It gives me great pleasure to announce that the 2007 NASSTRAC Shipper of the Year has been awarded to Robert Engle and the supply chain organization at Dole Fresh Vegetables, Inc. No one has become more familiar with managing supply chain complexities than Engle and Dole; and few shippers have exhibited such grace under pressure, especially while attempting to solidify confidence in the nation’s food supply under some trying circumstances.

The award, given annually to a member of the National Shippers Strategic Transportation Council (NASSTRAC) by Logistics Management, recognizes exceptional best practices in transportation and distribution. Executive Editor Patrick Burnson presented the award at the NASSTRAC event in Half Moon Bay, Calif., back on September 13. Burnson shares Engle’s compelling tale.

For Engle, crisis management is uncomplicated: keep cool, examine core competencies, exert control where possible, and execute accordingly. Last year, Engle, then vice president of supply chain for Dole Fresh Vegetables, found himself in the middle of a health scare that was splashed across the national news. “When the E.coli outbreak linked to California spinach was first discovered, we had to act quickly to make sure our house was in order,” says Engle. “The event was a major wake up call for all produce shippers.”

Engle and his team wasted no time assessing vulnerabilities in the company’s inbound and outbound operations, and then went into a deep examination of every element linking product distribution. Engle knew that some portion of his supply would remain out of his hands, but the goal was to gain the best visibility possible of what was in his hands.

As retail giants Vons, Ralph’s, and Albertsons tightened guidelines for their suppliers, Engle partnered with systems integrator Lowry Computer Products to develop a track-and-trace process for Dole’s entire cold chain. The result is a RFID/GPS solution that starts at the harvest field and runs through the entire supply chain.

And while Dole found itself back in the headlines last month, the new system has helped the company isolate any issues and enables them to alert the FDA to take immediate action. For this world class performance, the staffs of NASSTRAC and LM congratulate Engle and Dole for taking swift, definitive action to control what they can control.

Quick note: This month’s “must read” is Ray Bohman’s dissection of the cube-based pricing concept and what the eventual adoption of such a model could mean for LTL carriers and shippers. When the STB terminated the rate bureaus’ antitrust immunity earlier this year, it opened the door for any progressive carrier willing to give a new model a try—and any shipper persistent enough to push carriers to adopt a new system.

Bohman’s feature is based on the work of transportation pricing consultant Hank Mullen, president of The Visibility Group, and one of the pioneers of the system.

One word of caution, however: While we have reports that several carriers are now in the process of crafting their own version of cube-based, the model is still considered to be in the developmental stage—a way off from broad market acceptance. And, don’t expect the NMFC to go away. “While putting this together, we quickly learned the NMFC is the major key to all LTL pricing,” Mullen told me.

Comments? E-mail me at michael.levans@reedbusiness.com