"Shipping Wars" Star Roy Garber Dies

Roy Garber, one of the stars of A&E’s reality show “Shipping Wars” has died, according to the show’s Facebook page.

Garber, 49, died of a heart attack, Variety reports. He was one of the top earners on the show — which pits teams against each other in shipping difficult items long distances that most couriers don’t want to attempt.

Garber operated Arbie’s Team Transport in New Hampshire, along with his son Travis.

The fifth season of “Shipping Wars” wrapped Wednesday.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of a member of the A&E family,” the network said Saturday. “Our thoughts are with Roy’s loved ones during this difficult time. He will be missed.”

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© 2014 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Newsmax – America

"Shipping Wars" Star Roy Garber Dies

Amazon Refunds Shipping as UPS Misses Some Christmas Deliveries

Amazon.com Inc., the largest online retailer, offered $ 20 gift cards and refunds on shipping charges after United Parcel Service Inc. said overwhelming volume left it unable to deliver some packages by Christmas.

Amazon cited failures in UPS’s transportation network in messages to customers, saying its own fulfillment centers processed customers’ orders in time for holiday delivery.

“We are reviewing the performance of the delivery carriers,” Mary Osako, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in an e- mail.

UPS, the world’s largest package-delivery company, said in a service update on its website that the volume of air packages exceeded its capacity immediately preceding Christmas.

“UPS is not making pickups or deliveries on Christmas Day and will resume normally scheduled service on December 26,” it said in the update.

U.S. online holiday retail sales were projected to climb 15 percent to a record of more than $ 78 billion by Forrester Research Inc. in a report published last month.

UPS expected to ship more than 132 million parcels globally during the week before Christmas, according to the cover story for subscribers to Bloomberg Businessweek in its Dec. 23 issue.

Spokesman David Tovar of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Jen Johnson of Kohl’s Corp. didn’t immediately respond to e-mails seeking comment on the Christmas holiday. Johnna Hoff of EBay Inc., Kathleen Waugh of Toys “R” Us Inc. and Laura Jones of Zulily Inc. didn’t immediately respond to e-mails and calls seeking comment. An e-mail to UPS’s public-relations department and a call to Natalie Black, a spokeswoman, weren’t immediately returned.

UPS, FedEx

UPS has long dominated the holiday shipping business in the U.S. because of its fleet of 101,000 signature brown trucks, vans, tractor trailers and motorcycles, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Its rival, Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx Corp., has more jets though its ground-delivery fleet is less than one- third the size, at about 32,000 vehicles.

In October, UPS and FedEx announced their holiday shipping forecasts. FedEx said it would carry more than 85 million shipments in the first week of December. UPS predicted it would deliver 129 million packages that week, and would see a second holiday rush during the week before Christmas.

UPS added 55,000 part-time holiday workers, leased 23 extra planes and effectively built a second trucking fleet to handle the seasonal package flow, according to the cover story.

© Copyright 2013 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.

Newsmax – America

Amazon Refunds Shipping as UPS Misses Some Christmas Deliveries

My home rocks, but it’s only a box: Soaring rents force Londoners to live in shipping containers

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My home rocks, but it’s only a box: Soaring rents force Londoners to live in shipping containers

My home rocks, but it’s only a box: Soaring rents force Londoners to live in shipping containers

Published time: November 02, 2013 15:41

Screenshot from RT video

A London charity has imported steel containers from China and converted them into bargain basement homes, as part of a novel solution to try and solve homelessness amid soaring rents in the British capital.

A hostel in east London has come up with the ingenious idea of converting a shipping container from China into a tiny low cost home for hard up and desperate Londoners.

Although it’s only a steel box, they are calling it mYpad, as notwithstanding how small it is, it’s a compact home with a tiny kitchen, bathroom and living quarters complete with a flat screen TV and a single bed.

Lying on your bed, you could almost imagine you were in a bunk on a ship, perhaps the one on which the containers were transported.

