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.
Combine a successful entrepreneur and businessman, an industry ripe for consolidation, and a cluster of small businesses that may be ready to sell out at the right price, and, if nothing else, it could create the most compelling stew of activity the U.S. transportation industry has seen in some time.
Stirring the pot will be 55-year-old Bradley S. Jacobs, a balding, bespectacled Providence, R.I., native. Jacobs may lack the visibility of such buy-out artists as Carl C. Icahn and William A. Ackman, but he has prospered greatly in his own right by starting and running businesses in three other industries: energy, equipment rental, and solid waste.
Now, Jacobs has set his sights on transportation, specifically the $50 billion-a-year truck brokerage sector, where third parties help shippers locate available truck capacity, among other services.
Last year, Jacobs led a team that invested $150 million in cash in a non-asset-based expedited transportation company called Express-1 Expedited Solutions Inc. He renamed the company XPO Logistics and installed himself as CEO. From this platform, Jacobs aims to construct a $5 billion to $6 billion-a-year powerhouse mostly by unifying a scattered truck brokerage segment through a combination of acquisitions and organic expansion XPO refers to as "cold starts."
Jacobs, who opened an office late last year in Phoenix, envisions launching about 20 cold-start offices over the next 18 months to three years. He said he expects each location to generate between $25 million and $200 million in revenue a year.
In addition, Jacobs projected that XPO would make five to seven brokerage acquisitions a year. XPO had not made any acquisitions as of this writing, though Jacobs said in other interviews that he has talked to about 100 potential acquirees.
Jacobs said XPO has about $70 million in cash and a $10 million line of credit that could be expanded if necessary. The combination of cash and credit availability should get XPO through the first phase of acquisitions and cold starts, which, if business grows as Jacobs hopes, will result in a near-doubling of XPO's current annual revenue to about $400 million.
XPO will also look to build a presence in other non-asset-based operations, like freight forwarding and time-critical transportation, Jacobs said. However, the bulk of his efforts will be focused on truck brokerage.
A major wager Jacobs' bet is big and, in the eyes of many, unprecedented. No one recalls a transportation logistics company of this size (XPO is expected to report about $225 million in annual revenue in 2011) achieving a 20- to 30-fold increase in its top line in five years.
"It's quite a challenge, and it will take a lot of acquisitions to build out the [revenue] model and hit those goals," said Evan Armstrong, president of Armstrong & Associates, a Stoughton, Wis.-based consultancy that follows the third-party logistics and truck brokerage sectors and has done consulting and advisory work for XPO.
Charles W. Clowdis Jr., managing director, transportation advisory services for consultancy IHS Global Insight, said there aren't many truck brokers with net revenues—gross revenues minus purchased transportation costs—in the millions of dollars for XPO to roll up into a multi-billion enterprise. Clowdis said there might be a large block of owners willing to sell to XPO, but only at an appropriate multiple of earnings that meets their exit requirements.
Then there's the competition. Besides the established companies like C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc.—with the industry's largest brokerage operation—and Echo Global Logistics, truckload carriers are muscling into the brokerage segment as a way to round out their product offerings. XPO could also face competition from the executives of the companies it buys out unless the sellers sign ironclad non-compete contracts, Clowdis said.
Beyond the buyouts and the cold starts, XPO's success will hinge on everyday execution, namely the ability to maintain and strengthen relationships with shippers and carriers, and to develop a solid IT network that extends real-time visibility to all of its customers and service providers. XPO plans to have one IT platform extending across its brokerage, freight forwarding, and expedited transport businesses.
Jacobs recognizes that potholes lie ahead. For example, the marketplace may not welcome a potentially disruptive player to the game, and the capital markets may not be healthy enough to support XPO's funding needs. "The risks are there, and they are not trivial," he said in a recent interview with DC Velocity.
XPO's publicly traded shares took a hit in the fall after the company reported a $5.38 per-share third-quarter loss. The stock price fell steadily through November, though it had recovered some of its losses by the middle of December.
The company said the third-quarter loss was due to accounting charges relating to Jacobs' initial $150 million investment, the expense of building out the IT network and physical infrastructure, and the cost of recruiting high-end personnel.
XPO's executive team includes Greg Ritter, who built the brokerage business of truckload giant Knight Transportation after spending 22 years at C.H. Robinson; Scott Malat, who was Goldman, Sachs & Co.'s senior equity transportation analyst; and Richard M. Metzler and Thomas Connolly, who combined have decades of mergers and acquisitions experience in the transportation and finance fields, respectively.
"Begging to be consolidated" Despite the risks, Jacobs believes the characteristics of the truck brokerage business are so favorable as to make the potential negatives seem minor. Perhaps the sector's strongest lure to an entrepreneur like Jacobs is its extreme fragmentation. There are approximately 10,000 licensed truck brokers in the United States, but only about 25 have annual gross revenues—revenues before the cost of purchased transportation—of more than $200 million.
