ers instead of 28-foot doubles, “it’s going to come to a bad
end,” he warned.
ONGOING CHALLENGES
Things haven’t been going much better in other parts of the
business. The trucking supply chain was hammered in the
first quarter by brutal weather that took many contracted
truckers off the road and forced shippers and brokers into
the higher-priced spot market. Unsurprisingly, spot rates
soared as users vainly searched their routing guides for
supply only to find a lot of it had migrated there.
Warmer weather has provided some pause. A 16-percent
increase in available trucks on the spot market for the week
ending April 12 helped restore some balance to the load-to-truck ratio, according to data from DAT, a consultancy.
As a result, spot market rates dipped significantly from the
prior week’s levels.
But no one believes the market will flip with the bloom
of daffodils. Mother Nature only piled on to secular prob-
lems that have constrained supply. Besides a shortage of
drivers, there are rising equipment and fuel costs, poten-
tially higher insurance premiums, and new government
directives that have curbed fleet productivity. The result is
narrowing profit margins that make an already-demanding
job that much harder. The burden is especially onerous
for the nation’s owner-operators, who account for about
two-thirds of the country’s truck fleet. If owner-operators
abandon the field for more-remunerative work, supply will
become even tighter, experts said.
Eric McGee, senior vice president of transportation for
Lowell, Ark.-based J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., said at
the NASSTRAC conference in Orlando, Fla., in mid-April
that the supply-demand scale is somewhat balanced at this
time. However, that balance is so tenuous that it will only
take one disruption—such as labor strife on the West Coast
waterfront as management and unionized dockworkers try
to make a June 30 deadline for reaching a new contract—to
return to the ultra-tight conditions of February and March,
he said.
—M.S.
selected the HighJump WMS and performance manage-
ment system to optimize the accuracy and performance
of its supply chain. … Lennox International Inc., a heating,
air conditioning, and refrigeration company, has doubled
its distribution footprint via a strategic redesign of its
supply chain using Manhattan Associates’ transportation
management system, warehouse management system,
and labor management system in six U.S. distribution cen-
ters. … Cushman & Wakefield’s Metropolitan Area Capital
Markets Group has orchestrated the $29 million trade
of five industrial buildings in Avenel, N.J. TA Associates
purchased the portfolio, which totals 329,000 square feet.
… Crowley’s Carib Energy subsidiary has been awarded a
multiyear contract to supply containerized U.S.-sourced
liquefied natural gas (LNG) to its first industrial customer,
Coca-Cola Puerto Rico Bottlers. … International Business
Systems (IBS), an integrated enterprise resource planning
and supply chain solution provider, has entered into a
partnership with TZA to add a best-of-breed labor man-
agement system to the IBS Business Suite. IBS has also
formed a partnership with MercuryGate International,
a transportation management system (TMS) company,
to bolster the TMS capabilities of its IBS Dynaman WMS
and IBS Enterprise ERP software. … The Trading Partner
Alliance of the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and Grocery
Manufacturers Association (GMA) has released the best
practices guideline “Brand Protection and Supply Chain
Integrity: Methods for Counterfeit Detection, Prevention
and Deterrence,” completed in collaboration with Inmar
and Authentix. … Accellos, a provider of supply chain
execution software solutions, has announced an integra-
tion of its Prophesy Dispatch Transportation Management
System and MacroPoint, a service that provides location
tracking for brokered loads. … Plug Power has signed a
memorandum of understanding to create a joint venture
partnership with Hyundai Hysco Co. Ltd. that will result
in the development, manufacture, and sale of hydrogen
fuel cell solutions for material handling applications in
Asian markets. … Westfalia Technologies has been select-
ed by the Sazerac Co., a U.S. distilling company, to install
automated storage and retrieval systems and its Savanna.
NET WMS software in two of its Kentucky distilleries. … J
Rayl Transport Inc. has partnered with U.S. Oil to use Gain
Clean Fuel compressed natural gas (CNG) as the trucking
firm works to convert its fleet from diesel to CNG. …
Swisslog has been chosen by Hat World to install a state-
of-the-art omnichannel order fulfillment and storage
system.
