Susan Lacefield has been working for supply chain publications since 1999. Before joining DC VELOCITY, she was an associate editor for Supply Chain Management Review and wrote for Logistics Management magazine. She holds a master's degree in English.
If yours is a typical shipping operation, shipments probably aren't the only thing flowing out your dock doors each day. Chances are, money is too, in the form of air you've paid to heat or cool.
The causes of the problem aren't hard to understand. With doors opening and closing all day long, loading docks represent a prime escape route for heated and cooled air. And those doors aren't the only area of vulnerability. Think of all the gaps between the dock door and the door of the truck that's parked there for loading or unloading. Those cracks and gaps may seem insignificant, but they're actually a prime source of energy loss. If you added up all those gaps for 10 dock doors, you'd have the equivalent of a 6- by 6-foot hole in your distribution center's wall, says Steve Sprunger, vice president of sales and marketing for dock equipment maker 4Front Engineered Solutions.
In the past, it was easy enough to dismiss the problem as an unavoidable part of dock operations. But times are changing. Today, rising utility costs and societal and corporate pressure to be green are driving companies to take a look at how they can conserve energy at the loading dock.
So what can you do to tighten up your operations? Here are some tips.
Mind the gaps
When it comes to saving energy at the dock, most experts will tell you that shelters and seals are the first line of defense. Dock doors typically stand open for hours on end while trucks are loaded and unloaded, creating enormous potential for energy loss if the opening isn't sealed. Shelters, which cover and surround the top and sides of a trailer, and seals, which work by pressing up against the truck, are designed to prevent air from escaping. If your operation doesn't already have these devices in place, investing in them would be a good place to start.
But it's not enough to simply install these devices; you have to keep them in good working order. Seals and shelters can lose effectiveness over time—whether through normal wear and tear or damage. That's why it's a good idea to regularly inspect seals and shelters and replace old and damaged units.
It's worth noting that the cause of sealing failures isn't always obvious. Sometimes, the fault lies not with the seal, but with the door itself. As Sprunger explains, it's not unusual for a door to get hit and end up with a kink in it. Although the DC often is able to get the door working again, there may be residual damage—like panels that have been knocked out of alignment, creating a gap of a quarter inch or more and compromising the seal. To avoid this, Sprunger recommends installing dock doors that are specifically designed to withstand abuse, like those with impactable bottom panels.
Draft dodging
Although seals and shelters can go a long way toward stemming energy loss, they're not always enough. Even with these devices in place, dock doors can still be drafty. If that's true of your operation, there are a couple of other possibilities to investigate.
One is the so-called "hinge gap." Most over-the-road trailers have doors that hinge open as opposed to rolling up. When the truck backs into the dock, the dock shelter then seals to the inside face of the trailer door, as opposed to the trailer's outside wall. The result is a vertical gap between the outside wall of the door and the outside wall of the trailer, where air can rush in and out, says Walt Swietlik of dock equipment maker Rite-Hite.
Specialized seals designed to close off the trailer hinge gap during loading and unloading can help plug this type of leak. Rite-Hite also offers a dock shelter that has hooks that extend over the hinge, sealing it off from top to bottom.
Another place to check for leaks is the dock leveler, the device that bridges the gap between the truck or trailer door and the loading dock. Oftentimes, gapping occurs at the corners on either side of the dock leveler. As Swietlik puts it, as you look down on the leveler, there are two squares of white space on either side of it.
These gaps can be a significant source of energy loss, according to the experts. That's because unlike the gapping that occurs around dock doors and trailers, these gaps don't disappear once the dock door is closed. "Gaps around the leveler are a 24-hour-a-day concern since the front of the leveler is exposed to the exterior of the building," says Sprunger.
A number of dock equipment companies offer products that mount to the outside of the building and to the dock leveler to seal up those gaps.
Leakage can also occur underneath the dock leveler. Traditional dock levelers are recessed into a pit. If there's any kind of gapping between the leveler and the concrete pit, heated and cooled air can escape through the opening. Investing in an under-leveler seal can help plug this gap.
Open door policy?
When it comes to dock-related energy loss, the problem isn't always with the equipment. Sometimes, it's with the people. Seals won't do much good if dock attendants inadvertently leave doors open or fail to follow the proper procedure for opening dock doors (thus leaving doors open longer than necessary).