C.H. Robinson is on track to generate more than $10 billion in gross revenues in 2011. Robinson's 2011 net revenue, which includes the cost of transportation, will be about $1.5 billion if current patterns hold. The next 29 biggest brokers have combined net revenues of about $1.9 billion, according to Armstrong & Associates.
Many truck brokers, though successful, remain small because they lack the working capital to fund a meaningful expansion. It is this wide net of modestly sized brokers—those with $30 million to $200 million in annual gross revenue—that Jacobs has targeted.
Jacobs said the number of small brokers fighting for market share means the brokerage business is "just begging to be consolidated." He added, "Small companies are more valuable to me as part of a larger company than they are to the actual owners who control them."
The sector has also shown a long-running pattern of above-trend growth, regardless of macroeconomic conditions. For years, it has grown two to three times faster than annualized gross domestic product, and it continues to do so.
Jacobs figures broker services will remain in demand as many small to mid-sized shippers that lack dedicated shipping departments increasingly turn to third parties to help them find the best deals from the approximately 250,000 trucking companies that ply the nation's roads. He contends that, over time, XPO and others will find themselves competing for a larger pie than what exists today.
"I am making a bet that the way transportation is purchased today by smaller shippers is inefficient," he said. "And I am making a bet that a growing percentage of shippers will use brokers because it is more efficient."
In addition, the brokerage model is easily scalable because it is so sales driven, and it operates with significant variable costs, meaning a manager can get to critical mass of network capacity without a massive fixed investment. Jacobs followed this approach in growing his four prior companies, and he is not about to stop with XPO.
"Brad realizes you need to have scale to build capacity, and this is something he is very good at," said Armstrong.
A long entrepreneurial history At mid-life, Jacobs is poised for what could end up being the biggest of his many paydays. At 23, Jacobs co-founded Amerex Oil Associates Inc., a New Jersey-based oil brokerage firm, and served as its CEO until the firm was sold in 1983. The next year, he moved to England and founded Hamilton Resources (UK) Ltd., an oil trading company. Using most of his savings and a $1 billion line of credit, he built the company into a $1 billion-a-year enterprise.
In 1989, he founded United Waste Systems, Inc., which became the United States' fifth largest solid waste company before it was acquired by United Waste Services in 1997 for $2.5 billion, including debt. In 1997, he founded United Rentals Inc., which had become the world's largest equipment rental company by the time Jacobs stepped down from day-to-day management a decade later.
Jacobs said his prior endeavors required significant transportation and supply chain experience, the ability to meld acquisitions and organic expansion, and a mastery of information technology to connect multiple offices in disparate locations across a single network. Those skills will be heavily utilized as he goes where few in the transportation field have gone before.
Ben Gordon, managing director of BG Strategic Advisors, a Palm Beach, Fla.-based logistics mergers and acquisitions advisory firm, thinks it would be foolish to sell Jacobs short. "We think Brad is likely to be very successful," Gordon said. "We believe in his strategy."
National nonprofit Wreaths Across America (WAA) kicked off its 2024 season this week with a call for volunteers. The group, which honors U.S. military veterans through a range of civic outreach programs, is seeking trucking companies and professional drivers to help deliver wreaths to cemeteries across the country for its annual wreath-laying ceremony, December 14.
“Wreaths Across America relies on the transportation industry to move the mission. The Honor Fleet, composed of dedicated carriers, professional drivers, and other transportation partners, guarantees the delivery of millions of sponsored veterans’ wreaths to their destination each year,” Courtney George, WAA’s director of trucking and industry relations, said in a statement Tuesday. “Transportation partners benefit from driver retention and recruitment, employee engagement, positive brand exposure, and the opportunity to give back to their community’s veterans and military families.”
WAA delivers wreaths to more than 4,500 locations nationwide, and as of this week had added more than 20 loads to be delivered this season. The wreaths are donated by sponsors from across the country, delivered by truckers, and laid at the graves of veterans by WAA volunteers.
Wreaths Across America
Transportation companies interested in joining the Honor Fleet can visit the WAA website to find an open lane or contact the WAA transportation team at trucking@wreathsacrossamerica.org for more information.
This story first appeared in the July/August issue of Supply Chain Xchange, a journal of thought leadership for the supply chain management profession and a sister publication to AGiLE Business Media & Events’ DC Velocity.
Companies can find it challenging to meet the increasing demand to make their supply chains sustainable—except when external events force their hands.
Our research shows that when large-scale disruptions compel companies to rethink their operations, improving sustainability is often part of the redesigned supply chains that emerge from such crises. Counterintuitively, supply chain sustainability (SCS) efforts appear to thrive in a crisis.
