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.
Flooding could disrupt supply chains across the Southeast U.S. this week, as Hurricane Debby sweeps slowly over the region state with drenching rain after making landfall this morning in northern Florida’s Big Bend.
The region’s major cargo airports will likely duck those impacts, but there is a high risk of flooding at the ports of Jacksonville, Savannah, and Charleston, as well as eight intermodal hubs around Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, according to a video press conference from supply chain risk management firm Everstream Analytics.
Although it has lower wind speeds forecast than past storms like Hurricane Beryl just last month, the hurricane could do most of its damage through extended, soaking rainfall.
That’s because the Category 1 storm will lose strength after moving off the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, leaving its remnants to drift very slowly and “basically stall out” across the Southeast region over the next five days, Everstream Chief Meteorologist Jon Davis said. The result will be a “major flooding event” due to the long duration of impacts, leading to “extremely high rainfall totals” that could cause significant supply chain disruptions, he said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had similar warnings, saying “Potentially historic heavy rainfall, associated with Hurricane Debby, across southeast Georgia and South Carolina through Friday morning will likely result in areas of catastrophic flooding.”
Specific commercial disruption could strike industries including aerospace & defense, life sciences, manufacturing, oil & gas, and high-tech, according to an analysis by Resilinc. Those potential impacts could involve nearly 17,000 sites at risk, which perform activities like manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, fabrication, and testing.
In response, the emergency response nonprofit American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) is urging residents of the Southeast to heed emergency management officials’ warnings about everything from safely evacuating to sheltering in place– and asking members of the logistics community to be ready to help. “In addition to high winds and a significant storm surge, Hurricane Debby has the potential to bring huge amounts of rain and significant flooding to many parts of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. That has us especially concerned, because flood waters are often the deadliest and most underestimated effect of a hurricane,” Kathy Fulton, ALAN’s executive director, said in a release.
The event also highlights the increasing need to improve supply chain resiliency, according to Moody’s. In an analysis, the firm noted that following Hurricane Beryl, which was the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record in the North Atlantic Basin, Hurricane Debby is the second U.S. hurricane landfall of 2024, which is forecast to be an active hurricane season. “With the increasing frequency and severity of hurricanes, the resilience of supply chains faces unprecedented challenges,” John Donigian, Supplier Risk Management Strategy, Moody’s, said in a statement. “Proactive supply chain planning, backed by advanced risk data and analytics, is essential. For instance, by analyzing real-time data on hurricane paths and intensities, businesses can pre-emptively reroute shipments, secure alternative suppliers, and adjust inventory levels to mitigate potential disruptions.”
The third-party logistics service provider (3PL) Total Distribution Inc. (TDI) is continuing to grow through acquisitions, announcing today that it has bought REO Processing & REO Logistics.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but REO Processing & REO Logistics is headquartered in West Virginia with 10 facilities across West Virginia in Parkersburg, Vienna, Huntington, Kenova, and Nitro as well as in Atlanta, GA.
Headquartered in Canton, Ohio, TDI is a wholly owned subsidiary of Peoples Services Inc. (PSI). The combined TDI and PSI businesses operate over 12 million square feet of contract and public warehouse space located in 65 facilities in eight states including Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida.
As an asset-based 3PL, the PSI network offers a range of specialized material handling and storage services including many value-added activities such as drumming, milling, tolling, packaging, kitting, inventory management, transloading, cross docking, transportation, and brokerage services.
This latest move follows a series of other acquisitions, as TDI bought D+S Distribution, Inc. and Integrated Logistics Services Inc. in May, and Swafford Trucking, Inc., Swafford Warehousing, Inc., and Swafford Transportation, Inc. in February. The company also bought Presidential Express Trucking, Inc. and Presidential Express Warehousing & Distribution, Inc. in 2023.
The freight equipment original equipment manufacturer (OEM) Wabash will use a federal grant to launch a project with the University of Delaware that will save electricity by incorporating lightweight solar panels into refrigerated trailers and truck bodies, the Indiana company said today.
The three-year project, set to begin next year in partnership with the University of Delaware’s Center for Composite Materials, is intended to play a pivotal role in making zero-emission mid-mile transportation a commercially viable option, Wabash said.
Those materials are important because batteries powering heavy trucks can weigh between 5,000 to 10,000 pounds, often limiting the payload capacity and drawing significant energy from the electrical grid when charging, the partners said.
“This project has the potential to revolutionize refrigerated transport by reducing reliance on the electrical grid and minimizing overall emissions,” Michael Bodey, director of technology discovery and innovation at Wabash, said in a release. “While many of today’s zero-emission products focus on tailpipe emissions, they still draw power from energy grids, which often rely on non-renewable sources. Our goal is to offer a truly green solution—a well-to-wheel approach—that accounts for the full life cycle of energy consumption, from production to usage.”