If you suspect operator error is a factor in your operation, "interlocking" or "sequencing" the dock operation can help. The use of interlocking equipment—devices that automatically engage when another piece of equipment is set in motion—removes the risk of operator oversight. Mike Earle of inflatable seal maker Pentalift says his company offers seals that can be interlocked with the mechanism that opens overhead doors so that once a door is opened, the seal starts inflating against the truck. This eliminates the chance that the operator or dock attendant will forget to engage the seal.
Sequencing a dock operation is another way to limit the amount of time doors are kept open. With sequencing, a control system or panel automatically sets the order of the dock door opening process. So, for example, a dock attendant must lock the trailer before raising the dock door and then engaging the dock leveler. The equipment will not turn on until the previous step has been completed.
In addition to interlocking and sequencing, there's always the software route. A number of companies offer dock management software that monitors loading dock equipment to make sure a dock door isn't left open. The software notifies the user when a door has been breached and then acknowledges any corrective action taken, says Sprunger of 4Front.
Watts going down?
Opportunities to save energy at the loading dock aren't limited to plugging air leaks, to be sure. Switching to more efficient—that is, lower wattage—dock lighting can also go a long way toward cutting utility bills.
Motor carrier Old Dominion Freight Line, for example, installed T5 lights at its freight handling facilities along with motion sensors that turn on the lights when motion is detected and ambient sensors that dim or raise lights depending on how much natural light is available. It also installed skylights to increase the amount of natural light in the loading dock area.
The result has been a noticeable drop in Old Dominion's utility bills. The carrier has seen a payback in anywhere from one to 12 months, depending on the number of lighting fixtures in the facility, says Howard Cornelison, the company's director of purchasing and real estate.
Another way to take a bite out of utility costs is to install high-volume, low-speed fans in the dock vestibule. In cold weather, these fans force hot air down from the ceiling; in hot weather, they promote air circulation and have a slight cooling effect.
Energy audit
If that seems like a lot of information to digest, help is available. Many dock equipment companies, including Rite-Hite and 4Front, offer free energy audits to identify areas of vulnerability and recommend solutions.
The return on investment for this type of equipment is typically pretty fast, according to the vendors. So once you've decided on a solution, it's usually fairly easy to get upper management to sign off on it, they say.
"In our analysis, we find the payback in Northern climates [is] in many cases a year or less," says Swietlik of Rite-Hite. "Considering that this equipment can run anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500," he adds, "that's a fair amount of energy saved."
Four Seasons keeps cool in face of rising energy costs
Utility rate increases may be a fact of business life, but the hikes Ephrata, Pa.-based Four Seasons Produce was looking at four years ago were in a category of their own. With Pennsylvania's electricity price cap set to expire on Jan. 1, 2010, the produce wholesaler had been running some numbers to see what kind of hit it would take. The findings came as something of a shock: Four Seasons learned its utility bills would rise anywhere from 20 to 40 percent. That was all it took for the company to launch a wholesale energy conservation effort aimed at generating savings roughly equivalent to the increase—somewhere between 20 and 30 percent.
One of the first areas to come under scrutiny was the company's bustling distribution center, a three-shift operation that operates six and a half days a week and handles more than a million cases a month. "We started by looking at areas of the facility where we knew we could reduce our energy use," says Randy Groff, Four Seasons' director of facilities and energy. "The building envelope, including the dock area, was one place that we knew we could generate some savings."
That assumption proved correct. A review of the operation revealed significant energy leakage at the dock's 35 doors—a serious concern for a refrigerated operation that requires its docks to be kept at a cool 40 degrees F. Part of the problem was that the original dock shelters were designed for tractor-trailer barn-style doors. When the company had to load or unload anything smaller, the result was a significant gap between the shelter and the vehicle.
To plug the leaks, the company invested in dock shelters and seals. In 2009, Four Seasons installed Rite-Hite's Eliminator-GapMaster dock shelters at all of its loading dock doors to seal the gap at the trailer door hinge. It also put in Rite-Hite's Pit Master under-leveler seals, which eliminate the gap between the leveler and the pit wall.
"It's now a lot easier to keep the ice on the broccoli," says Nelson Longenecker, Four Seasons' VP of business innovation.
How did the company do against its target? Quite well, it turns out. Its overall conservation initiative, which also included a lighting retrofit and the installation of a DC energy management system, produced savings of almost exactly 25 percent. "We hit our goal of having a smaller electrical bill this year than we did four years ago," says Longenecker.