While companies should not limit their SCS efforts to crises, an awareness of these opportunities can help them identify opportune moments to advance their green agendas. This is especially the case in today’s volatile business environment, where adjustments to operational footprints in response to disruptive market forces are becoming more frequent.
The pressure to make supply chains more sustainable has risen steadily over the four years we have done this research. We measure 10 sources of pressure, including investors, government entities, corporate buyers, company executives, and consumers, and the pressure from all of them has increased over the four years.
Investors represent the fastest-growing source, with a 25% increase in average respondent score throughout observation. Next come corporate buyers, with a 15% increase, followed by governments and governing bodies (11%).
Overall, the research indicates that commercial interests—be it access to capital gated by sustainability-minded investors or sales opportunities gated by sustainability-minded procurement teams—are pushing companies to improve their SCS performance year after year.
OBSTACLES TO SCS
However, meeting stakeholder expectations of significant reductions in supply chain carbon footprints is still a stretch for many companies.
Reducing Scope 3 emissions—those associated with assets not owned by the company and therefore largely out of their control—is proving particularly tricky. These problems are reflected in our latest research. Almost half of the “2023 State of Supply Chain Sustainability” report respondents indicated their organizations will not begin measuring or reducing Scope 3 emissions for five years or more. Scope 3 reporting and collecting reliable data across company boundaries appear to be especially challenging.
Another indicator of the bumpy road to SCS is the number of companies rethinking or scaling back their net-zero emissions pledges. Again, these issues are reflected in our research. Across all global respondents in the 2023 report, only 35% confirmed that their companies have net-zero goals. Moreover, many within this minority group appear unprepared for the net-zero deadlines they set for themselves.
DON’T WASTE A CRISIS
Four years of researching SCS efforts have allowed us to study the impact of various large-scale global crises on firms’ commitment to this work. We have found that the effect varies with the type of disruption experienced.
For the most part, crises that provoke acute supply chain network disruptions necessitating supply lines to be redrawn tend to result in an increased commitment to sustainability in supply chains. However, economic crises that require companies to regroup tend to dampen their SCS commitments.
For example, in the 2023 report, respondents were asked to rate their companies’ continued commitment to SCS in light of three crises: the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020–21, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (asked in 2023), and adverse economic conditions in 2023. In the first two cases, SCS efforts did not flag, but they did in the third situation. The survey results show that 79% of respondents confirmed that their SCS commitments increased in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and 61% said they have increased due to the Ukraine invasion.
In contrast, 56% of respondents indicated that their commitments to SCS declined over concerns that an economic slowdown was imminent in 2023. The research shows that when an economic downturn is in the offing, firms tend to concentrate on developing leaner, more cost-effective supply chain networks, even when such efforts do not align with sustainability goals. Also, companies are more focused on short-term risk-mitigation efforts—rather than longer-term sustainability targets—when dealing with economic headwinds.
However, when global disruptions upend operations, the reaction is different. Companies redesign their supply chain networks in response, and building sustainability into these revamps makes sense. In recent years, we’ve observed that the most opportune time to redesign a supply chain with sustainability in mind is, paradoxically, when the supply chain is broken.
AN EXTENSION OF REDESIGN
In today’s uncertain world, there is no shortage of global-scale disruptions to supply chains, and these are unlikely to diminish in the face of future uncertainties, such as climate change and geopolitical instability.
Framing SCS as part of a company’s ongoing supply chain network redesign efforts might be a way to secure resources for these programs.
Moreover, perhaps this rationale need not be restricted to global crises. A host of competitive challenges can require firms to review the structure of their end-to-end operations. A company might need to change the geographic profile of its supply base as political tensions rise, decentralize its supply chain to reduce risk, or reconfigure its last-mile operations in changing e-commerce markets.
Further research is needed into the relationship between sustainability efforts and managing and mitigating disruption risks. Meanwhile, current and potential disruptions can offer an opportunity to integrate sustainability into the design and management of supply chains.
Krish Nathan is the Americas CEO for SDI Element Logic, a provider of turnkey automation solutions and sortation systems. Nathan joined SDI Industries in 2000 and honed his project management and engineering expertise in developing and delivering complex material handling solutions. In 2014, he was appointed CEO, and in 2022, he led the search for a strategic partner that could expand SDI’s capabilities. This culminated in the acquisition of SDI by Element Logic, with SDI becoming the Americas branch of the company.
A native of the U.K., Nathan received his bachelor’s degree in manufacturing engineering from Coventry University and has studied executive leadership at Cranfield University.
Q: How would you describe the current state of the supply chain industry?
A: We see the supply chain industry as very dynamic and exciting, both from a growth perspective and from an innovation perspective. The pandemic hangover is still impacting decisions to nearshore, and that has resulted in a spike in business for us in both the USA and Mexico. Adding new technology to our portfolio has been a significant contributor to our continued expansion.
