July orders for durable goods rebound on aircraft category
Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods surged in July, lifted in part by the biggest rise in orders in a key investment category since January.
Orders for durable goods jumped 4.4 percent in July, rebounding from a 4.2 percent plunge in June, the Commerce Department said Thursday. The changes in both months were driven by swings in the volatile category of commercial aircraft.
An important category that serves as a proxy for business investment rose 1.6 percent in July, up from a 0.5 percent rise in June. It was the best showing in this category in six months. The result could be a sign that business investment is starting to rebound after big cutbacks earlier Front seats await placement in a vehicle at the Nissan assembly plant in Canton, Miss. Orders for durable goods jumped 4.4 percent in July, rebounding from a 4.2 percent plunge in June, the Commerce Department said Thursday. this year. The upswing in June and July followed decreases in March and April.
U.S. manufacturers have struggled this year with a strong dollar, which has hurt exports, and a drop in investment spending in the energy sector, reflecting falling oil prices.
Orders for commercial aircraft surged 89.9 percent in July after a plunge of 59.7 percent in June. Excluding the volatile transportation category, orders rose 1.5 percent in July, the best showing since January. family TV into the garage because he thought it was too distracting.
And where most kids sat in L.A. traffic sighing and groaning, Green was plotting and scheming, always asking what if? What if people just gave up their cars? What if it started with him?
Once in college, he helped the campus fundraise for a new bike lane. He convinced the university to donate six cars to a carsharing program, similar to Zipcar, so students on campus could leave their cars at home, too. His enthusiasm for buses and car sharing caught the attention of the Santa Barbara City Council, which appointed him to its Metropolitan Transit District’s board of directors, its youngest-ever member.
The concept of sharing a ride isn’t new. Many U.S. cities have some form of casual carpooling program. But few people do it. What if, Green wondered, people whose cars were already on the road could charge a fare in exchange for giving others a ride? More bottoms in seats means fewer cars on the road, which means less congestion, less pollution and, ultimately, a changed world.
During a post-college trip to Zimbabwe, he’d seen ordinary Zimbabweans do this, so he knew it worked. Maybe he could replicate it, make it work for Americans. This was the beginning of Zimride, a Facebook app he built that let people take long-distance carpools with each other. But there was a problem. In 2007 no one had a smartphone. Coordinating rides over Facebook was cumbersome. And demand for long-distance rides was low.
The breakthrough didn’t come until nearly five years later when he and partners experimented with Lyft, smartphones and GPS. They launched a separate app in which ordinary people could offer rides in their cars on demand — no need to go through a Facebook Web application.
Whether or not they knew at the time, moving into on-demand peer-topeer ride-hailing pulled the trigger on a ruthless race. Back in 2012, Uber was only a black town car service. Then, Uber launched its own peer-to-peer ridehailing product, UberX.
“I don’t know if I’ve been part of a company that has had such a tough competitor,” said Scott Weiss, a partner at Lyft investor Andreessen Horowitz. “From the outset, Uber just went after them.”
Today, Uber is 10 times the size of Lyft with more money, more drivers and more customers. And thanks to a deal that hands over the Chinese market to rival Didi Chuxing, Uber will have an extra $1 billion a year to steer toward other markets or projects — or deploy against its rivals.
“Lyft might have to be content with the markets it’s in, or maybe try to get acquired by General Motors,” said Ajay Chopra, a partner at Trinity Ventures, which has not invested in Uber or Lyft.