Commercial fleet operators are steadily increasing their use of GPS fleet tracking, in-cab video solutions, and predictive analytics, driven by rising costs, evolving regulations, and competitive pressures, according to an industry report from Verizon Connect.
Those conclusions come from the company’s fifth annual “Fleet Technology Trends Report,” conducted in partnership with Bobit Business Media, and based on responses from 543 fleet management professionals.
The study showed that for five consecutive years, at least four out of five respondents have reported using at least one form of fleet technology, said Atlanta-based Verizon Connect, which provides fleet and mobile workforce management software platforms, embedded OEM hardware, and a connected vehicle device called Hum by Verizon.
The most commonly used of those technologies is GPS fleet tracking, with 69% of fleets across industries reporting its use, the survey showed. Of those users, 72% find it extremely or very beneficial, citing improved efficiency (62%) and a reduction in harsh driving/speeding events (49%).
Respondents also reported a focus on safety, with 57% of respondents citing improved driver safety as a key benefit of GPS fleet tracking. And 68% of users said in-cab video solutions are extremely or very beneficial. Together, those technologies help reduce distracted driving incidents, improve coaching sessions, and help reduce accident and insurance costs, Verizon Connect said.
Looking at the future, fleet management software is evolving to meet emerging challenges, including sustainability and electrification, the company said. "The findings from this year's Fleet Technology Trends Report highlight a strong commitment across industries to embracing fleet technology, with GPS tracking and in-cab video solutions consistently delivering measurable results,” Peter Mitchell, General Manager, Verizon Connect, said in a release. “As fleets face rising costs and increased regulatory pressures, these technologies are proving to be indispensable in helping organizations optimize their operations, reduce expenses, and navigate the path toward a more sustainable future.”
Businesses engaged in international trade face three major supply chain hurdles as they head into 2025: the disruptions caused by Chinese New Year (CNY), the looming threat of potential tariffs on foreign-made products that could be imposed by the incoming Trump Administration, and the unresolved contract negotiations between the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX), according to an analysis from trucking and logistics provider Averitt.
Each of those factors could lead to significant shipping delays, production slowdowns, and increased costs, Averitt said.
First, Chinese New Year 2025 begins on January 29, prompting factories across China and other regions to shut down for weeks, typically causing production to halt and freight demand to skyrocket. The ripple effects can range from increased shipping costs to extended lead times, disrupting even the most well-planned operations. To prepare for that event, shippers should place orders early, build inventory buffers, secure freight space in advance, diversify shipping modes, and communicate with logistics providers, Averitt said.
Second, new or increased tariffs on foreign-made goods could drive up the cost of imports, disrupt established supply chains, and create uncertainty in the marketplace. In turn, shippers may face freight rate volatility and capacity constraints as businesses rush to stockpile inventory ahead of tariff deadlines. To navigate these challenges, shippers should prepare advance shipments and inventory stockpiling, diversity sourcing, negotiate supplier agreements, explore domestic production, and leverage financial strategies.
Third, unresolved contract negotiations between the ILA and the USMX will come to a head by January 15, when the current contract expires. Labor action or strikes could cause severe disruptions at East and Gulf Coast ports, triggering widespread delays and bottlenecks across the supply chain. To prepare for the worst, shippers should adopt a similar strategy to the other potential January threats: collaborate early, secure freight, diversify supply chains, and monitor policy changes.
According to Averitt, companies can cushion the impact of all three challenges by deploying a seamless, end-to-end solution covering the entire path from customs clearance to final-mile delivery. That strategy can help businesses to store inventory closer to their customers, mitigate delays, and reduce costs associated with supply chain disruptions. And combined with proactive communication and real-time visibility tools, the approach allows companies to maintain control and keep their supply chains resilient in the face of global uncertainties, Averitt said.
A move by federal regulators to reinforce requirements for broker transparency in freight transactions is stirring debate among transportation groups, after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published a “notice of proposed rulemaking” this week.
According to FMCSA, its draft rule would strive to make broker transparency more common, requiring greater sharing of the material information necessary for transportation industry parties to make informed business decisions and to support the efficient resolution of disputes.
