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 country's logistics infrastructure stretching from New England down to Virginia and west into
Ohio and the Great Lakes braced today for the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, a potential mega-storm
threatening to disrupt freight services for days and perhaps as long as a week or more.
As of 4 pm Eastern Time on Monday, the storm was about 100 miles from making landfall around Atlantic
City, N.J., according to projections from Earth Networks, a Germantown, Md.-based environmental research
firm that also operates a weather center. But the storm, which is expected to hit land late this evening
or very early Tuesday, was already wreaking havoc on low-lying coastlines from North Carolina to New
Jersey, with the worst of it well ahead for the region, said Mark Hoekzema, Earth Networks' chief meteorologist.
The hurricane is expected to collide with a cold front coming from the West, which is likely to increase Sandy's
ferocity. The cold front will also pull the storm westward and delay it from following a normal East Coast tropical storm's
path of speeding up the Seaboard before heading towards the Canadian Maritimes and then out to sea. As a result, the storm
is expected to linger through Wednesday across a 500-mile area populated by 50 million people. By Thursday, Sandy should
weaken as it heads eastbound towards the Atlantic.
Adding to the angst is that the storm will hit during a full moon that will raise already high tides
even more. An expected storm surge around midnight could raise water levels to 11 feet above normal high
tide, depending on the location.
In the Great Lakes, a key shipping point, wave heights could reach 22 to 31 feet. The Lakes,
however, will not experience storm surges that are more common in coastal areas. In a phenomenon
that Hoekzema said he's never seen before from a tropical storm, blizzard conditions are likely to
envelop high-elevation levels in the Appalachian region.
Hoekzema said wind gusts of 30 to 70 miles per hour, combined with downed trees, power lines,
traffic signals, and maybe as much as a foot of standing water from rainfall, will cause severe
disruptions to freight and passenger transportation systems. "It will be a number of days before it
gets back to normal," he said, noting that millions will be without power at least through the rest
of the week and possibly into the weekend.
Heavy rains and enormous waves will buffet the St. Lawrence Seaway, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and
Lake Huron, causing extended shipping delays, he said.
In a statement, FedEx Corp. said it is prepared to "provide service to the best of our ability" in the
affected areas. The Memphis-based company urged shippers to "contact your recipients to verify whether their
location is open or able to receive deliveries" before and after the storm. The storm may leave hundreds of
damaged facilities in its wake and could keep thousands away from work for days.
"Shipments not delivered, due to road closures and local restrictions, will be secured in one of our facilities,"
the statement said. "Delivery will be attempted when it is safe to do so."
UPS Inc. has routed its European flights bound for East Coast points like Philadelphia and Newark, N.J.,
to its primary air hub in Louisville, Ky. The Atlanta-based company's information technology (IT) facilities
in New Jersey and Maryland are closed for normal operations, but employees are working remotely to process
shipment information, according to Susan L. Rosenberg, a UPS spokeswoman. Any IT-related contingencies will
be handled at the company's data center in Alpharetta, Ga., a northern suburb of Atlanta, she said.
Rosenberg said UPS performed limited delivery this morning in Manhattan. However, it avoided the low-lying lower
Manhattan area that may bear the brunt of the storm surge as it makes landfall, she said. Some facilities of UPS
Freight, the company's less-than-truckload (LTL) arm, have already closed, she said.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's marine terminals and the Port of Virginia have closed. As of
this morning, the Port Authority's four airports remained open, but airlines had canceled flights there.
CSX Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp., the two main Eastern railroads, are telling customers to expect at least
three days of traffic delays in the affected areas. In a statement on its web site, Jacksonville, Fla.-based CSX
said its network has been closed from Richmond, Va., to Albany, N.Y. The closure extends as far west as Brunswick,
Md., CSX said.
Norfolk-based Norfolk Southern said in its web alert that it was experiencing traffic delays on its system. However, the alert did not say that the system had been shut down.
Nearly one-third of American consumers have increased their secondhand purchases in the past year, revealing a jump in “recommerce” according to a buyer survey from ShipStation, a provider of web-based shipping and order fulfillment solutions.
The number comes from a survey of 500 U.S. consumers showing that nearly one in four (23%) Americans lack confidence in making purchases over $200 in the next six months. Due to economic uncertainty, savvy shoppers are looking for ways to save money without sacrificing quality or style, the research found.
Younger shoppers are leading the charge in that trend, with 59% of Gen Z and 48% of Millennials buying pre-owned items weekly or monthly. That rate makes Gen Z nearly twice as likely to buy second hand compared to older generations.
The primary reason that shoppers say they have increased their recommerce habits is lower prices (74%), followed by the thrill of finding unique or rare items (38%) and getting higher quality for a lower price (28%). Only 14% of Americans cite environmental concerns as a primary reason they shop second-hand.
Despite the challenge of adjusting to the new pattern, recommerce represents a strategic opportunity for businesses to capture today’s budget-minded shoppers and foster long-term loyalty, Austin, Texas-based ShipStation said.
For example, retailers don’t have to sell used goods to capitalize on the secondhand boom. Instead, they can offer trade-in programs swapping discounts or store credit for shoppers’ old items. And they can improve product discoverability to help customers—particularly older generations—find what they’re looking for.
Other ways for retailers to connect with recommerce shoppers are to improve shipping practices. According to ShipStation:
70% of shoppers won’t return to a brand if shipping is too expensive.
51% of consumers are turned off by late deliveries
40% of shoppers won’t return to a retailer again if the packaging is bad.
