Commercial trailer producers received 19,579 new orders in April, a 71% jump from the same month last year, and the manufacturers’ backlog rose above 100,000 for the first time in the current recovery, ACT Research Co. said.

Third-party logistics provider GSC Logistics said it has purchased Seattle-based Best Way Trucking, effective June 1. Terms were not disclosed.

The first formal association of international shippers, including the National Industrial Transportation League, has formed under the banner of the Global Shippers Forum to raise the profile of freight groups in an increasingly global marketplace.

Because transportation costs outweigh warehousing costs several times over and continue to rise, most companies think outside that big box called the warehouse when the topic is logistics and concentrate instead on how things get to their destination.

Air and freight forwarder UTi Worldwide said Thursday its fiscal first-quarter profit fell to $8.7 million, or 8 cents per share, from $10.1 million, or 10 cents, a year ago.

NFI said Tuesday it has acquired the West Coast operations of Gilbert Co., a subsidiary of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group.

Third-party logistics provider Kane Is Able said Thursday it has named 30-year logistics industry veteran Pete Westermann its president and chief operations officer.

The successful application of just-in-time delivery requires every link of the supply chain to remain unbroken. Trucks and their cargo must arrive within a very precise, predetermined period of time — often only hours before the cargo is needed on the assembly line.