newsworthy
to sign for them, the supply chain has made positive
strides, Menzies said. Today, goods flow relatively freely into the
Port of Haiti and Port-au-Prince International Airport, though
airport capacity remains tight relative to the enormous
demand, he said. Most shipments are properly signed for and
reach their intended destinations, though ground deliveries in
the country remain an adventure, Menzies said.
And yet there are anecdotes that remind Menzies of the
yawning logistical gaps that still exist. In one refugee camp,
medical personnel used their personal credit cards to buy food
and water because the relief supplies on hand were inadequate.
For ALAN, which was created in 2005 following Hurricane
Katrina to serve as a conduit between the resources of the logistics community and disaster relief agencies needing supply
chain support, Haiti was the largest-scale disaster it has yet
confronted. Menzies said he has been satisfied with ALAN’s
response and performance. Still, he acknowledges there were
areas that need improvement.
For example, ALAN could be more precise and focused in connecting logistics companies, relief groups, and the needs at hand,
he said. Menzies also found that while the leading NGOs had
solid knowledge of the nuances of international logistics, the sec-ond-tier organizations, for the most part, did not. “One of our
jobs is to help point [the secondary groups] in the right direction
and support them with the necessary resources,” he said.
Menzies knows that, sadly, there will be another time and
place for ALAN’s services. For now, though, the attention
remains focused on Haiti, which he said would not be restored
to pre-quake conditions for at least three years.
Menzies and the thousands of relief workers with boots on
the ground in Haiti share one common fear: that the world has
already put Haiti in the rear-view mirror and will soon forget
about the misery that still very much plagues its people.
“The attention to disaster relief anywhere in the world quickly falls off,” he said. “People will say to themselves, ‘Well, we’ve
done enough,’ and they then move on to the next issue. It
would be a tragedy if that happened here.” ;
—Mark Solomon
Editor’s note: To learn how you can help with the relief
efforts, visit www.dcvelocity.com/haiti.
UPS unveils “Smart Pickup”
program
Traditionally, regular shipping customers of UPS
Inc. receive a daily visit from one of the company’s drivers even if the customer has no packages to be picked up that day. Now, for small to
mid-sized businesses, the delivery game has
changed.
In March, the carrier unveiled a new service
called UPS Smart Pickup that ensures a UPS
driver will stop at a location for a pickup only
when there is a shipment to be picked up. The
Atlanta-based giant said the service, which is
now in effect, is ideal for customers who want
the convenience of a scheduled pickup but who
may not need to ship a package every day.
The move, which is part of the company’s
Decision Green environmental program, is
designed to help the carrier reduce the amount of
fuel it burns. Company executives said the new
initiative will eliminate 8 million miles from the
total driven by UPS each year in the United States.
UPS said it will save 793,000 gallons of fuel and
cut 7,800 metric tons of CO2 emissions as a result.
“Before UPS Smart Pickup, UPS would often
arrive at a customer’s location only to discover
that the customer had no packages for pickup
that day,” said David Barnes, UPS’s chief infor-
mation officer, in a statement. “For the first time,
a UPS service integrates the company’s opera-
tional and customer-facing technology to elimi-
nate unnecessary stops.”
Barnes said a customer using existing UPS
shipping technology will be able to process a
package for shipment each day prior to a pre-
determined cutoff time. The shipping system
then automatically communicates with the car-
rier’s internal operations systems to notify driv-
ers via their handheld computers that a pickup
is required, without the need for the customer
to make a phone call or schedule a shipment
online. The result is that a pickup is only sched-
uled when a customer processes a package in a
UPS shipping system, Barnes said.
Barnes said the service is a good choice for
customers “interested in cost-effective ways to
make environmentally responsible choices,
while at the same time helping UPS reduce
miles and lessen our carbon footprint.”
UPS will charge a weekly flat fee of $10 for
the service. ;
