inbound
Here’s our monthly roundup of some of
the charitable works and donations by
companies in the material handling and
logistics space:
; For the ninth consecutive year,
Con-way Freight donated its services to the
nonprofit group Elves & More, shipping
more than 1,000 bicycles as well as toddler gifts to underprivileged children in
Canton, Ohio. Local Con-way Freight
employees also volunteered to assemble
the bikes in time for Christmas.
; American Crane and Equipment
Corp. packed and delivered more than
170 children’s backpacks filled with
snacks, stationery, and toiletries to the
Reading, Pa., YMCA’s Transitional
Housing Program. The company’s vendors also donated cash, toys, clothing,
and other items to the program.
; Volga-Dnepr Airlines
transported medical equipment on short notice
from Oslo, Norway, to Freetown, Sierra
Leone, on behalf of the Norwegian
Red Cross. The flight delivered urgently needed equipment for a new Ebola
treatment center in a remote region of
the country.
; Invata Intralogistics Inc., specialists in distribution center design, and
Partners In Health, an international
social justice organization that provides
health care for the poor, are collaborating to build a distribution center to
serve the people of Haiti.
; The staff of Battery Handling Systems
Inc. (BHS) raised over $1,000 for the
St. Louis Breast Cancer Coalition in a
companywide donation drive. Personnel
were encouraged to donate $1 per workday; each dollar was matched by BHS.
; Wal-Mart Stores Inc. donated cash
and transportation services to Wreaths
Across America, which delivers holiday wreaths to veterans’ cemeteries and
memorials nationwide. The retailer also
provided 16 tractor-trailers and nearly 100 drivers to assist in delivering
wreaths in 13 states and the District of
Columbia.
Logistics gives back
The controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, better known as “
fracking,” requires massive amounts of
water, chemicals, and sand, which
are mixed together and are forced
into wells in order to extract oil and
gas from shale. The water splits open
the rock, and the sand props the cracks open so machinery can extract
the oil or gas. That much is pretty well known.
What many people don’t know is that since 2013, hydraulic fracturing has created huge demand for a particular type of sand. As reporter
Dan Weissman explained recently on the American Public Media radio
show “Marketplace,” technological advances that year allowed the energy industry to develop shale extraction on a commercial scale, mostly
in the United States, Canada, and China. In just two years, supplying
sand to fracking operations has become a $10 billion industry involving some 100 billion pounds of that commodity annually, according to
Weissman.
Think about that. Practically overnight, the energy industry has
had to develop a supply chain capable of extracting, processing, and
delivering—and later removing—millions of tons of a hard-to-handle
commodity in some pretty remote areas.
Just another reminder that sometimes logisticians are asked to move
heaven and earth.
Moving heaven and earth (or at least
water and sand)
We’re already well into winter, but it’s never too late to make sure your
highway trucks and lift trucks are prepared for cold weather. Here are
two sources of info on how to “winterize” your operation.
For highway truck fleets, Ryder’s Online Center for Winter
Preparedness offers videos and a series of free tip sheets for downloading. Topics include winter tire care, fueling, safe driving, and emergency preparedness (including a checklist of supplies for drivers). One of
the more interesting tip sheets looks at special winter considerations for
new engine technologies. Among the engine-care tips: Drivers of trucks
with newer engines should not let them idle as a means of warming up
the engine. That’s because the engine temperature could be too low,
preventing the diesel particulate filters from reaching the temperatures required to convert soot to ash. Soot may therefore build up and
eventually clog the filter. For more details and advice, go to campaigns.
ryder.com/WinterDriving.
For lift trucks, the website Purchasing.com, an online marketplace
for material handling and construction equipment, offers a collection
of winter safety tips, including advice about operator and forklift protection, forklift operation, and even forklift attachments. To read the
tips, go to www.purchasing.com and click on News.
Are your vehicles “winterized”?
