newsworthy
Saddle Creek buys warehousing,
fulfillment operator
Third-party logistics service provider Saddle Creek Corp. said it has
acquired ProLog Logistics Inc., a San Diego-based warehousing and
fulfillment company. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Founded in 1996, Prolog provides order fulfillment, warehousing,
e-commerce, call center, and customer care services from locations
in San Diego and Lexington, Ky. All ProLog employees will be
retained, and the business will continue to operate as ProLog
Logistics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Saddle Creek.
In a statement, David Lyons, Saddle Creek’s founder and chair-
man, said the ProLog acquisition will “allow us to deepen our ful-
fillment capabilities, providing a broader range of services and
greater value to our customers.”
This is Saddle Creek’s second acquisition in just over a year. In
November 2009, it acquired ServiceCraft Logistics, a third-party
service provider based in Buena Park, Calif.
Saddle Creek is headquartered in Lakeland, Fla. ;
short takes
Transportation Management Center (TMC), a division of C.H.
Robinson Worldwide, has continued the rollout of its worldwide
Managed TMS services by adding a control tower operations center in Mumbai, India. ... The parent company of Bastian Material
Handling has formed Bastian Development, a commercial real
estate company that will provide real estate development, logistics, and material handling services on a national basis. … ABB, a
power and automation technology company, has acquired Baldor
Electric Co., a North American manufacturer of industrial motors,
for $4.2 billion. Baldor motor products are commonly used in
material handling equipment. ... RedPrairie Corp. has donated the
use of its On-Demand WMS software to Samaritan’s Feet, a nonprofit organization that aims to provide shoes to 10 million
impoverished children over the next 10 years. Samaritan’s Feet is
currently using On-Demand WMS at its distribution center in
Charlotte, N.C., and will soon roll out the software at facilities in
California, Indiana, and Washington, D.C., as well as sites in South
America and Africa. ... UPS has reached an agreement to sell its
UPS Logistics Technologies unit to private equity investment firm
Thoma Bravo, LLC. UPS Logistics Technologies, headquartered in
Baltimore, employs about 145 people to develop high-tech transportation routing and fleet management systems. ... Brambles
Ltd., the parent company of CHEP, is acquiring IFCO Systems, a
provider of reusable plastic containers in 23 countries and pallet
management services in the United States. ... B2B Industrial
Packaging has acquired privately held Pac Fast Corp., which is
located in Yorba Linda, Calif. The merger allows B2B Industrial to
serve West Coast customers more effectively and gives the company a presence in the nail, screw, and staple markets.
First driver safety ratings yield
mixed results for carriers
The first publicly available data measuring
truck driver safety showed mixed results for
major trucking companies and third-party
logistics service providers, with eight of the 23
companies receiving scores that could warrant
federal government involvement in their operations at some point.
According to the data, made available Dec.
12 by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety
Administration (FMCSA), eight carriers, including Knight Transportation, USA Truck, FedEx
Ground—the ground parcel unit of FedEx
Corp.—and Covenant Transportation, scored in
certain categories at levels that could prompt
FMCSA “intervention” into their businesses.
The intervention process normally begins
with a warning letter from the agency, providing the companies with an opportunity to
review their performance and make improvements without further agency involvement.
FMCSA intervention does not automatically
signify that a carrier’s operations are unsafe.
Analysts said the scores will prompt truckers to
be more aggressive in their recruitment of drivers with strong safety track records. As a result,
up to 9 percent of marginal drivers are expected
to be pushed out of their rigs. With fewer qualified drivers available, driver pay is expected to
escalate significantly over the next two years.
But any harm that carriers suffer from paying
higher driver wages will easily be offset by their
ability to demand higher rates due to tightening
capacity, according to analysts.
Jon A. Langenfeld, transport analyst for
Milwaukee-based investment firm Robert W.
Baird & Co., said the results are good news for
large trucking companies that have the scale
and resources to better manage the driver
recruitment process, mitigate the shipper’s
burden in securing capacity, and limit the
impact of higher insurance premiums with an
ability to self-insure.
“Publicly available safety data creates [an]
opportunity for insurance companies to actively
monitor scores. Additionally, potential legal and
social consequences of hiring carriers with poor
safety ratings may guide shippers’ decision-mak-ing process,” Langenfeld said in a research note.
The results of the driver safety assessments
“impact all carriers regardless of size, with safer,
larger carriers benefiting,” he said. ;
