Mark Solomon joined DC VELOCITY as senior editor in August 2008, and was promoted to his current position on January 1, 2015. He has spent more than 30 years in the transportation, logistics and supply chain management fields as a journalist and public relations professional. From 1989 to 1994, he worked in Washington as a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, covering the aviation and trucking industries, the Department of Transportation, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he worked for Traffic World for seven years in a similar role. From 1994 to 2008, Mr. Solomon ran Media-Based Solutions, a public relations firm based in Atlanta. He graduated in 1978 with a B.A. in journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.
The new CEO of less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier YRC Worldwide Inc. said Friday he is focusing much of his early efforts on fixing the operating culture at the company's national LTL division, saying the network and the attitude supporting it "are not where we want it to be."
In an Aug. 5 interview, James L. Welch said that "we still have work to do" at the division, known as YRC National. "We want to get rock-solid with our network and have a disciplined process for running the network." Welch, who started at YRC 13 days ago, did not provide specifics.
Welch, 57, spent seven years as CEO of the former Yellow Transportation, which was later integrated with Roadway Express to form YRC National. Though Yellow acquired Roadway in 2003, the integration took six years to complete and was fraught with delays and cost overruns due to operational redundancies. The integration also led to customer defections as Yellow and Roadway customers—most of whom were satisfied with service levels of the respective carriers—experienced service problems with the integrated business.
In 2009, the renamed YRC Worldwide shrank the YRC National network by about 25 percent in an effort to streamline the operation, improve service, and cut costs.
Welch said trucking integrations are never easy and not always successful. One problem at YRC National, he said, is there have been so many changes in the operational network since 2003 that customers and employees don't have any consistent pattern to follow. "We don't have the culture defined at YRC National," he said, without going into detail.
By contrast, Welch said he is pleased with the performance of YRC's three regional carriers: Holland, Reddaway, and New Penn. He singled out Holland, which has posted strong operating and financial results of late, for praise.
"I want Holland to continue to do business the way Holland does business, not the way YRCW does business," said Welch, invoking the company's four-letter stock symbol.
Welch said the company's overall network capacity is "meeting our needs right now," indicating there is no immediate rush to expand the network. He echoed comments made last month by outgoing CEO William D. Zollars that YRC is winning back former customers who had defected to rivals, and is gaining new market share as well.
100-day blueprint
Welch said he is following a 100-day blueprint for reshaping the company but added that it is not a hard timetable. "As a start-to-finish scenario, it's not a concrete 100-day plan," he said. Welch declined to comment on what moves he might take to shed underperforming units like the company's truckload operations.
Welch said he has spent his first two weeks talking to employees and customers by phone, via e-mail, and by walking the corridors of the company's 10-story headquarters building in Overland Park, Kan. "There has been a little lack of leadership that's been accessible to people," he said.
Welch also said he's been immersed in analyzing the details of YRC's multi-month restructuring plan that was finalized July 22, the day his hiring was formally announced. The executive had been, until his resignation the prior day, CEO of Dynamex Inc., a Dallas-based company specializing in time-definite, or expedited, transportation service.
YRC and three of its rivals last month announced rate increases of 6.9 percent on non-contract traffic, effective Aug. 1. Welch said that the LTL industry, after two or more years of destructive rate wars, is getting closer to achieving an appropriate balance of tonnage and yield needed for long-term profitability.
Welch said that there is already ample LTL capacity on the road and that no more is needed at this time. Capacity "is not tight, but it's not been as loose as it's been," he said.
Welch said he expects little, if any, tailwind from the overall economy for the balance of 2011. "I am approaching the rest of the year as there will be no improvement in the U.S. economy," he said.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.