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.
Less than three years after Coyote Logistics LLC, the freight broker he co-founded with his wife Marianne, was acquired by UPS Inc. for $1.8 billion, Jeff Silver has parted ways with Big Brown.
Silver, who last year took a position at UPS' advanced technology group, resigned within the past two to three weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter. Marianne Silver remains at the unit as its chief people officer, according to a UPS spokesman, who confirmed Jeff Silver's departure. The company said that Silver left of his own accord.
The couple founded Coyote in 2006 and built it into a billion-dollar-a-year broker before its acquisition. UPS purchased Chicago-based Coyote in July 2015 in the largest acquisition in its 111-year history. Silver retained the Coyote CEO title after moving to the parent, but he relinquished day-to-day responsibilities.
Jonathan Sisler remains Coyote's president. However, Geoff Kelley, a long-time UPS executive who has headed up the Coyote transition team, has taken on a more prominent role in the unit's affairs, according to one of the people. A UPS spokesman declined to comment on any other personnel decisions at the Coyote unit. Coyote continues to contribute to UPS's growth and profitability. UPS folds Coyote's financial results into its supply chain and freight business unit, and thus doesn't separately disclose the unit's financial performance.
Atlanta-based UPS originally structured Coyote as a wholly owned subsidiary, instead of immediately absorbing it into the larger operation as it has done with other acquisitions. UPS also pledged to let the unit continue with its freewheeling modus operandi even though it contrasted greatly with UPS' own culture. Now, however, UPS has clamped down hard on the unit, according to the people. "UPS has Coyote in a chokehold," said one.
Tension had been building between Jeff Silver and UPS executives, many of whom thought that Silver, despite being a brilliant visionary, had too independent a personality to suit UPS' consensus-driven environment. Few at the parent were unhappy that Silver resigned, one of these people said. As far back as mid-2015, when the deal was consummated, observers were questioning whether the UPS and Coyote cultures could mesh beyond the standard honeymoon period. They also suggested it was simply a matter of time before the entrepreneurial Silvers would leave UPS.
Coyote came of age as Chicago began developing a worldwide reputation for its flamboyant logistics mindset. For generations a transportation hotbed because of its location in the country's midsection, Chicago in recent years has become a magnet for non-asset-based firms like brokers and third-party logistics (3PL) providers that understand the melding of physical distribution and information-technology skills, and that push hard to sell their services. An article appearing earlier this week on the financial website Marketwatch quoted Bobby Harris, CEO of Chicago-based 3PL BlueGrace Logistics LLC, telling Crain's Chicago Business that the city had become the "Hollywood of Logistics."
Young, smart people looking to make serious money have gravitated to Chicago to take positions on their employers' brokerage floors and aggressively buy and sell freight capacity. The Chicago brokerage floors, like trading floors in other industries, have become notorious for off-color banter and a "work hard, play hard" attitude.
Coyote's success stemmed largely from the Silvers' ability to recruit and develop talented employees, then let them do their jobs, said one of the people. "Much has been made of Coyote's technology, but the strength of the company was its people," the person said.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.