USPS to launch LTL service
ground breakers
The U.S. Postal Service planned to launch less-than-truckload operations
on May 6 as part of a test program named “Collaborative Logistics.” But it’s
doubtful that the revenue generated by the service will have much impact
on the $38 billion-a-year U.S. LTL market, analysts say. The service offering,
announced April 2 in a filing with the U.S. Postal Rate Commission, cannot
go beyond two years unless the commission approves a one-year extension
beyond that. By law, revenues generated from the service cannot exceed $10
million a year, plus inflation, though USPS can seek to have the revenue
ceiling raised to $50 million a year.
USPS will offer the service on a space-available basis with one- to four-day
transit times. It will leverage its existing surface transportation network,
and will price the product competitively with other providers.
Jon A. Langenfeld, transportation analyst for Robert W. Baird & Co., says
that because of the operational demands of competing in the LTL sector, he
doesn’t see USPS “as a viable near-term threat to the industry.”
David Humes, an executive with consultants AFMS Logistics Management
Group, says USPS’s revenues would barely make a dent in the overall LTL
market. “It sounds to me like a plan to use up extra capacity as volumes are
down. The question is whether this is a quick fix or a long-term strategy.”
Averitt Express has opened four
new Texas locations in order to
improve transit times in hundreds of
lanes in and out of the state. The facilities are located in Amarillo, Wichita
Falls, Del Rio, and Corpus Christi.
Averitt now has 18 locations in Texas.
Averitt has also opened a new
service center in Winchester, Va. The
facility, which features 14,000 square
feet of dock space and 28 bay doors,
will allow the carrier to improve transit times in northern Virginia and
serve new points in eastern West
Virginia and western Maryland.
importers win Lacey Act concessions
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has narrowed the list of wood and plant
products that are subject to provisions of the Lacey Act that bar business transactions involving illegally harvested plant and related products.
The USDA action is a victory for U.S. importers and customs brokers, which
faced the potentially onerous task of filing detailed declarations about their
source materials for a broad range of wood and plant products. The industry
also won a concession from USDA and the Bureau of Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) to phase in the provisions’ implementation. The agencies
agreed to enforce compliance in four phases, based on tariff classifications,
with the last phase beginning April 1, 2010.
Since April 1, CBP has been electronically receiving the declarations and forwarding the data to the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
(APHIS). The declarations must include shipment details, genus and species of
the source plant, country of harvest, quantity of plant material, and more.
Importers, customs brokers, and customs officials maintained they had no
advance warning of the provisions and were taken aback by their complexity.
They voiced their concerns to policymakers and agencies charged with writing
the implementing regulations.
Despite these victories, importers still have much to worry about. For
instance, if the genus and species are unknown, the declaration must contain
the name of every species of plant that may have been used in the products.
And if the country where the plant was harvested is unknown, importers must
list the names of all of the countries from which the plant may have been taken.
“This is part of the absurdity [of the law],” said Cynthia D. Allen, educational
institute director for the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of
America at the recent Northeast Trade and Transportation Conference of the
Coalition of New England Companies for Trade (CONECT). “There could be
thousands of possible combinations.”
—T.G.
Aspen, a third-party logistics service firm, has opened a new warehouse in Ontario, Calif. The building
has rail spur access and offers easy
access to and from Southern
California’s ports. Aspen, which operates approximately 2. 5 million square
feet of ambient and refrigerated distribution space in the United States,
also operates its own truck fleet.
The Evans Network has expanded
into Louisiana with the opening of a
new service center in New Orleans.
The Evans Network offers logistics
and transportation services, with a
fleet of over 1,350 tractors and 80
service centers nationwide.
ProLogis has leased space at its
ProLogis Park Ontario Airport location
in California to Safelite AutoGlass.
Safelite will occupy 282,000 square feet
of the 681,000-square-foot building.
Nike has broken ground on a distribution center in the Jiangsu province in
eastern China. The new facility is
expected to occupy 1. 3 million square
feet of space, which will make it the
largest distribution facility to date in
that country. The DC, which will house
footwear, apparel, and sports equipment, will incorporate high-tech sorters
and conveyors into its operations.
