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.
When a Utah farmer named Chester Robert England decided soon after World War I that there had to be a better way to make a living, he bought a Model T truck and started hauling milk in the morning for a local dairy, then produce in the afternoon from farms to market.
Over the decades, England's two sons, their two sons, and then their six sons, joined the family business. After 91 years, Salt Lake City-based C.R. England Inc. has become one of the most established and successful refrigerated truckers in the land.
Yet Dean England, president of the privately held company and one of the third generation of Englands to work in the business, is under no illusions of how his grandfather would have fared if he began in 2011.
"Could he do it today?" England asks rhetorically. Then he answers: "I don't know. It might not work." England has three sons employed at the company.
Nearly 15 years after C.R. England got started, Earl Sr. and Lillian Congdon founded a Virginia trucking company with a lone rig hauling goods between Richmond and Norfolk. After Earl Sr. died in 1950, Lillian Congdon took over the company, joined by their two sons. In 1998, David S. Congdon, grandson of the founders, became president. He would eventually add the CEO title. His father, Earl, remains executive chairman of the board.
Today, less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. is arguably the country's most successful trucking company and is completing one of the best years in its 77-year history. Yet as he surveys the landscape, David Congdon acknowledges how hard it would be for a new entrant to even begin replicating Old Dominion's network of 216 service centers in the lower 48 states.
"It would be relatively impossible today to start up an LTL company and build a network like we have," he says. "It takes a lot of time and capital."
Congdon is somewhat pessimistic about the future for the next generation of truckers. "I'm not sure I would encourage my children to start a trucking business," says Congdon, who nonetheless has two sons-in-law, a niece, and two nephews working for Thomasville, N.C.-based Old Dominion.
Ready to hang it up
The thousands of truckers that work the nation's roads each day likely share the sentiments of England and Congdon. Truckers today face a witch's brew of challenges: escalating asset inflation, higher insurance premiums, a looming driver shortage, increasing government regulations, volatile diesel fuel prices that as of mid-November had hit $4 a gallon, and difficulties gaining access to credit. Freight rates, though rising, are for many carriers just covering these higher costs. Faced with poor prospects for profitability, truckers are fleeing the market, and a generation of potential entrepreneurs is being deterred from entering an industry that has historically thrived on entrepreneurial activity.
A third-quarter 2011 survey by mergers and acquisitions advisory firm Transport Capital Partners (TCP) found that 11.8 percent of fleets would consider leaving the industry in the next six months if volumes don't increase. About 20 percent of smaller fleets—those with annual revenues of less than $25 million—would also consider exiting if business fails to improve during that time frame, according to the survey.
In addition, 28 percent of truckers surveyed are considering selling out in the next 18 months if conditions don't improve, the survey found. That's the highest total percentage since the survey began almost three years ago. Nearly 40 percent of smaller carriers are weighing an exit, compared with 23 percent of the larger carriers, TCP said.
Ben Gordon, managing director of BG Strategic Advisors, a Palm Beach, Fla.-based company specializing in logistics mergers and acquisitions, says his firm is working overtime in large part fielding inquiries from trucking companies interested in exploring a potential sale. As a result, "we expect to double our deal activity in 2012," he says.
"It just isn't fun anymore"
Ironically, smaller truckers are more optimistic than their larger brethren—and by a wide margin—about gains in freight volumes. Lana R. Batts, a long-time trucking executive and now a partner at TCP, says smaller carriers are more frustrated with higher costs and bureaucratic red tape than they are heartened by a rebound in freight demand. "In essence, it just isn't any fun anymore," she said in a statement.
Many trucking executives started their companies in the 1980s in the wake of trucking deregulation and have no interest in "relearning" the business at this point in their lives, Batts said in an e-mail to DC Velocity. Their children have no desire to inherit a business where the risks have become so high and the potential returns so small, she added.
If these trends play out, they will have implications that go beyond a particular bloodline, Batts warned. "The desire to leave ... will significantly change the face of the industry as well as the business models that depend upon smaller carriers providing hard assets," she said. It is estimated that 93 percent of all U.S. truck fleets operate seven trucks or less, with many of those being one-person, one-rig owner operators that drive under contract for larger fleets.
