Filed in Transportation

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

The biggest labor contract in transportation comes up for renewal next year when 250,000 Teamsters at UPS negotiate a new deal with the world’s largest and most profitable transport company.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

While the full impact of India’s massive power outage has yet to be measured in the global supply chain, analysts say it won’t be long before significant disruption is felt.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

The editorial staff of Logistics Management (LM) is proud to unveil the results of the 29th Annual Quest for Quality Awards. This year, 127 providers of transportation and logistics services have received the ultimate vote of confidence, posting the highest scores across our lists of critical service criteria.

While the recession left the national less-than-truck (LTL) carriers reeling, we’re happy to report that this sector is more “in balance” than in past years, with capacity now aligning with demand. For the first time in at least five years, the sector is showing positive operating margins—albeit scant—while rates have started to clearly reflect that equilibrium.

Being nimble, quick, and responsive to constantly changing customer demands has kept many of the nation’s top regional LTL’s alive over the past four years. But this year’s story revolves around the improved scores cross the entire regional category, signaling that this year’s Quest for Quality winners have come out of the Great Recession with a full head of steam.

Not even the great recession could slow down progress on the nation’s rails. In fact, over the past four years, rail and intermodal service provider Quest for Quality scores have steadily improved as more shippers put this time-tested mode to work to cut costs and mitigate capacity issues on the road.

Due to the critical role our nation’s gateways play in the growth of global trade, the staffs of Peerless Research Group (PRG) and Logistics Management felt the need to bring the Ports category back to the Quest for Quality Awards survey after a more than 10-year hiatus.

The Great Recession didn’t slow it down, and now economic woes throughout Europe don’t seem to be impeding its progress. The global third-party logistics (3PL) industry just keeps rolling along, as merger and acquisition (M&A) activity heats up and the world’s providers report decent revenue growth.

As if navigating the Great Recession, earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist threats, revolutions, volcanos, and high fuel prices over the past 24 months wasn’t enough, along comes the European economic crisis to tug on the wings of world’s leading air cargo carriers.

Global manufacturing and retail shippers now have their eyes firmly fixed on the tentative economic condition of Europe, attempting to calculate the eventual impact the situation will have on supply chain operations in the region and the rest of the world.