The proposed rule titled “Transparency in Property Broker Transactions” would address what FMCSA calls the lack of access to information among shippers and motor carriers that can impact the fairness and efficiency of the transportation system, and would reframe broker transparency as a regulatory duty imposed on brokers, with the goal of deterring non-compliance. Specifically, the move would require brokers to keep electronic records, and require brokers to provide transaction records to motor carriers and shippers upon request and within 48 hours of that request.
Under federal regulatory processes, public comments on the move are due by January 21, 2025. However, transportation groups are not waiting on the sidelines to voice their opinions.
According to the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), an industry group representing the third-party logistics (3PL) industry, the potential rule is “misguided overreach” that fails to address the more pressing issue of freight fraud. In TIA’s view, broker transparency regulation is “obsolete and un-American,” and has no place in today’s “highly transparent” marketplace. “This proposal represents a misguided focus on outdated and unnecessary regulations rather than tackling issues that genuinely threaten the safety and efficiency of our nation’s supply chains,” TIA said.
But trucker trade group the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) welcomed the proposed rule, which it said would ensure that brokers finally play by the rules. “We appreciate that FMCSA incorporated input from our petition, including a requirement to make records available electronically and emphasizing that brokers have a duty to comply with regulations. As FMCSA noted, broker transparency is necessary for a fair, efficient transportation system, and is especially important to help carriers defend themselves against alleged claims on a shipment,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said in a statement.
Additional pushback came from the Small Business in Transportation Coalition (SBTC), a network of transportation professionals in small business, which said the potential rule didn’t go far enough. “This is too little too late and is disappointing. It preserves the status quo, which caters to Big Broker & TIA. There is no question now that FMCSA has been captured by Big Broker. Truckers and carriers must now come out in droves and file comments in full force against this starting tomorrow,” SBTC executive director James Lamb said in a LinkedIn post.
Bloomington, Indiana-based FTR said its Trucking Conditions Index declined in September to -2.47 from -1.39 in August as weakness in the principal freight dynamics – freight rates, utilization, and volume – offset lower fuel costs and slightly less unfavorable financing costs.
Those negative numbers are nothing new—the TCI has been positive only twice – in May and June of this year – since April 2022, but the group’s current forecast still envisions consistently positive readings through at least a two-year forecast horizon.
“Aside from a near-term boost mostly related to falling diesel prices, we have not changed our Trucking Conditions Index forecast significantly in the wake of the election,” Avery Vise, FTR’s vice president of trucking, said in a release. “The outlook continues to be more favorable for carriers than what they have experienced for well over two years. Our analysis indicates gradual but steadily rising capacity utilization leading to stronger freight rates in 2025.”
But FTR said its forecast remains unchanged. “Just like everyone else, we’ll be watching closely to see exactly what trade and other economic policies are implemented and over what time frame. Some freight disruptions are likely due to tariffs and other factors, but it is not yet clear that those actions will do more than shift the timing of activity,” Vise said.
The TCI tracks the changes representing five major conditions in the U.S. truck market: freight volumes, freight rates, fleet capacity, fuel prices, and financing costs. Combined into a single index indicating the industry’s overall health, a positive score represents good, optimistic conditions while a negative score shows the inverse.
Specifically, the new global average robot density has reached a record 162 units per 10,000 employees in 2023, which is more than double the mark of 74 units measured seven years ago.
Broken into geographical regions, the European Union has a robot density of 219 units per 10,000 employees, an increase of 5.2%, with Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Slovenia in the global top ten. Next, North America’s robot density is 197 units per 10,000 employees – up 4.2%. And Asia has a robot density of 182 units per 10,000 persons employed in manufacturing - an increase of 7.6%. The economies of Korea, Singapore, mainland China and Japan are among the top ten most automated countries.
Broken into individual countries, the U.S. ranked in 10th place in 2023, with a robot density of 295 units. Higher up on the list, the top five are:
The Republic of Korea, with 1,012 robot units, showing a 5% increase on average each year since 2018 thanks to its strong electronics and automotive industries.
Singapore had 770 robot units, in part because it is a small country with a very low number of employees in the manufacturing industry, so it can reach a high robot density with a relatively small operational stock.
China took third place in 2023, surpassing Germany and Japan with a mark of 470 robot units as the nation has managed to double its robot density within four years.
Germany ranks fourth with 429 robot units for a 5% CAGR since 2018.
Japan is in fifth place with 419 robot units, showing growth of 7% on average each year from 2018 to 2023.