INBOUND
Here’s our monthly roundup of some of the charitable works and donations by
companies in the material handling and logistics space.
b Employees of XPO Logistics Inc. in Rockford, Illinois, received a welcome
surprise during the company’s annual Fill the Truck holiday drive for animal
welfare. The Pound Bakery, an Illinois-based manufacturer of pet treats, donated
$30,000 worth of goods—enough to fill one of XPO’s 53-foot tractor-trailers end
to end. Fill the Truck raised a record 40,000 pounds of pet food, accessories, and
cleaning supplies as well as $2,200 in cash.
b Joseph Tillman, founder of educational development company TSquared Logistics, along with 13 other logistics leaders,
participated in century (100-mile) bike rides around the country to raise funds to fight type 1 diabetes (T1D) in 2019. In total,
the 14 “Logistics Leaders for T1D Cure” team members raised
$75,000 for the cause in 2019.
b Ifco, a company that operates a pooling system for reusable plastic containers
(RPCs), has donated the use of 5,000 RPCs annually to Food for Life, a food-res-
cue organization in Ontario, Canada. The arrangement will allow Food for Life
to use Ifco’s RPCs all the way through its supply chain, eliminating the need for
it to repackage donations that arrive in RPCs into cardboard boxes for shipping.
b Canadian truck dealership Maxim Truck & Trailer raised $27,202 for the
Christmas Cheer Board of Winnipeg, Manitoba, at its annual charity pancake
breakfast in December. Along with the cash donation, the company collected a
pallet load of nonperishable food items for the charity. n
Logistics gives back
Schneider, WIT name first
“driver ambassador”
With the country’s unemployment rate at a 50-year
low, transportation and logistics service providers
are struggling to fill open positions. Now, the trucking, intermodal, and logistics services company
Schneider has launched a recruiting initiative that targets a demographic that has
historically been under-represented in the trucking profession: women.
Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Schneider collaborated with the nonprofit group
Women In Trucking to create the position of “driver ambassador” within Women
In Trucking’s diversity recruitment program. The ambassador’s mission will be to
encourage people of all genders, and particularly females, to consider a career in
the trucking industry.
In February, the partners named their first ambassador: Kellylynn McLaughlin, a
Schneider driver and trainer who has also volunteered in the Peace Corps, Truckers
Against Trafficking, and other driving-related groups throughout the last decade.
As a driver ambassador, McLaughlin will attend events like the Mid-America
Trucking Show and visit commercial driver training schools and college campuses
to raise awareness of careers in the trucking profession.
“We want to encourage the employment of women in the industry,” Debbie
Sparks, vice president of Women In Trucking, said in a release. “Women don’t
think of themselves as professional drivers, so when they see Kellylynn, they think,
‘If she can do it, I can do it.’ She is sophisticated, articulate, passionate, and perfect
for this role.” n
Spend enough time around
marine docks, warehouses, or
intermodal ramps, and you can
get bored by the sight of ship-
ping containers. To most supply
chain pros, the giant steel boxes
are simply utilitarian tools.
But designers with an architecture firm called Lot-Ek see them
as something else entirely: building blocks for architecture. The
firm specializes in the “adaptive
reuse” (upcycling) of industrial
objects like 40-foot ocean containers, which it literally cuts,
opens, and unfolds to create
highly conceptual buildings and
other complex structures. To
date, Lot-Ek has incorporated
the boxes into projects in China,
South Korea, New York, and
Denmark.
For its latest project, the firm
has teamed up with JR, a French
street artist known for installing large-scale murals in public
spaces … occasionally without
the permission of property owners or law enforcement. For this
installation, known as “Triangle
STACK #2,” Lot-Ek designed
a mazelike structure using 16
stacked shipping containers. The
60-foot-high temporary structure supports an “urban-scale”
JR mural called “The Chronicles
of New York City,” a collage of
photographs of more than 1,000
New Yorkers.
The art installation is situated
in Domino Park, the former site
of a Domino Sugar factory in
Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. The site is around
the corner from the Brooklyn
Museum, which is hosting a collection of JR’s murals, photographs, videos, films, and dioramas through May 3. n
Shipping containers
stack up in Brooklyn
