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.
Volumes have significantly increased in recent months due to a spike in online shopping as people stayed quarantined due to Covid-19, said Plantation, Florida-based DHL Express, which is a business unit of logistics giant Deutsche Post DHL Group.
Urgent shipments such as masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment (PPE) also contributed to holiday peak season-like volumes, but these volumes have come without the usual pre-season preparation time. “Inbound shipment volume is booming, particularly from Asia,” Greg Hewitt, CEO for DHL Express U.S., said in a release. “Our customers are relying on us to deliver their shipments, whether it’s personal protective equipment (PPE) or home necessities, so we must add staff at our hubs, gateways and on the road to continue providing our customers with excellent service.”
The hiring includes:
about 150 jobs at the DHL Express Americas Hub, at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, has seen a 30% year-over-year volume increase.
about 30 jobs at the company’s gateway at the Miami International Airport, which connects to destinations in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, and just added a new Hong Kong – Los Angeles – Miami flight that will run five times per week.
more than 50 permanent employees at DHL Express’ gateway at Chicago’s O'Hare International, which saw a 25% volume increase year-over-year in 2020.
Looking into future months, DHL expects shipment volumes to remain high as U.S. businesses restock inventory to prepare for factory and store re-openings in sectors of the economy that have been shuttered throughout the pandemic. DHL’s forecast was echoed today by another logistics group predicting a pending rebound as U.S. companies open up again following coronavirus restrictions.
Many freight-related economic indicators hit record lows in April, prompting the transportation industry analysis group FTR Transportation Intelligence to say the month likely marked the bottom of the pandemic contraction. Following an uptick in payroll employment in May, FTR said it expects post-April trucking conditions to improve sharply, although they are currently so low that they will still remaining in negative territory through early 2021.
Bloomington, Indiana-based FTR said its Trucking Conditions Index (TCI) reading for April was the lowest ever measured at -28.66, beating the previous low of -16.08 in September 2008.
“Spot market load volumes have recovered well since bottoming out in mid-April, although the recovery seems to have stalled out a bit. The unprecedented depth and speed of the contraction and the severity of disruption in supply chains and freight networks will make it difficult to assess in the short run whether higher volumes are merely temporary or part of a sustained rebound,” Avery Vise, FTR’s vice president of trucking, said in a release. "The critical question is what happens once consumers and businesses exhaust the trillions of dollars that Washington has pumped into the economy to offset the pandemic’s financial consequences. All that we can be sure about is that market conditions will not be as bad as they were in April.”
FTR says its TCI tracks changes in five conditions of the U.S. truck market, including: freight volumes, freight rates, fleet capacity, fuel price, and financing. Combined into a single index number, a positive score represents optimistic conditions, while a negative score represents pessimistic conditions and readings near zero signal a neutral operating environment.
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.