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.
On April 27, 1984, a train operated by the Southern Pacific Transportation Co. left Los Angeles for South Kearny, N.J. This wasn't just another train, however. On board were containers stacked two-high on specially designed "wellcars." The lower boxes rested in a depression built into each car's center area, allowing the train to clear bridges and tunnels despite the higher cube.
The launch of the "Stacktrain," developed by steamship line American President Lines Ltd. and railcar manufacturer Thrall Car Manufacturing Co., became another "quantum leap" moment in the history of freight transportation in America. Railroads limited to hauling single trailers or containers on flatcars could now double their capacity with little additional investment. Shippers, meanwhile, would enjoy a second surge of fleet productivity just two years after Congress permitted the use of longer and heavier trucks on the country's interstates.
It's been a prolonged adolescence, but 30 years on, domestic intermodal—70 percent of which today moves in double-stack configuration—appears to have come of age. Its growth rate is currently about four times that of over-the-road truck. Shippers, brokers, and motor carriers concerned about road congestion, driver shortages, and volatile diesel prices continue to convert to intermodal; in the country's densely populated Eastern half, they are doing so over shorter stage lengths once reserved for trucks.
Intermodal has a ground-floor opportunity to capture up to 2 to 3 million truckloads crossing the U.S.-Mexican border each year (see sidebar). Intermodal executives are pursuing small to mid-sized brokers, truckers, and intermodal marketing companies (IMCs)—firms that retail intermodal service to shippers—with door-to-door services that didn't exist for them a decade ago. On the distant horizon is the $292 billion-a-year private truck fleet market, a category that may not be overly suitable for intermodal conversion because most moves are truck-friendly short-hauls from DC to store, but that could offer opportunities under certain scenarios.
During the 12-month period that ran through the end of 2014's first quarter, the domestic intermodal system moved 19,070 containers and trailers of dry van freight per calendar day, according to the consultancy FTR Associates. In the prior 12-month period, 18,573 units moved through the system daily. Larry Gross, a principal at FTR who specializes in intermodal, said the year-over-year increase—497 units per day—is significant. Conversion from over-the-road accounted for 15 percent of intermodal's year-on-year growth, Gross estimates.
A TOUGH SELL
Intermodal executives aware their industry has a spotty track record of operational consistency focus more time these days on education than anything else. To newcomers, they tout intermodal's benefits (economies of scale, fuel efficiency, environmental friendliness, etc.). To former users that may have been burned years ago, they say that multibillion dollar investments in ramps and terminals have brought intermodal close to being cost and service competitive with single-driver truck operators, mostly in the East.
"Intermodal is very much a truck-like business today. It's just done a little differently," said Matt Meeks, head of ABF Multimodal, a unit of Fort Smith, Ark.-based ArcBest Corp. (formerly Arkansas Best Corp.) that manages the company's intermodal business. To reinforce the tutorial, Schneider National Inc., the trucking and logistics giant and a big intermodal user, often sends a director-level executive on customer calls to explain the ins and outs of the service, according to Jim Filter, the Green Bay, Wis.-based company's vice president, intermodal commercial sales. It can be a tough sell, Filter admitted: Some shippers still have a hard time grasping intermodal; others worry about erratic rail service levels. Some potential users "think they need a rail siding to ship intermodal," he added.
Aware of these concerns, executives take pains to educate potential users in situations where intermodal might not work. The cost of truck dray services to and from intermodal ramps is a crucial element. The longer the dray distance, the higher the total expense. Service to and from high-density markets like Chicago and the Ohio Valley make dray service economical. However, the returns begin diminishing when the service hits lower-density markets.
A ratio of dray miles to over-the-road linehaul miles above 30 percent would likely put intermodal at a cost disadvantage to truck, according to Sam Niness, assistant vice president and general manager of "Thoroughbred Direct," the intermodal unit of Norfolk, Va.-based rail Norfolk Southern Corp. (NS). For example, if the truck mileage is 800 miles and a shipper and consignee are each 100 miles from their respective ramps, a 50-percent ratio (truck mileage divided by the total round-trip dray miles on both ends) would pose a conversion challenge, based on Niness's formula. However, change that truck haul to 2,000 miles, and intermodal becomes an attractive option. In an effort to reduce dray costs, a growing number of NS's customers are working with the railroad to position new distribution centers close to its ramps, Niness said.
OPENING THE DOORS
The past 10 years have seen dramatic changes in how intermodal is marketed. In a move to attract freight brokers, railroads have made intermodal available on the spot market, the world brokers live in. In addition, the rails now offer brokers door-to-door services by bolting drayage operations onto the traditional ramp-to-ramp business. While this has benefited all brokers, it has been a particular boon to smaller players, which had to find their own dray services but often lacked the scale or network contacts to do it economically.
In 2007, Union Pacific Railroad Co. created a unit called "Streamline" catering to smaller users that previously could only secure ramp-to-ramp service from their rail partners. By leveraging its enormous resources, Omaha, Neb.-based Streamline gave users the opportunity to offer end-to-end intermodal solutions to their customers, according to Kari A. Kirchhoefer, Streamline's president.
Rail intermodal folk contend that the ability to sell a door-to-door product has demystified intermodal service for many shippers and has opened doors previously closed. Potential users are "amazed at how easy it is," said Niness of Thoroughbred.