But as rents in London continue to soar, putting most flats and houses out of reach of many people on low incomes or benefits, these may be part of the solution.

A mYpad costs just £75 a week. While in some parts of the UK this is cheap but not a giveaway, in London it’s unheard of. In the British capital the average rent, even in a distant borough where oligarchs wouldn’t venture, alive or dead, is around £300 a week.

At 30% of the minimum wage, mYpad is affordable to those who need it most. Louise Stephenson used to live in a hostel but will be one of the first mYpad tenants.

“I think it’s difficult for anyone right now to get comfortable accommodation at a good price, without paying extortionate amounts of rent,” she told RT’s Sarah Firth.

MYpad is the brainchild of Timothy Pain and the YMCA Forest hostel in Walthhamstow East London.  The containers get shipped to Tilbury from China and are then sent to a company for fitting out.

“Society takes the carpet out from under them, because the moment they get into work, they can’t afford to live in a hostel and they can’t afford to live anywhere else. It doesn’t make any moral or economic sense,” Pain told RT.

Each container costs £20,000 and to start with they will be built at just two sites in 2014, both of which are connected to the Forest Hostel and are only for young people the charity is working with. 

But with some funding from the Greater London Authority, it is hoped that more charitable housing associations will take them on.

While there are plans to build thirty more mYpads next year, this is not even a drop in the ocean. Unless Britain increases the rate at which it is building affordable, new homes, then by 2020 there will be a shortfall of 2 million homes in the UK.

In London this means that some people may never be able to afford a home of their own.

RT – News

My home rocks, but it’s only a box: Soaring rents force Londoners to live in shipping containers

France Considers Ban on Free Shipping by Amazon, a "Destroyer of Bookshops"; Prepare for Economic Collapse in France

The amount of economic illiteracy in France is simply staggering. Please consider French minister hits at Amazon ‘dumping’.

France’s culture minister has attacked Amazon, the online retailer, for deliberately undercutting traditional rivals to create a “quasi-monopoly”, in the latest assault by the socialist government on internet companies.

“Today, everyone has had enough of Amazon which, through dumping practices, smashes prices to penetrate markets to then raise prices again once they are in a situation of quasi-monopoly,” said Aurélie Filippetti, the culture minister.

Calling Amazon a “destroyer of bookshops”, she added that she was considering a ban on free postage offers and ending the current regime of allowable 5 per cent discounts on books.

Ms Filippetti was speaking in Bordeaux where the government announced a €9m joint plan with French publishers to support independent booksellers. “This is an unprecedented effort in favour of the book and reading because without independent bookshops there will be fewer publishers and authors, less choice for the reader and fewer social networks in towns,” she said.

What’s the Goal?

If the goal is to get people to read books, logic would dictate the cheaper the price the better. Kindle, Nook, and other eBook readers come to mind.

What good would banning free shipping do? Amazon could easily up shipping charges and lower the price of the book and get the same result. Of course, France would then want to dictate the price of books as well, all in the name of “preserving culture.”

It’s easy to spot the problem. France does not need and cannot afford a culture minister whose obvious goal is to stop the spread of technology and preserve culture as she sees fit.

But France is France. So when does this fool announce a tax on Kindle or campaign to bring back the horse and buggy?

Prepare for Economic Collapse in France

Government spending is already 56% of GDP. Hollande has threatened to take over steel, auto makers, and other industries to preserve jobs. Every month, France becomes less and less competitive. It is no wonder French unemployment soared. And unemployment will continue to rise.

Economic idiocy in France has even led to an open feud between French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. For details, please see Simmering Feud Between France and Germany Erupts Into Verbal Warfare; France Tells Brussels to Shove It

Prepare for an economic collapse in France, because it is on the way. And Germany cannot possibly carry the European economy on its own. That is yet another reason IMF Growth Estimate for Germany is Still Too Optimistic.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Mike “Mish” Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis

France Considers Ban on Free Shipping by Amazon, a "Destroyer of Bookshops"; Prepare for Economic Collapse in France