Q: Distributors were making huge tech investments during the pandemic simply to keep up with soaring consumer demand. How have things changed since then?
A: The consumer demand for e-commerce certainly appears to have cooled since the pandemic high, but our clients continue to see steady growth. Growth, combined with low unemployment and high labor costs, continues to make automation a good investment for many companies.
Q: Robotics are still in high demand for material handling applications. What are some of the benefits of these systems?
A: As an organization, we are investing heavily in software that will allow Element Logic to offer solutions for robotic picking that are hardware-agnostic. We have had success deploying unit picking for order fulfillment solutions and unit placing of items onto tray-based sorters.
From a benefit point of view, we’ve seen the consistency of a given operation improve. For example, the placement accuracy of a product onto a tray is far higher from a robotic arm than from a person. In order fulfillment applications, two of the biggest benefits are reliability and hours of operation. The robots don't call in sick, and they are happy to work 22 hours a day!
Q: SDI Element Logic offers a wide range of automated solutions, including automated storage and sortation equipment. What criteria should distributors use to determine what type of system is right for them?
A: There are a significant number of factors to consider when thinking about automation. In my experience, automation pays for itself in three key ways: It saves space, it increases the efficiency of labor, and it improves accuracy. So evaluating which of these will be [most] beneficial and quantifying the associated savings will lead to a “right sized” investment in technology.
Another important factor to consider is product mix. With a small SKU (stock-keeping unit) base, often automation doesn’t make sense. And with a huge SKU base, there will be products that don’t lend themselves to automation.
With any significant investment, you need to partner with an organization that has deep experience with the technologies that are being considered and … in-depth knowledge of the process that is being automated.
Q: How can a goods-to-person system reduce the amount of labor needed to fill orders?
A: In most order picking operations, there is a considerable amount of walking between pick faces to find the SKUs associated with a given order or set of orders. Goods-to-person eliminates the walking and allows the operator to just pick. I have seen studies that [show] that 75% of the time [required] to assemble an order in a manual picking environment is walking or “non-picking” time. So eliminating walking will reduce the amount of labor needed.
The goods-to-person approach also fits perfectly with robotic picking, so even the actual picking aspect of order assembly can be automated in some instances. For these reasons, [automation offers] a significant opportunity to reduce the labor needed to fulfill a customer order.
Q: If you could pick one thing a company should do to improve its distribution center operations, what would it be?
A: Evaluate. Evaluate the opportunities for improving by considering automation. In my experience, the challenge most companies have is recognizing that automation is an alternative. The barrier to entry is far lower than most people think!
Toyota Material Handling and its nationwide network of dealers showcased their commitment to improving their local communities during the company’s annual “Lift the Community Day.” Since 2021, Toyota associates have participated in an annual day-long philanthropic event held near Toyota’s Columbus, Indiana, headquarters. This year, the initiative expanded to include participation from Toyota’s dealers, increasing the impact on communities throughout the U.S. A total of 324 Toyota associates completed 2,300 hours of community service during this year’s event.
The PMMI Foundation, the charitable arm of PMMI, The Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, awarded nearly $200,000 in scholarships to students pursuing careers in the packaging and processing industry. Each year, the PMMI Foundation provides academic scholarships to students studying packaging, food processing, and engineering to underscore its commitment to the future of the packaging and processing industry.
Truck leasing and fleet management services provider Fleet Advantage hosted its “Kids Around the Corner Foundation” back-to-school backpack drive in July. During the event, company associates assembled 200 backpacks filled with essential school supplies for high school-age students. The backpacks were then delivered to Henderson Behavioral Health’s Youth & Family Services location in Tamarac, Florida.
For the past seven years, third-party logistics service specialist ODW Logistics has provided logistics support for the Pelotonia Ride Weekend, a campaign to raise funds for cancer research at The Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center–Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. As in the past, ODW provided inventory management services and transportation for the riders’ bicycles at this year’s event. In all, some 7,000 riders and 3,000 volunteers participated in the ride weekend.
After years in the military, service members and their spouses can find the transition to civilian life difficult. For many, a valuable support on that journey is the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) SkillBridge program. During their final 180 days of service, participants in the program are connected with companies that provide them with civilian work experience and training. There is no cost to those companies while the service member continues receiving military compensation and benefits.
Both sides benefit from the program. “We’re proud to work with SkillBridge to give back to our military veterans for the bravery and sacrifices they’ve made for all of us,” Troy Pederson, director of training and development at LiftOne, a Hyster-Yale dealer and established SkillBridge employer, said in a release. “In the last year, we’ve helped 10 SkillBridge interns transition from military to civilian life, and the value and positive impact of the program can’t be overstated. At LiftOne, we’ve gained so much from the experience and diverse mix of technical and leadership skills of our SkillBridge candidates.”