Friedmann’s fearless forecast, 2009 edition

Peter A. Friedmann’s rapid-fire rundown of issues affecting international traders is one of the highlights of the annual Northeast Trade and Transportation Conference of the Coalition of New England Companies for Trade (CONECT). Friedmann, a well-connected trade attorney and ex-Senate counsel, represents CONECT and other trade groups in Washington.

Here are just a few nuggets from this year’s address:

Mexican trucks. The Teamsters were behind the spending bill provision that cut funding for the on-again, off-again cross-border trucking pilot mandated by NAFTA. Mexico will file a complaint with the WTO but may not be placated. Meanwhile, Friedmann is fielding calls from agricultural producers hurt by Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs on 90 U.S. products. Most of U.S. growers’ “irregulars”—damaged fruits and vegetables—are shipped to Mexico, but the tariffs make that business a money-loser.

The Employee Free Choice Act. Passed by the House but temporarily blocked in the Senate, EFCA would allow employees to form a collective bargaining unit without a secret ballot and would require employers to submit to binding arbitration in some circumstances. “Business will throw everything they have against this issue. It will rivet everybody’s attention.”

West Coast labor. If the Teamsters get Los Angeles and Long Beach to require drayage drivers to work for carriers under the ports’ clean air rules, the union will legally be free to organize the drivers. Drayage costs could conceivably rise enough that importers will shift more cargo away from those ports. “The question the ports need to ask is, Do we care about clean trucks or about creating union jobs?”

Trade security tit for tat. China now wants 24-hour advance notice prior to loading U.S. exports on board a vessel. Expect more of the same, Friedmann warned. “We have to be prepared for the possibility that every time we impose security restrictions on imports, our foreign customers will demand the same restrictions on U.S. exports.”

big stuff? bring it on!

Suppose someone asked you to ship 10 pieces of machinery, each of them 11 feet tall and weighing more than 10 tons. Could you do it? Or how about an

entire manufacturing plant with all of its equipment still inside? Would you even know where to begin?

For companies that specialize in oversized shipments, known as project cargo, it’s all in a day’s work. Take a recent move handled by Crowley Maritime Services, for example. In January, Crowley’s logistics and liner services groups transported a 235-ton incinerator from Richmond, Va., to the Caribbean island of Tortola. The carrier shipped 42 individual pieces (including one that was 30 feet long and weighed 80,000 pounds) on 10 flatbed trucks and in four open-top containers. Crowley drove the vehicles right onto one of its roll-on/roll-off barges and delivered them to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. At St. Thomas, the shipment was transferred to a connecting carrier for safe delivery to Tortola.

inbound

10 tips for tough times

Everybody is looking for ways to cut costs right now. But it’s not always easy for logistics and DC managers to come up with fresh ideas.

Hyster Co. says it can help. The lift-truck manufacturer has posted a booklet on its Web site that presents 10 strategies for managing material handling costs. Each of the tips includes a quick-scan list of steps you can take, followed by a paragraph explaining the potential benefits.

Areas where you may “strike gold” include energy costs, safety and insurance, equipment financing and taxes, purchasing and contracts, and maintenance.

Some of the suggestions will be nothing new to managers, but the lineup includes plenty of “gee, I never thought of that” ideas, such as renegotiating insurance coverage or taking advantage of municipal, state, and federal tax breaks for job creation, energy efficiency, and the like.

Download the free booklet at http://hyster.com/Americas/en-US/ FinancialSolutions/ Home.htmx.

Toyota makes a
“tree-mendous” donation

Plenty of companies are “going green,” but few take that mandate as literally as Toyota Material Handling U.S.A. (TMHU) has. The lift-truck manufacturer is donating one living tree for every lift truck the company sold in the United States in 2008 and for every 8-Series truck sold in 2007. That works out to 57,000 trees to be planted at national forests and local parks through the manufacturer’s alliance with the Arbor Day Foundation. TMHU’s employees will help to plant some of the trees at locations around the country.

That’s just the latest chapter in Toyota’s four-year-old environmental initiative. The company has also been researching and developing alternative fuels for material handling equipment and introduced an innovative hybrid concept lift truck at January’s ProMat exhibition.