High-cost wheels
Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operators Independent Drivers Association, says the number of independents leaving the business is growing at "greater numbers than we've seen in the past." The association did not have data to quantify that claim.
For independents as well as for larger fleets, the biggest hit is the cost of the rig itself. Since 2001, the cost of a Class 8 tractor has risen to $124,000 from $84,000, according to data from investment firm BB&T Capital Markets. In addition, late-model used trucks—rigs built between 2007 and 2010—are in short supply. Today, there are between 350,000 and 400,000 fewer late-model used trucks available than at nearly any time in the past 15 years, the firm said.
The escalating cost of new trucks and the shortage of less-expensive rigs are putting severe pressure on independents that lack the economies of scale of larger, multi-unit fleets. In the past, about half of all owner-operators would buy new trucks as part of a typical business cycle, Spencer says. Today, that number has dwindled to about one-quarter, he adds.
Spencer acknowledges that today's rigs are better built, with longer life spans that don't require as much turnover as in the past. However, he says most of the decline is attributed to the rising tab for new trucks, which is making it harder for independents to swallow. Complying with federal engine emissions standards mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency alone contributes about $10,000 to the cost of a new truck, he says.
Environmental compliance costs are just one of several government mandates that have hit truckers' pocketbooks. Others include CSA 2010, the new driver safety grading initiative; potential changes to drivers' hours-of-service regulations that could force truckers to add more rigs and drivers to their fleets; and requirements for drivers to install electronic recorders in each vehicle to monitor drivers' compliance with hours-of-service requirements. The latter two initiatives are, or have been, subject to legal challenges by the industry.
"So much of the risk right now is coming from government regulations making life miserable for our business," says England.
No going back
Compounding the industry's angst are the accompanying costs of state regulations, as well as the proliferation of class-action lawsuits brought by plaintiffs' attorneys seeking heavy monetary damages in the wake of truck-related accidents. England says his company faces major liability issues in California, where its footprint is "two to three times larger" than in any other state.
England is confident that his company will work through the treacherous road ahead. But his optimism is leavened by the knowledge that the industry will never again be what it once was.
"We are going to find ways to be successful, no matter what," he says. "But is it going to be as much fun as it used to be? Probably not."
Sometimes, all you need is the right partner to solve your logistics problems.
In 2021, global paint supplier Sherwin Williams faced driver and hazardous material (hazmat) capacity constraints: There simply weren’t enough hazmat drivers available in its fleet to maintain the company’s 90% fleet utilization rate expectations for key partner store deliveries while also meeting growing demand for service. Those challenges threatened to become even more acute in the future, as a competing paint supply company began to scale back its operations in the Pacific Northwest, leaving Sherwin Williams with an opportunity to fill the gap.
The paint supplier needed a logistics partner that could help it overcome the shortage of hazmat drivers while also helping to manage its West Coast trailer pools, out-of-region runs, and ad-hoc freight. It also needed a solution that would meet quarterly and annual fleet budgets.
SCALING UP
Enter ITS Logistics, a third-party logistics service provider (3PL) that offers supply chain solutions for drayage, network transportation, distribution, and fulfillment across North America. ITS proposed a combined owned-asset and asset-light approach that would provide Sherwin Williams with the equivalent of 21 additional drivers. The 3PL would leverage its carrier network to overcome the shortage of hazmat capacity while also certifying its own drivers via a three-month process. Further, ITS would help manage Sherwin Williams’ trailer pools and coordinate carriers, providing the paint company with a single point of contact for transportation.
The project would address cost concerns as well: “ITS Logistics aligned its solution with Sherwin Williams’ budgetary cadence and offered a quarterly business review to align on price structure, adding a level of transparency and trust to the relationship,” according to a case study the partners released earlier this year.
The companies soon sealed the deal and launched the program.
