Ben Ames has spent 20 years as a journalist since starting out as a daily newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania in 1995. From 1999 forward, he has focused on business and technology reporting for a number of trade journals, beginning when he joined Design News and Modern Materials Handling magazines. Ames is author of the trail guide "Hiking Massachusetts" and is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.
Midwestern states are thawing out this week from multiple days of brutal cold that closed schools and businesses and delayed parcel deliveries as residents huddled against the dreaded polar vortex.
The weather threw frozen wrenches into the works of major supply chain players, canceling U.S. Postal Service mail deliveries around Chicago and Cincinnati, closing Amazon.com Inc.'s Chicago-area delivery stations, and prompting FedEx Corp. to warn customers of potential delivery delays, according to published reports.
Logistics software provider Convey Inc. tracked the impact of the big chill by analyzing 3.7 million shipments on its platform over the last two weeks of January and detecting a jump in exceptions from 9 percent to 11 percent nationally, the firm said.
Looking at data in the coldest states, the percent of retail shipment exceptions (deliveries having an issue in transit) spiked 191 percent in those weeks in the Northeast and Midwest, the firm said."According to Convey data, bad weather accounted for 45 percent of retail shipment exceptions nationally last week, and a whopping 992 percent increase in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan and Illinois over the past two weeks," Convey CMO Kirsten Newbold-Knipp said in a statement.
But even as the temperate has rebounded in February, weather forecasts now call for freezing rain and snow in the region this week, creating conditions that can stall deliveries and damage sensitive freight.
While the Midwest may feel cursed by this run of weather, some transportation providers in the nation's cold belt have deployed special measures they say can protect customers' supply chains from disruption. With the right equipment in hand, winter conditions are just another logistics challenge, according to West Chester, Pa.-based trucking company A. Duie Pyle.
The company offers "Protect from Freeze" service spanning roughly Nov. 15 to April 15 every year, according to John Luciani, Pyle's COO for less than truckload (LTL) Services. The service ensures that customers can ship or receive their water-based commodities regardless of the day of the week or temperature, carrying sensitive freight in specialized trailers outfitted with onboard heaters for both line haul and city operation, he said.
"Everything changes at 32 degrees in the Northeast, unless you're prepared for it," the company's website says. In addition to its heated trailers, Pyle's cold weather preparation includes overhead radiant heaters installed in the firm's service centers, located at the docks where workers store freight and do dock operations, he said.
Without those steps, extreme cold could harm freight such aswater-based paints and chemicals, water-based glues and starches, and sterilizing commodities used in stores and hospitals, according to Luciani. Pyle's service allows customers who are shipping those items during cold snaps to make anote on the bill of lading whether their freight is freezable. And in extreme cases, Pyle can even pack the shipment toward the back of the truck so it's delivered earlier in the day, ensuring less exposure to the elements, he said.
"We keep our heated trailer fleet on a schedule. We move those trailers on a planned cycle, running regular routes to all 23 LTL service centers, because you never want to leave a center vulnerable," Luciani said. "Those assets are pretty valuable this time of year, so we watch over them pretty hard."
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.