I drive a big vehicle. My everyday “car” is a 2001 F-150 SuperCrew pickup truck. I don’t get great gas mileage in it, but for all of the driving I do with my kids I know that this vehicle will protect them and gives me as a driver a better view of the road, and the “fine” drivers out on the roads today.

Yesterday one of the SmartFor2 cars by Daimler almost pulled out into my traffic lane. The driver was busy yacking on the phone and thought that it would be OK to pull a running right on red. I was very happy that the fool decided that it would be wise to stop, since I am sure that I would have punted him and his roller skate of a car into the next township.

I kept thinking of how much damage would have happened, and who&rsq...Read More

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There is something to be said for tenacity, and then there is just plain old stubbornness.

The Hours of Service (HOS) Rule is back on the argument table. You remember that one, it's there were four key changes to the rule: changed the legal driving hours from 10 to 11 hours, reduced the drivers work day from 15 hours to 14 hours, allowed a driver to reset the “week” by taking 34 hours of “off duty” time and the biggest change removing the ability of a driver to “stop the clock” and mark himself off-duty for a chunk of time in the middle of his workday.

The “Stop the clock” change had the biggest impact on the way that the truckers operated, perhaps removed the driver fatigue issue from the table and impacted driver pay in a r...Read More

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While outwardly logical that building a relationship of trust between the customer and the 3rd party logistics (3PL) operator is key, many "engagements" between the client and the 3PL fail because the client does not trust the 3PL operator.

Truly successful outsourcing relationships depends on a high level of trust between both parties in the business relationship. Rather than being "engaged" and in effect withholding trust until proved, the successful players in this arena start with an "Open Kimono" approach to all joint operations, including internal costs of the provider and the client. By operating where there is open transparency between the two, the client and the pr...Read More

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One of the places on the Internet that I spend time at is LinkedIn. If you know about it and use it, great. If not, you need to think about using this great professional networking tool.

A section on the site is called “Answers”. Members can post a questions, or a thought provoking statement, and other members can post answers or comments. There are other places on the site that have somewhat the same function and are much freer about what you post, but this area is reserved for professional questions and answers.

The title of this posting is the title of a question that caught my eye last month. I wanted to share it and my answer with you. I think that the question is very appropriate to our current times and the forces that are shapin...Read More

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In the past month I've been to the ProMat material handling show and the RILA Logistics conference. In each conversation that I had with attendees and exhibitors I'd ask them how their business was. Typically every one reflected that business was not good. But when pressed to think beyond the gloom and doom in the press some people responded that actually business isn't all that bad.

Elsewhere in the blogs here on the LM website you can read about how Michael Reagan has made the decision not to participate in the recession. When I would ask people at ProMat or RILA about the stimulus package being extruded through Congress the same people that said business wasn't all that bad also voiced concern how the stimulus package really wasn't very stimulating.

As part of my ongoin...Read More

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As our new president is “installed” in office this week, the talk continues about the new stimulus plan and how big it grows to. I have some quick observations to make to think about in regards to the state of our supply chain nation.

This past week I rode Amtrak out to Chicago for the ProMat Materials Handling Show. Rolling through Harrisburg the Norfolk Southern intermodal yard was full of trains loaded with domestic containers and trailers. There were very few sea containers to be seen. In fact, for the rest of the trip it was rare to see a sea container on any trains. It looks like the imports are down, way down.

Rolling into Pittsburgh the steel plants were warm in the below freezing weather. But the blasts were not running. I d...Read More

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A critical putdown for a pretty thing that is not very useful is “Form over Function”, meaning that the designer or builder put more effort into the way something looked than how it worked. It can also mean that the selection of an option was based on how good it looked and not how well it worked. 

I have found the comment to be both relevant and wrong, depending on how it was used and on what.

Relevant and wrong?

Look at the way your company is organized. If your company is typical there is a “Big Cheese” CEO, and arrayed around him are different executives that head different functional departments. There is a VP of Finance, a VP of Marketing, VP of Sales, VP of Manufacturing, VP of MIS, etc.&nbs...Read More

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It is a fairly simple concept of the free market. The relative cost of a good or a service is a function of the supply of the good or service and the demand for that same good or service. Markets are stable when supply and demand are equal, rising when demand is greater than supply and falling when supply if greater than demand.

This summer we saw artificial demand for oil drive the price for the commodity into new highs. That artificial demand was driven by the flight of money, too much money in some opinions, from other investment and trading vehicles into the oil markets. The pricing bubble could not be sustained and now crude trades in the mid $30’s. Will the price of oil stay this low? I would not bet on it.

In 2000 and 2001 there was a h...Read More

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Go spend a little bit of quality time and review the mayors list of infrastructure projects presented 2 weeks ago.  http://www.usmayors.org/mainstreeteconomicrecovery/default.asp The list is long, over 5000 projects. I focused on just one single area roads and highways and found over 2400 projects listed.  Review the descriptions and the projects break down into different types; road repair, new highways, landscaping, sidewalks, curbs cuts, bicycle trails, traffic signals, and design work.

Obviously there's different kinds of infrastructure projects each having different project cost and payback. Resurfacing and road repair projects are obviously important, but what is the payback of all those resurfacing and repair pr...Read More

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Do we have a bailout for Detroit yet? No? Thursday the deal in the Senate for $15 Billion for “The Big 3” died when the UAW said that they would not give more concessions.  But it is only Sunday night, and the way economic news has been breaking for the past 6 months early Monday mornings we still don’t know if some cash is going to flow to the Detroit big three or not.

Meanwhile the Conference of Mayors this week showed up in Washington asking for about $73 BILLION to fund 11,391 “infrastructure” projects that are reported to be “shovel ready”. Infrastructure, like roads, sewers, water mains; you know, stuff that are “fundamental facilities and systems serving a country, city, or area”.  An excellent commentary in the Wall Street Journal by Robert Poole expos...Read More

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OK, so “mergers of equals” don’t work because of the “Be Nice” behavior mutation.

Still not convinced?   Then let’s look at a case.

Two small businesses have decided to merge. They sell the same “solution” but are not competitors; they have adjacent protected market territories. The two business leaders have figured out that they can pool resources and combine back office functions like purchasing, IT support, engineering, installation, implementation, accounting and advertising. They have a great logical reason for the merger that the savings in the back office can be deployed to the sales and implementation teams to grow the overall business much farther and faster than they can do so standing alone.&nbs...Read More

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If “Mergers of Equals” really don’t work, why do companies do them?

Simply put, it is the “Be Nice” mutation of behavior. I call it a “mutation” because it is an unnatural expectation placed on the need to be “liked”, to be accepted.

Think this one through.

Companies are led by leaders. Some leaders are aggressive; you know, the “Type A’s” that are making way through the waves of commerce. And you know what; some of those guys (and gals) make fairly good leaders. There are also some great leaders that are not aggressive, but that does not mean that they want to win. In fact, great leaders have ambitions and are assertive. But they keep their...Read More

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