Pharmaceutical groups are breathing a sigh of relief today after federal regulators granted many of them more time to come into compliance with strict track and trace rules required by the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA).
The regulation was initially scheduled to be required by 2023, but that has been delayed due to the steep logistics and IT challenges of managing the reams of data that must be generated, stored, and retrieved. The most recent target update was November 27, but industry experts say many businesses would probably have missed that date, too.
Facing that reality, the FDA yesterday again delayed that deadline until next year, setting new deadlines for various trading partners: Manufacturers and Repackagers have until May 27, 2025; Wholesale Distributors have until August 27, 2025; and Dispensers with 26 or more full-time employees have until November 27, 2025.
Pharmaceutical businesses quickly cheered the move. “HDA and our pharmaceutical distributor members applaud the FDA’s decision to grant an exemption for the DSCSA’s enhanced drug distribution security (EDDS) requirements for eligible trading partners,” said Chester “Chip” Davis, Jr., president and CEO of the Healthcare Distribution Alliance (HDA), which is an industry group representing primary pharmaceutical distributors, who connect the nation’s pharmaceutical manufacturers with pharmacies, hospitals, long-term care facilities, and clinics.
“While many in the supply chain have made significant progress throughout the stabilization period, some are still struggling to establish data connections. Given the interdependency of the pharmaceutical supply chain, FDA’s phased-in approach will allow supply chain partners to better align their data exchange processes to ultimately achieve full implementation and also acknowledges the progress made thus far,” Davis said.
“As we continue to make progress toward full DSCSA implementation, HDA and our distributor members will remain engaged with our public- and private-sector partners to share information and education, as we move toward our shared goal: helping patients and providers safely access the medicines they need.”
For example, millions of residents and workers in the Tampa region have now left their homes and jobs, heeding increasingly dire evacuation warnings from state officials. They’re fleeing the estimated 10 to 20 feet of storm surge that is forecast to swamp the area, due to Hurricane Milton’s status as the strongest hurricane in the Gulf since Rita in 2005, the fifth-strongest Atlantic hurricane based on pressure, and the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane based on its peak winds, according to market data provider Industrial Info Resources.
Between that mass migration and the storm’s effect on buildings and infrastructure, supply chain impacts could hit the energy logistics and agriculture sectors particularly hard, according to a report from Everstream Analytics.
The Tampa Bay metro area is the most vulnerable area, with the potential for storm surge to halt port operations, roads, rails, air travel, and business operations – possibly for an extended period of time. In contrast to those “severe to potentially catastrophic” effects, key supply chain hubs outside of the core zone of impact—including the Miami metro area along with Jacksonville, FL and Savannah, GA—could also be impacted but to a more moderate level, such as slowdowns in port operations and air cargo, Everstream Analytics’ Chief Meteorologist Jon Davis said in a report.
Although it was recently downgraded from a Category 5 to Category 4 storm, Milton is anticipated to have major disruptions for transportation, in large part because it will strike an “already fragile supply chain environment” that is still reeling from the fury of Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago and the ILA port strike that ended just five days ago and crippled ports along the East and Gulf Coasts, a report from Project44 said.
The storm will also affect supply chain operations at sea, since approximately 74 container vessels are located near the storm and may experience delays as they await safe entry into major ports. Vessels already at the ports may face delays departing as they wait for storm conditions to clear, Project44 said.
On land, Florida will likely also face impacts in the Last Mile delivery industry as roads become difficult to navigate and workers evacuate for safety.
Likewise, freight rail networks are also shifting engines, cars, and shipments out of the path of the storm as the industry continues “adapting to a world shaped by climate change,” the Association of American Railroads (AAR) said. Before floods arrive, railroads may relocate locomotives, elevate track infrastructure, and remove sensitive electronic equipment such as sensors, signals and switches. However, forceful water can move a bridge from its support beams or destabilize it by unearthing the supporting soil, so in certain conditions, railroads may park rail cars full of heavy materials — like rocks and ballast — on a bridge before a flood to weigh it down, AAR said.
Seagull Software, which makes “BarTender” label management software, today said it has combined with Mojix, a provider of item-level inventory management and traceability.
As a single company, the combined firms will offer new capabilities in end-to-end supply chain management, leveraging BarTender’s global customer base and value-added channel partner network with more than 250,000 customers across 175 countries.
“We believe that labeling is the key to addressing the traceability challenge,” Dan Doles, now acting CEO and Director of Seagull, said in a release. “BarTender’s labeling software is ubiquitous at the front end of the supply chain, enabling the printing of more than 100 billion labels each year. By combining with Mojix, we will capture and track that data through the supply chain, providing unparalleled item-level traceability and visibility.”
That approach will allow the partners to provide their customers with value-added solutions for compliance, sustainability, serialization, and inventory and asset management requirements across the supply chain ecosystem, according to Chris Cassidy, the newly appointed Chief Revenue Officer of Seagull.