 2022 3 minutes read
Listen to this article 0:00 / 5:44 BeyondWords
Once again, the worst truck bottleneck in the country is as a driver approaches the George Washington Bridge (GWB) from the New Jersey side.
For the third consecutive year, the American Transportation Research Institute found the intersection between state Route 4 and Interstate 95 in New Jersey, just before eastbound traffic crosses the bridge into New York, is the biggest bottleneck in the U.S. ATRI, the research arm of the American Trucking Associations, released its annual list Wednesday.
ATRI uses truck GPS data from the previous year to come up with its findings. It said it uses data from more than 1 million freight trucks and has set up a series of benchmarks to reach its conclusions on the most congested bottlenecks. There are 100 bottlenecks on the list.
Once again, there is only one city with two bottlenecks in the top 10: Atlanta. The intersection between Interstate 285, the loop around Atlanta, and Interstate 85 on the northeast side of the city was fourth on the list — it was third in the 2020 survey — and the intersection between Interstates 20 and 285 on the west side of Atlanta was fifth.
The junction in Cincinnati between Interstates 71 and 75 was second on the list for a second consecutive year. That exchange goes by the name, similar to other intersections around the country, of Spaghetti Junction, given its many elevated ramps that cross each other at varying heights.
ATRI said the rebound of traffic in 2021 had resulted in average rush hour truck speeds of 38.6 miles per hour, which was down more than 11% from the prior year as traffic recovered from the low levels of the pandemic.
The Department of Transportation recently reported that total miles driven in November were more than in 2019, the first time since the pandemic began that vehicle miles traveled were greater than corresponding pre-pandemic levels. In November 2021, vehicle miles traveled in the U.S. totaled 267.5 billion. In November 2019, it was 260.3 billion miles.
Other highlights of the ATRI reports:
– Houston’s downtown intersection between Interstates 45 and 69, which is also state Route 59, moved up to third from fifth last year. Another significant move, albeit downward, came for the intersection between Interstates 75 and 24 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the only top 10 bottleneck not in one of the country’s biggest cities. It was 10th this year; last year it was seventh.
– While Atlanta may be the only city with two top 10 bottlenecks, Southern California has two on the top 100. In Los Angeles, the intersection between state Routes 60 and 57 in Diamond Bar, a city in eastern Los Angeles County, is on the list, as is the intersection in San Bernardino between Interstates 10 and 15.
– The George Washington Bridge approach was the only New York-area intersection in the top 10. The intersection between I-95 and Interstate 287 in Rye, New York, dropped off the top 10. It was ninth last year. It is down to 17th in the most recent survey.
– Chicago’s Interstate 290/90/94 intersection was sixth in both the 2021 and 2022 surveys.
– The states with the most bottlenecks on the top 100 list were Texas, 14; Georgia and Tennessee, nine; California, eight; Washington, seven; and Connecticut and New York, six. Texas’ ranking led to a statement being released by the Texas Trucking Association. “Texas is used to being ranked No. 1, but this is one list we are not proud to be on top of,” the association’s president and CEO, John D. Esparza, said. “Bottlenecks around the state continue to waste time and money, further damaging the already fragile supply chain. With the newly available federal resources for infrastructure projects, there is no excuse — these bottlenecks must be addressed. A reliable and stable transportation network is essential to our economy — just like the trucking industry.”
– Thirty states have at least one bottleneck on the list. Florida, where residents complain frequently about their traffic, has only one intersection on the list: Interstates 4 and 275 in Tampa at 69th. Boston’s traffic may be legendary as well, but it only came in with a 99th place spot, for Interstate 93 at SR 3. The Washington, D.C., area had a 92nd place finish for the intersection between I-95 and the beltway, known more formally as I-495. The 70th worst bottleneck intersection in Stafford, Virginia, on I-95 is on the more far-flung suburban outskirts of the D.C. suburbs in the Old Dominion State.
February 10, 2022
Middle East Polyol Podcast
PODCAST: Asia, Mid East polyols eye demand improvement after lull
Jasmine Khoo
10-Feb-2022
SINGAPORE (ICIS)–In this podcast, ICIS editors Jasmine Khoo and Damini Dabholkar discuss recent developments and the outlook for the Asian and the Middle Eastern polyether polyols markets.
The Asian and Middle Eastern polyether polyols markets observed significant price declines in late 2021, with demand poised to strengthen going forward into March amid restocking activities and recent upstream price gains.
- Upstream propylene oxide (PO) and polyols yuan prices plunged in late 2021
- Competitively-priced Chinese origin cargoes offered to regional markets
- Mideast polyols demand stayed subdued in Dec 2021
- Recovery in PO yuan prices to potentially reflect on H2 Feb, H1 Mar Mideast offers
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