Not long after that, Sherwin Williams began to feel the effects of the anticipated challenges in the Pacific Northwest—but the company was prepared. When the competing paint supply company shuttered its operations, causing demand for Sherwin Williams’ products to spike, ITS injected a blend of owned trailers and carrier power to alleviate equipment challenges, cover all locations and regions, and help the paint supplier scale to meet volume.
CLOSING THE GAPS
The project has helped Sherwin Williams rapidly scale its capacity, meet fleet utilization requirements, manage trailer pools, coordinate carriers, and flex to meet spikes in regional demand.
And the results speak for themselves.
“ITS integrating themselves into our fleet was instrumental in helping increase our outbound volume by 18.4 million pounds [year over year] in the last seven months of 2023,” said Ted Taxon, regional transportation manager at Sherwin Williams, in the case study. “This equated to approximately 460 truckloads of extra freight, a large portion of which ITS [handled] on an ad-hoc basis with no operational constraints or quality issues.”
The partnership also helped Sherwin Williams maintain a 90% fleet utilization rate with big box retailers—an increase from less than 70% prior to the partnership’s launch.
Robots are revolutionizing factories, warehouses, and distribution centers (DCs) around the world, thanks largely to heavy investments in the technology between 2019 and 2021. And although investment has slowed since then, the long-term outlook calls for steady growth over the next four years. According to data from research and consulting firm Interact Analysis, revenues from shipments of industrial robots are forecast to grow nearly 4% per year, on average, between 2024 and 2028 (see Exhibit 1).
EXHIBIT 1: Market forecast for industrial robots - revenuesInteract Analysis
Material handling is among the top applications for all those robots, accounting for one-third of overall robot market revenues in 2023, according to the research. That puts warehouses and DCs on the cutting edge of robotic innovation, with projects that are helping companies reduce costs, optimize labor, and improve productivity throughout their facilities. Here’s a look at two recent projects that demonstrate the kinds of gains companies have achieved by investing in robotic equipment.
FASTER, MORE ACCURATE CYCLE COUNTS
When leaders at MSI Surfaces wanted to get a better handle on their vast inventory of flooring, countertops, tile, and hardscape materials, they turned to warehouse inventory drone provider Corvus Robotics. The seven-year-old company offers a warehouse drone system, called Corvus One, that can be installed and deployed quickly—in what MSI leaders describe as a “plug and play” process. Corvus Robotics’ drones are fully autonomous—they require no external infrastructure, such as beacons or stickers for positioning and navigation, and no human operators. Essentially, all you need is the drone and a landing pad, and you’re in business.
The drones use computer vision and generative AI (artificial intelligence) to “understand” their environment, flying autonomously in both very narrow aisles—passageways as narrow as 50 inches—and in very wide aisles. The Corvus One system relies on obstacle detection to operate safely in warehouses and uses barcode scanning technology to count inventory; the advanced system can read any barcode symbol in any orientation placed anywhere on the front of a carton or pallet.
The system was the perfect answer to the inventory challenges MSI was facing. Its annual physical inventory counts required two to four dedicated warehouse associates, who would manually scan inventory to determine the amount of stock on hand. The process was both time-consuming and error-prone, and often led to inaccuracies. And it created a chain reaction of issues and problems. Fulfillment speed is one example: Lost or misplaced inventory would delay customer deliveries, resulting in dissatisfaction, returns, and unmet expectations. Productivity was also an issue: Workers were often pulled from fulfillment tasks to locate material, slowing overall operations.
MSI Surfaces began using the Corvus One system in 2021, deploying a small number of drones for daily inventory counts at its 300,000-square-foot distribution center (DC) in Orange, California. It quickly scaled up, adding more drones in Orange and expanding the system to three other DCs: in Houston; Savannah, Georgia; and Edison, New Jersey. The company plans to add more drones to the existing sites and expand the system to some of its smaller DCs as well, according to Corvus Robotics spokesperson Andrew Burer.
Those expansion plans are based on solid results: MSI’s inventory accuracy was about 80% prior to the drone implementation, but it quickly jumped to the high 90s—ultimately reaching 99%—after the company initiated the daily drone counts, according to Burer.
