Without a doubt, 2018 was a banner year for trucking and almost every other form of freight transportation. Business investment took off, hiring picked up and freight volume soared with both domestic and international shipments sharing in the bounty.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services has made its first purchase of electric-powered trucks, acquiring five medium-duty eCanter box trucks from Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corp. for use in making deliveries in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., and in the greater Houston area in Texas.

The decision by General Motors to cease production at five of its factories in the United States and Canada will have consequences for trucking companies that serve those plants.

Jack Cooper Holdings has acquired the assets of Seattle-based Selland Auto Transport, a move that extends the car hauler’s presence in the western United States and provides more balance to the firm’s delivery network.

Swiss freight forwarder Kuehne + Nagel International AG has purchased Quick International Courier, a leading provider of time-critical transportation services, from The Jordan Co., an investment firm that has been on a logistics buying spree over the past couple of years.

Fleet Complete, a Toronto-based provider of vehicle telematics and driver management software with operations in North America, Europe and Australia, has received an investment from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

Elon Musk is doing everything he can to speed up deliveries of the Tesla Model 3, including the tantalizing prospect that he may have purchased a trucking company to augment capacity provided by existing vehicle haulers.

Serial entrepreneurs Andrew and Michael Leto, who started GlobalTranz Enterprises and 10-4 Systems, both of which were sold earlier this year, are launching a new enterprise. It is a software platform called Emerge that allows shippers and carriers to book loads, track shipments and source new capacity in what is being described as a private freight marketplace.

Lineage Logistics and Dreisbach Enterprises opened a modernistic cold storage and logistics facility at the Port of Oakland to handle food imports and exports.

The newest entrant in the nascent market for on-demand warehousing is the owner of a Chicago-based trucking company who said he wants to use technology to help reduce the time that drivers spend waiting for freight to be loaded and unloaded. Vlad Gasnikov, CEO of Business Lines of America Corp., is currently beta testing an online platform called OLIMP.