In our continuing series of discussions with top supply-chain company executives, Loren Swakow discusses changes in the lift truck market, his company’s growth, and the impact of telematics.
David Maloney has been a journalist for more than 35 years and is currently the group editorial director for DC Velocity and Supply Chain Quarterly magazines. In this role, he is responsible for the editorial content of both brands of Agile Business Media. Dave joined DC Velocity in April of 2004. Prior to that, he was a senior editor for Modern Materials Handling magazine. Dave also has extensive experience as a broadcast journalist. Before writing for supply chain publications, he was a journalist, television producer and director in Pittsburgh. Dave combines a background of reporting on logistics with his video production experience to bring new opportunities to DC Velocity readers, including web videos highlighting top distribution and logistics facilities, webcasts and other cross-media projects. He continues to live and work in the Pittsburgh area.
Loren Swakow is managing director of Noblelift North America, a China-based forklift manufacturer that hired Swakow in 2016 to bring the brand to the U.S. and Canada. He has since overseen the spinoff of Noblelift Canada into a separate entity with 30 dealers. Noblelift currently has 115 dealers in the United States as well as dealers in Mexico and Colombia.
A life-long Chicagoan, Swakow was president of Scott Lift Truck in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, from 1977 to 2012. He holds a business degree from Carthage College in Wisconsin and an MBA from Northern Illinois University. Swakow is a past president of MHEDA (the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association) and past president of CITDA (Chicago Industrial Truck Dealers).
Q: How would you describe the current state of the material handling industry?
A: The material handling industry in America continues to flourish. E-commerce requires a lot of products to be moved continuously. We can see our brick-and-mortar stores continue to disappear. Americans are consuming online.
This requires efficient distribution centers. I believe they are driving the market. They need material handling equipment in volume. They require frequent deliveries to keep their stock levels optimum. These trucks coming in are all loaded with material handling equipment as well. The industrial buildings are getting taller to make the most of a smaller footprint. This requires a new style of lift truck that can reach up to 400 inches. This, in turn, requires the owner to buy new equipment. A lift truck that can go up to 400 inches is cheaper than the land to expand to hold extra product.
The wide acceptance of lithium power as the preferred source of energy is driving the market as well. Lithium batteries generally have a 10-year warranty. There are electric trucks that can have 50-degree gradeability. Cleaner, no maintenance, fast charging, opportunity charging, etc. are pushing the electric and internal combustion market to lithium. We are seeing higher and higher capacities as well. With the continual drop in lithium pricing out of China, the lithium lift truck is competing in price with the lead acid truck—we are seeing many cases where lithium can even be less expensive at initial purchase point. Leasing companies see this and are increasing residuals on lithium trucks. A five-year-old lead acid truck needs a battery. A five-year-old lithium truck still has five years of warranty left on the battery.
I feel these two issues—e-commerce and lithium—are keeping material handling growing at a rate faster than the economy.
Q: You have been in the lift truck industry since 1977. What major changes have you seen during your 45-plus years in the business?
A: Some of the biggest changes I’ve seen center on the safety of the driver and the pedestrians in the work area. Blue lights, strobes, headlights, and so forth used to be options. Now they are standard equipment. This helps protect the pedestrian, especially as we move to electric trucks, which are quieter than internal combustion units. The addition of a rear horn button so the driver can sound the horn without having to take his eyes away from the direction of travel is also helping to warn pedestrians of an oncoming vehicle.
Driver safety has been improved greatly as well. Seat belts, including those with ignition lock-out, are common. Speed reduction in turns is standard, reducing rollovers. Speed reduction with forks in the air also helps stabilize the truck. The advancements in safety are removing driver error from the equation and saving lives.
I have also seen the advent of OSHA certification, a justifiable requirement to drive a lift truck. The ergonomics of the lift truck have seen major advances as well. Driver comfort is important. Adjustable steering wheels are standard. Seats have greatly improved too, with multiple settings to adapt to each driver. When I think about the seats we were selling in the 1970s, I wonder how the driver could sit in them for hours at a time. Monitors in the dash now give the driver access to information on the machine’s operating condition.
The second major change I have witnessed would be with electric lift trucks, primarily Class I. We have moved from carbon pile, to contactors, to rectifiers, to solid state—all with the goal of reducing heat production in electric lift trucks and increasing efficiency. Heat is lost energy. The drive motor has seen major improvements as well. From DC to AC, with AC having the ability to put power back to the battery. These new motors also have a very long life span compared to electric motors with carbon brushes.
Electric lift trucks were slowly eating into the market share of internal combustion trucks. Now with the advent of lithium and all its attributes, I expect that replacement of IC trucks by electrics to increase. Lithium is here to stay. We are also seeing higher voltage in lift trucks compared to the 1970s. We have an 80-volt 5,000-pound truck that has twice the voltage of the old 36-volt electric truck. Again, higher voltage is more efficient and has less heat output and longer run times. All of this in a smaller configuration. We are using a lithium iron compound, the most stable and safe compound on the market.
Q: How have telematics and real-time information technologies affected lift truck operations?
A: Information gathering and dissemination has always been an important topic for American business. Telematics came into vogue when the large distribution centers with hundreds of lift trucks needed to keep track of their fleet—not only monitoring the location of the trucks but also tracking critical maintenance and operational information. This can be reviewed in an office without having to inspect the lift truck. This also prevents a lot of major repairs by noting an issue before it becomes crucial. Fleets of lift trucks are expensive. Fleet management is paramount to protect that investment.
With today’s large buildings, you need communication with the driver. Coming back and forth to the office is terribly inefficient. Lift trucks now come with USB ports to power communication devices or tablets, making the drive more efficient. Real-time information sharing between management and the driver promotes efficiency and saves both fuel and time, which translates into money for the owner.
Q: Noblelift has seen tremendous growth in recent years, with sales projected to rise 25% in 2023. To what does your company owe its success?
A: The product is exceptional. Our warranty cost compared to revenue is less than one-half of 1%.
When Noblelift first offered me the job in 2016, I turned it down. I had never heard of Noblelift, and I had a preconceived notion of Chinese quality. They asked me to come over for an interview. After I had personally seen the quality of the workmanship and rigorous inspection processes, I readily accepted the position. I will admit, I was extremely impressed with the quality control and high-tech manufacturing with robotics. I also found out they were building products for many well-respected OEMs, many of which I had represented at one time or another.
Our dealers felt the same way. They would give it a try, as I was offering free returns with no restocking charge. They discovered the same quality and slowly began to embrace the brand. We felt strongly that the brand needed to be promoted, and we have been marketing to achieve that.
China also put a bonus plan in place that promotes our team, so we are all pulling in the same direction. Last year, this amounted to 18% of pay. Morale is good, and financials are shared. We measure ourselves against the previous year’s month. We compare October of 2023 against October of 2022. This format takes cycles out of the comparison and I believe is a good measure of our consistent growth. We have been surpassing the previous year’s month [in terms of performance] on a regular basis for over four years now. With the addition of new products on a regular basis, I expect double-digit growth to continue for years to come.
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.”