The “CMA CGM Startup Awards”—created in collaboration with BFM Business and La Tribune—will identify the best innovations to accelerate its transformation, the French company said.
Specifically, the company will select the best startup among the applicants, with clear industry transformation objectives focused on environmental performance, competitiveness, and quality of life at work in each of the three areas:
Shipping: Enabling safer, more efficient, and sustainable navigation through innovative technological solutions.
Logistics: Reinventing the global supply chain with smart and sustainable logistics solutions.
Media: Transform content creation, and customer engagement with innovative media technologies and strategies.
Three winners will be selected during a final event organized on November 15 at the Orange Vélodrome Stadium in Marseille, during the 2nd Artificial Intelligence Marseille (AIM) forum organized by La Tribune and BFM Business. The selection will be made by a jury chaired by Rodolphe Saadé, Chairman and CEO of the Group, and including members of the executive committee representing the various sectors of CMA CGM.
The global air cargo market’s hot summer of double-digit demand growth continued in August with average spot rates showing their largest year-on-year jump with a 24% increase, according to the latest weekly analysis by Xeneta.
Xeneta cited two reasons to explain the increase. First, Global average air cargo spot rates reached $2.68 per kg in August due to continuing supply and demand imbalance. That came as August's global cargo supply grew at its slowest ratio in 2024 to-date at 2% year-on-year, while global cargo demand continued its double-digit growth, rising +11%.
The second reason for higher rates was an ocean-to-air shift in freight volumes due to Red Sea disruptions and e-commerce demand.
Those factors could soon be amplified as e-commerce shows continued strong growth approaching the hotly anticipated winter peak season. E-commerce and low-value goods exports from China in the first seven months of 2024 increased 30% year-on-year, including shipments to Europe and the US rising 38% and 30% growth respectively, Xeneta said.
“Typically, air cargo market performance in August tends to follow the July trend. But another month of double-digit demand growth and the strongest rate growths of the year means there was definitely no summer slack season in 2024,” Niall van de Wouw, Xeneta’s chief airfreight officer, said in a release.
“Rates we saw bottoming out in late July started picking up again in mid-August. This is too short a period to call a season. This has been a busy summer, and now we’re at the threshold of Q4, it will be interesting to see what will happen and if all the anticipation of a red-hot peak season materializes,” van de Wouw said.
The report cites data showing that there are approximately 1.7 million workers missing from the post-pandemic workforce and that 38% of small firms are unable to fill open positions. At the same time, the “skills gap” in the workforce is accelerating as automation and AI create significant shifts in how work is performed.
That information comes from the “2024 Labor Day Report” released by Littler’s Workplace Policy Institute (WPI), the firm’s government relations and public policy arm.
“We continue to see a labor shortage and an urgent need to upskill the current workforce to adapt to the new world of work,” said Michael Lotito, Littler shareholder and co-chair of WPI. “As corporate executives and business leaders look to the future, they are focused on realizing the many benefits of AI to streamline operations and guide strategic decision-making, while cultivating a talent pipeline that can support this growth.”
But while the need is clear, solutions may be complicated by public policy changes such as the upcoming U.S. general election and the proliferation of employment-related legislation at the state and local levels amid Congressional gridlock.
“We are heading into a contentious election that has already proven to be unpredictable and is poised to create even more uncertainty for employers, no matter the outcome,” Shannon Meade, WPI’s executive director, said in a release. “At the same time, the growing patchwork of state and local requirements across the U.S. is exacerbating compliance challenges for companies. That, coupled with looming changes following several Supreme Court decisions that have the potential to upend rulemaking, gives C-suite executives much to contend with in planning their workforce-related strategies.”
Stax Engineering, the venture-backed startup that provides smokestack emissions reduction services for maritime ships, will service all vessels from Toyota Motor North America Inc. visiting the Toyota Berth at the Port of Long Beach, according to a new five-year deal announced today.
Beginning in 2025 to coincide with new California Air Resources Board (CARB) standards, STAX will become the first and only emissions control provider to service roll-on/roll-off (ro-ros) vessels in the state of California, the company said.
Stax has rapidly grown since its launch in the first quarter of this year, supported in part by a $40 million funding round from investors, announced in July. It now holds exclusive service agreements at California ports including Los Angeles, Long Beach, Hueneme, Benicia, Richmond, and Oakland. The firm has also partnered with individual companies like NYK Line, Hyundai GLOVIS, Equilon Enterprises LLC d/b/a Shell Oil Products US (Shell), and now Toyota.
Stax says it offers an alternative to shore power with land- and barge-based, mobile emissions capture and control technology for shipping terminal and fleet operators without the need for retrofits.
In the case of this latest deal, the Toyota Long Beach Vehicle Distribution Center imports about 200,000 vehicles each year on ro-ro vessels. Stax will keep those ships green with its flexible exhaust capture system, which attaches to all vessel classes without modification to remove 99% of emitted particulate matter (PM) and 95% of emitted oxides of nitrogen (NOx). Over the lifetime of this new agreement with Toyota, Stax estimated the service will account for approximately 3,700 hours and more than 47 tons of emissions controlled.
“We set out to provide an emissions capture and control solution that was reliable, easily accessible, and cost-effective. As we begin to service Toyota, we’re confident that we can meet the needs of the full breadth of the maritime industry, furthering our impact on the local air quality, public health, and environment,” Mike Walker, CEO of Stax, said in a release. “Continuing to establish strong partnerships will help build momentum for and trust in our technology as we expand beyond the state of California.”