DC Velocity - March 2019

16 DC VELOCITY MARCH 2019 www.dcvelocity.com newsworthy

After months of struggling to find affordable capacity, truck shippers are finally beginning to see relief, thanks to softening rates and falling fuel prices, according to the latest monthly market index from the freight transportation consultancy FTR.

Bloomington, Ind.-based FTR’s Shippers Conditions Index (SCI) for November moved from negative territory to a positive reading of 0.1, marking the ranking’s first positive reading in more than two years and its best since August 2016. As its name suggests, the SCI is a compilation of factors affecting the supply-demand environment for shippers, with a reading above zero representing favorable conditions and a below-zero score pointing to trouble.

FTR expects those conditions to continue, predicting that the SCI will stay within a range close to neutral throughout 2019 and even move into more positive territory if freight rates continue to be pushed lower by forces such as weakening demand, strong truck equipment sales, and accelerated driver hiring, the firm said.

“Conditions have improved noticeably for ship-
pers in the last few months,” Todd Tranausky,
vice president of rail and intermodal at FTR, said
in a statement. “The prospect of sustained lower
fuel prices, increasing capacity in the truck and
rail sectors, and the first signs of a turn in rail
service raise the prospect of a much better 2019
than shippers expected during much of 2018.”
The news does not necessarily foretell worsen-
ing conditions for carriers, however. Thanks to
the slump in fuel prices, FTR’s Trucking Conditions
Index (TCI) also rebounded in November after
plunging for the previous three months.

Monthly shippers index hints at relief from high freight rates

go figure …

5.4%

The increase in the number of parcels handled by the U.S. Postal Service between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2018, over the same period last year. Meanwhile, the volume of first-class mail declined by 2. 8 percent, and marketing mail rose 4. 8 percent.

SOURCE: U.S. POSTAL SERVICE

Midwestern states were thawing out in February from multiple days of brutal cold that closed schools and businesses, and delayed parcel deliveries as residents hunkered down during the dreaded polar vortex.

The weather threw a frozen wrench into the works of major logistics industry players, canceling U.S. Postal Service mail deliveries around Chicago and Cincinnati, closing Amazon.com Inc.’s Chicago-area delivery stations, and prompting FedEx Corp. to warn customers of potential delivery delays, according to published reports.

An analysis by logistics technology firm Convey Inc. showed that retail shipment exceptions—defined as shipments encountering a problem in transit—spiked 191 percent in the Northeast and Midwest in the last two weeks of January. By comparison, exceptions jumped from 9 to 11 percent nationally in that period, according to Convey, which analyzed 3. 7 million shipments on its platform to assess the big chill’s impact on delivery operations.

“According to Convey data, bad weather accounted for 45 percent of retail shipment exceptions nationally [in the last week of January] and a whopping 992-percent increase in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan, and Illinois over the [last two weeks of January],” Convey CMO Kirsten Newbold-Knipp said in a statement.

NO MORE FROZEN ASSETS

While the Midwest may feel cursed by the run of bone-chilling weather, some service providers in the nation’s frost belt have deployed special measures to protect their customers from supply chain disruptions. With the right equipment in hand, winter conditions are just another logistics challenge, says West Chester, Pa.-based trucking company A. Duie Pyle.

The company offers a special “Protect from Freeze” service from roughly Nov. 15 to April 15 every year, according to John Luciani, Pyle’s COO for less-than-truckload (LTL) services. The service ensures that customers can ship or receive cold-sensitive commodities regardless of the day of the week or temperature, he said, adding that the freight is transported in specialized trailers outfitted with onboard heaters for both linehaul and city operation.

“Everything changes at 32 degrees in the Northeast, unless you’re prepared for it,” the company says on its website. To help protect freight such as water-based paints and chemicals, the carrier installed overhead radiant heaters in its service centers to mitigate temperatures at the docks where workers handle freight, Luciani said. In extreme cases, Pyle can even load the shipment toward the back of the truck so it’s delivered earlier in the day, minimizing its exposure to the elements.

“We keep our heated trailer fleet on a schedule. We move those trailers on a planned cycle, running regular routes to all 23 LTL service centers,” Luciani said. “Those assets are pretty valuable this time of year, so we watch over them pretty [closely].”