“We actually had an incident early on where one of the forklift drivers ran into the landing pad, rendering it inoperable for about a week while the Corvus team fixed it,” Burer recalls. “When we restarted the system, we noticed MSI’s inventory accuracy had dropped down to the 80s. But after flights resumed, accuracy quickly improved back to near perfect.” He adds that such collisions are rare as Corvus mounts landing pads high off the floor to avoid impacts but that accidents can still happen.
Overall, the system has helped speed warehouse operations in two key ways: First, the accuracy improvement means that associates no longer waste time searching for missing material in the warehouse. And second, the associates who used to conduct the physical inventory counts have been reallocated to picking and replenishment—creating a more efficient, and optimized, workforce.
A SAFER, MORE EFFICIENT WAREHOUSE
Robot maker Boston Dynamics is well-known for its Stretch and Spot industrial robots, both of which are at work in warehouses and DCs around the world. Earlier this year, Stretch made its debut in Europe, teaming up with Spot at a fulfillment center run by German retail company Otto Group. The deployment marks the first time Stretch and Spot are being used together—in a partnership designed to improve Otto Group’s warehousing operations by increasing efficiency and making warehouse work safer and more attractive to workers.
The partnership is part of a two-year project in which Boston Dynamics will deploy dozens of its warehouse robots in Otto Group’s European DCs. The first location is a fulfillment site operated by Hermes, the company’s parcel delivery subsidiary, in Haldensleben, Germany—a facility that handles as many as 40,000 cartons of goods on peak days.
At the site, Stretch—which is a mobile case-handling robot—autonomously unloads ocean containers and trailers, using its advanced perception system to pick and place boxes onto a telescoping conveyor inside the container or trailer. Spot—a quadruped robot—helps with predictive maintenance by collecting thermal data and performing acoustic and visual detection tasks throughout the facility to reduce unplanned downtime and energy costs. One of Spot’s jobs is to detect air leaks in the facility’s warehouse automation systems; future duties may include conveyor vibration detection, according to leaders at Otto Group.
Both Stretch and Spot will help the Haldensleben facility run more efficiently, especially during fall peak season when volume increases and work intensifies. The addition of Stretch addresses safety and comfort issues as well: Trailer unloading—a process that entails repeatedly lifting and moving heavy boxes inside a trailer, which can be dark, dirty, cold, and/or hot, depending on the weather—tends to be unappealing to workers. Along with reducing the amount of labor required, automating these tasks will have the added benefit for European facilities of helping them comply with EU (European Union) regulations limiting the amount of time workers can spend in those conditions.
Essentially, the robots are making life easier on the warehouse floor and for the company at large.
“Stretch is going to have a ton of benefits for customers here in the EU,” Andrew Brueckner, of Boston Dynamics, said in a recent case study on the project.
The trucking industry faces a range of challenges these days, particularly when it comes to load planning—a resource-intensive task that often results in suboptimal decisions, unnecessary empty miles, late deliveries, and inefficient asset utilization. What’s more, delays in decision-making due to a lack of real-time insights can hinder operational efficiency, making cost management a constant struggle.
Truckload carrier Paper Transport Inc. (PTI) experienced this firsthand when the company sought to expand its over the-road (OTR), intermodal, and brokerage offerings to include dedicated fleet services for high-volume shippers—adding a layer of complexity to the business. The additional personnel required for such a move would be extremely costly, leading PTI to investigate technology solutions that could help close the gap.
Enter Freight Science and its intelligent decision-recommendation and automation platform.
PTI implemented Freight Science’s artificial intelligence (AI)-driven load planning optimization solution earlier this year, giving the carrier a high-tech advantage as it launched the new service.
“As PTI tried to diversify … we found that we needed a technological solution that would allow us to process [information] faster,” explains Jared Stedl, chief commercial officer for PTI, emphasizing the high volume of outbound shipments and unique freight characteristics of its targeted dedicated-fleet customers.
