Topic: Blogs

This earthquake is the latest in an ostensible series of events impacting the global supply chain, right on the heels last week’s tragic bridge collapse in Baltimore, which was preceded by the ongoing Red Sea and Panama Canal issues.

In commentary provided to Newsroom Notes, Kristian O’Meara, SVP Strategic Initiatives, for JAGGAER, a global procurement technology company, and Dean Alms, Chief Product Officer, for Aravo, a provider of third-party risk and resilience services, offered up their respective takes on the current situation at the Port of Baltimore.

Two years after the White House and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) formally announced the rollout of Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW), which it describes as an information sharing initiative to pilot key freight information exchange between parts of the goods movement supply chain, it provided an update this week on the progress it has made since its inception.

When Memphis-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider FedEx and global e-commerce giant Amazon ended their business relationship in 2019, one could have likely assumed, at the time, that the breakup was permanent.

In freight railroad circles, the topic of safety is never far from top of mind. That was made clear on two fronts this week by the Association of American Railroads (AAR), in the form of railroad safety data it cited from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and an AAR white paper, entitled “Building a Safer Future: Examining Freight Rail’s Comprehensive Safety Network.”

At this point, anyone who has seen Martin J. Oberman, Chairman of the Surface Transportation Board (STB), a Washington, D.C.-based independent adjudicatory and economic-regulatory agency charged by Congress with resolving railroad rate and service disputes and reviewing proposed railroad mergers, speak at a freight railroad conference, knows he is not holding anything back. That again was the case, when he gave a keynote speech at last week’s Southeastern Association of Rail Shippers (SEARS) 2024 Spring Meeting in Atlanta.

The ongoing series of attacks on the Red Sea shipping lane by the Yemeni Houthi pirates in response to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict continues to resonate within the global supply chain and economy by extension, to be sure. It has elicited no shortage of takeaways and opinions about various related factors, including: its potential duration; impact on rates; and supply chain strategies and contingency plans, among other things.

While this week’s fourth quarter earnings call, for Atlanta-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider UPS, was replete with interesting information and data, including nearly 8% revenue decline and 12,000 layoffs, another interesting takeaway was related to its truckload brokerage business, Coyote, which it acquired in 2015.

When posed the question of if there is really strong product consumption, coupled with consumers spending, why is that not being felt in the freight market, Prather explained that based on looking at data going back multiple decades, at time, freight transportation and the general economy get disconnected from one another.

It is fair to say that the topic of inventory management has always had a permanent seat at the table, so to speak, when it comes to mapping out logistics and supply chain planning and operations processes. That theme became especially heightened, as we all well know, during the height of the pandemic nearly four years ago.

While the 2023 holiday season is now officially in the rearview mirror, it is full speed ahead for the subsequent reverse logistics season.

In this space, at this time of year, I would typically put together a column that takes a look back at some key logistics trends and themes over the course of 2023 (which was a lot) and also takes a look at what may be in store for 2024. While it was my intention to get this written up before using up some banked time off for the rest of 2023, that ultimately did not come to fruition, so here we go, with...

There are a whole host of mixed economic messages, signals, and indicators, perhaps more so now than at any other time, especially over the past five years or so.

Following the Biden administration’s release of the White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience last week, which is comprised of nearly 30 actions focused on strengthening U.S. supply chains, there has been a fair amount of follow-up and some analysis from industry stakeholders on the effort’s potential merits and benefits, at a time when the supply chain continues to receive far more attention post-pandemic than pre-pandemic, to be sure.

In its “ATA Freight Transportation Forecast 2023 to 2024,” ATA said that truck tonnage is pegged to increase to 14.2 billion tons by 2034. While 2034 is more than a decade from now, it is not unexpected to see such a high estimate, especially when taking into account now the ubiquitous mode routinely moves more than 70% of the nation’s freight.

To be clear, 1993 was a long time ago, and over that time many, many things have changed, but, as we all know the respective per-gallon tabs of 23.4 cents for diesel and 18.4 cents for gasoline is something that has not changed.

There are a lot of different things that supply chain stakeholders, on all sides, will need to pay close attention to in the coming months. These things are not optional. They all matter and play a large role in the direction of our economy going forward. Those not in the supply chain learned first-hand over the course of the pandemic exactly how vital the sector is, but now, hopefully, supply chain is simply part of the story and not the...

A sure sign that the holiday season getting closer each day are the respective announcements made by carriers, transportation and logistics services providers, and shippers alike, announcing their “help wanted” signs have been hung, as they look for seasonal workers.

The letter was drafted by county and municipal officials and public works directors and county engineers and was organized by the Coalition Against Bigger Trucks (CABT).

To get a better sense of how things are shaping up for the 2023 Peak Season, Newsroom Notes caught up with two industry experts, representing trucking and ocean cargo, respectively, to get a sense of where things currently stand.