One objective of intermodal executives is to migrate intermediaries away from transactional business into long-term strategic relationships. Streamline, for example, has developed annualized rate programs for repeat broker customers, and pledges equipment and dray capacity in return for freight volume commitments. Kirchhoefer said many brokers working with Streamline shifted to the relationship model once they became confident in the service.
TECH RULES
The ubiquity of IT tools has enhanced intermodal's value proposition. Some large users have said they would like to see better data integration between their platforms and the rails' so that information doesn't have to be entered twice. On balance, however, the expanded use of technology has helped make users' lives easier, which is a good thing for providers.
It is commonplace today for users to share data on their current truck business with the railroads, which will, in turn, overlay their intermodal schedules on top of that to determine where rail service might be a better fit. C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., the third-party logistics service specialist, doesn't rely on published schedules; instead, it uses proprietary technology to analyze and assess intermodal opportunities, according to Phil Shook, director of intermodal for Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Robinson.
Robinson's analysis focuses on analyzing "normalized" ramp-to-ramp transit times to determine the highest likelihood of schedule variance, said Shook. Big intermediaries like Robinson have the resources to manage the dray process themselves.
Streamline offers an online visual graph that lights up to show where intermodal service is available, where ramps are located, and their proximity to key points of interest. Streamline's site also compares intermodal door-to-door and over-the-road pricing, but only shows the potential savings in each lane; access to the actual rates is limited to customers.
Then there are the disrupters like Chris Ricciardi, chief product officer of Chicago-based Logistical Labs. Ricciardi is directing a project that would consolidate all intermodal information in one pOréal. Today, users have to visit multiple sites to compare rates, services, and schedules from various providers.
Ricciardi's model is based on the premise that the one-stop online shop that has worked so well in areas like travel can be applied to the intermodal world. "We want," he said, "to be the Expedia of intermodal."
¡Hola, intermodal!
If the prospect of converting thousands if not millions of domestic truckloads to the rails isn't enough to put a smile on an intermodal executive's face, just ask him or her about the outlook south of the border.
The conversion trend in the U.S., while far from running its course, is well under way. But in the U.S.-Mexican market, the conversion game is still in the top of the first inning.
Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS), whose primary business is moving goods in and out of Mexico, estimates that 3 million truckloads per year have at least the potential for conversion to its intermodal services. Union Pacific Railroad Co., which operates across the border through a relationship with Mexican railroad Ferromex, estimates that 2 million daily truckloads are ripe for the taking. Dan Beers, intermodal project leader for the Mexican unit of Dallas-based third-party logistics firm Transplace, said the annual conversion rate could be as high as 6 to 8 percent.
Patrick Ottensmeyer, KCS's chief marketing officer, estimates that the railroad has a less than 3-percent share of the market that either could be converted today or would have the potential for conversion once planned new services become available. Transplace, which in mid-May announced a plan to expand its cross-border intermodal offerings, uses rail for only 1 percent of its shipments in the market.
Some of the growth spurs for intermodal are familiar to U.S. users: road congestion, volatile diesel fuel costs, and environmental concerns. Other factors, though, are unique to the border. Those include security concerns and a severe equipment imbalance favoring the northbound legs. Normally, two tractor-trailers move northbound for every one that heads south. However, this year, the demand imbalance has ranged from 3-to-1 to as high as 5-to-1. This has resulted in loaded trailers' sitting at the border for days or weeks waiting for tractors.
Intermodal can resolve a number of those problems, industry executives said. Containers moving by rail are often shipped "in-bond" to interior locations. This means intermodal users avoid the delays caused by detailed customs inspections, where truck operators must unload their cargo and have it examined before the goods are reloaded and the vehicles allowed to proceed.
Beers of Transplace added that abundant container capacity frees intermodal users from concerns over truck shortages. Security issues aren't a problem because a wellcar holding two stacked containers is virtually impossible to break into due to the height of the top box and the deep location of the bottom box.
Then there is the cost: According to Beers, intermodal shipping rates are 15 to 20 percent lower than truck. In addition, rail fuel surcharges are 40 to 50 percent less than truck because rail service is inherently more fuel efficient, he said.
Of course, working in the U.S.-Mexican market is not the same as playing on the domestic field. Different rules apply. Goods need to clear customs at origin and destination. Shippers will confront two sets of linehaul rates because the U.S. portion will contain fuel surcharges, while the Mexican portion won't. Insurance that is in force in the U.S. is not applicable in Mexico. Different policies and procedures at Mexican customs sometimes cause bottlenecks in the country even before the goods reach the border. Phil Shook, director of intermodal for third-party service provider C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., said Mexico suffers from a lack of intermodal ramp density that could temper growth prospects.
As in the U.S., the length of the rail move dictates the cost-effectiveness of cross-border intermodal service. A trip from Chicago to the border will offset the cost of the dray on either end. A trip from Dallas, on the other hand, will not pay its way. Users will also have to balance the cost-savings with the knowledge that a shipment moving by rail may arrive one to two days later than truck, even with the border congestion.
Another common denominator in both markets is the need to educate the marketplace on intermodal's pros and cons. Rail has only a 14-percent share of the value of the U.S.-Mexican market, according to the latest available U.S. government figures. Many shippers don't know any other form of transport besides truck, and they are unclear about intermodal's capabilities. Beers of Transplace said the conversion rate would be higher if shippers understood the benefits of intermodal and the trade-offs with over-the-road transport.
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.”