The Freight Science platform allowed PTI to apply its signature high-quality service to those needs, all while handling the daily challenges of managing drivers and navigating route disruptions.
STREAMLINING PROCESSES
Dedicated fleets face challenges that evolve from day to day and minute to minute, including truck breakdowns, drivers calling in sick, and rescheduled appointment times. PTI needed a tool that allowed for a real-time view of the fleet, ultimately enabling its team to adjust truck and driver allocation to meet those challenges.
The Freight Science solution filled the bill. The platform uses advanced analytics and algorithms to give carriers better visibility into operations while automating the decision-making process. By combining streaming data, a carrier’s transportation management system (TMS), machine learning, and decision science, the solution allows carriers to deploy their fleets more efficiently while accurately forecasting future needs, according to Freight Science.
In PTI’s case, Freight Science’s software integrates with the carrier’s TMS, real-time electronic logging device (ELD) data, and other external data, feeding an AI model that generates an optimized load plan for the planner.
“We’re an integrated data analytics company for trucking companies,” explains Matt Foster, Freight Science’s president and CEO. “We’re talking about AI.”
The benefits of the real-time data are difficult to overstate.
“We’ve been able to execute in the toughest of situations because we’ve got real, live data on how long each event is actually going to take and a system to aid and even automate the decision-making process,” says Chad Borley, PTI’s operations manager. “From what traffic patterns we are battling in the morning and evening with rush hour and things like that, to the impact of additional miles to a route, or even location-specific dwell times, it’s been a huge differentiator for us.”
REALIZING RESULTS
A case in point: the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in March. PTI was scheduled to go live with a new dedicated account in the area just days after the collapse, which would mean rerouting and the potential for longer transit times. Instead of recalculating based on assumptions or latent data, PTI was able to reroute freight based on real-time information and analytics to give the customer timely updates.
“With the bridge going out, that changed our ability to make as many turns a day as the customer would expect,” Stedl explains. “But one of the things Freight Science could do [was to] quickly [assess] how much of an impact that traffic would have [and] what the turns [would] be based on what’s happening on the ground.
“So we were able to go back to the customer and readjust expectations in a real way that made sense, using data. Now expectations can be reset¾we’re not asking for forgiveness when there’s no reason for it.”
The system’s advanced algorithms make load planning more cost-effective and scalable as well. The platform allows PTI to monitor trucks, trailers, and driver hours in real time, recommending additional loads with remaining driver hours that would otherwise be wasted.
And they’re doing it all with much less. Stedl says tasks that used to require five people and hours of work can now be accomplished by one person in mere minutes, improving productivity and profitability while reducing labor and operational costs.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Aptean said the move will add new capabilities to its warehouse management and supply chain management offerings for manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and 3PLs. Aptean currently provides enterprise resource planning (ERP), transportation management systems (TMS), and product lifecycle management (PLM) platforms.
Founded in 1980 and headquartered in Durham, U.K., Indigo Software provides software designed for mid-market organizations, giving users real-time visibility and management from the initial receipt of stock all the way through to final dispatch of the finished product. That enables organizations to optimize an array of warehouse operations including receiving, storage, picking, packing, and shipping, the firm says.
Specific sectors served by Indigo Software include the food and beverage, fashion and apparel, fast moving consumer goods, automotive, manufacturing, 3PL, chemicals, and wholesale / distribution verticals.
Schneider says its FreightPower platform now offers owner-operators significantly more access to Schneider’s range of freight options. That can help drivers to generate revenue and strengthen their business through: increased access to freight, high drop and hook rates of over 95% of loads, and a trip planning feature that calculates road miles.
“Collaborating with owner-operators is an important component in the success of our business and the reliable service we can provide customers, which is why the network has grown tremendously in the last 25 years,” Schneider Senior Vice President and General Manager of Truckload and Mexico John Bozec said in a release. "We want to invest in tools that support owner-operators in running and growing their businesses. With Schneider FreightPower, they gain access to better load management, increasing their productivity and revenue potential.”