Supply chain pressures are forcing trucking to get an early start to the holiday shipping season despite a shift of underlying conditions within the industry.

Rock guitarist Jack White, who extended his “Supply Chain Issues Tour” into October, might want to name his band’s next road trip after a different villain. That’s because supply strains, while still afflicting many consumers and businesses, are becoming more mundane.

OMAHA, Neb. — President Joe Biden on July 15 blocked a freight railroad strike that would disrupt shipments of all kinds of goods for at least 60 days by naming a board of arbitrators to intervene in the contract dispute.

Temperature-controlled truckload carrier KLLM Transport Services has acquired refrigerated transporter Quest Global Inc., the companies announced July 14.

While Chinese ports are close to recovering, transit times to the United States have remained elevated, according to supply chain visibility company FourKites.

Efforts by national freight rail carriers to increase efficiency are having the opposite effect, a union official said July 12. Demoralized workers are leaving the industry, causing delays and damage to the national supply chain, said Greg Regan, president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO.

Online spending in the U.S. rose 8.5% to $11.9 billion during Amazon.com Inc.’s two-day Prime Day promotion, according to Adobe Inc., helping boost traffic on competing sites such as Walmart.com and Target.com that held their own sales.

The new federal port envoy said he is “very optimistic” about the progress being made to unkink the nation’s seaports and supply chain.

The White House is monitoring labor talks in the logistics industry as unions representing 115,000 rail workers and 22,000 West Coast dockworkers negotiate fresh contracts, but won’t get directly involved in either bargaining process now, its supply chain envoy said.

Truckers servicing the California port gateways of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland staged protests July 13 as state-level labor rules that change their employment status begin to go into effect, creating another potential choke point in stressed U.S. supply chains.