Recent UPS service failures on Amazon’s supply chain services have caused rumbles of dissatisfaction in the industry, suggesting a “vendor divorce” from United Parcel Service (UPS). The most severe service failure was the Christmas season of 2013. To the defense of UPS, December of 2013 saw several severe weather situations, resulting in near-impossible operating conditions. Sorting centers were understaffed because employees could not get to work, and delivery trucks were stranded in many regions.

Especially if you’re in the food supply chain, you should be aware: the Extra-Virgin Olive Oil you may be buying or transporting may be a fraud! From 60 Minutes and The New York Times to various other sources, there have been various articles and segments on this topic.

The short answer is sure. If you’re willing to negotiate your own pricing on each individual shipment with a carrier you have likely never used before and assume the risk for the actions of a driver you have never used.

More than any other holiday season, the Christmas and New Year period is the season for freight theft. The volume of easily sold consumer products in transit and parked make for enticing targets for criminal elements. The elongated holiday and trimmed staff present a security challenge for carriers and warehouses that are ill-prepared for this downtime.

2016 will roll out several changes in transportation protocols, and every shipper needs to understand and prepare for the modifications. Current security challenges, along with an upcoming election year, mean that many additional changes are likely coming. Here at the top 5: 

In a recent blog, we stressed the importance of making the effort to become a "preferred shipper” to ensure equipment availability in a shrinking equipment market.  If you are a shipper relying on for-hire carriers, or a 3PL, you certainly should be aware of the looming issues conspiring to make it more expensive and more difficult to get your goods delivered. The one bright spot in the industry are falling fuel prices over the last 12 months. However, while this lone bit of positive news is certainly welcome, it will have little effect on the equipment availability issue that is spurred by several factors: a serious driver shortage, a lack of interest in young people to take on a driving career, ever-increasing government regulation and tightening capital markets. 

The U.S. trucking industry is pressuring Congress to allow men and women as young as 18 to drive 80,000 pound commercial trucks inter-state on U.S. highways. Federal regulations currently require that drivers be at least 21 before they can drive commercial trucks across state lines. This plan, before the Senate, and is part of highway legislation and would greatly increase the number of teenagers behind the wheel of big rigs. The pressure and importance of this issue is in response to the continuing driver shortage.

New rules governing the transportation and distribution of food began to take effect in June this year. There is profound concern among industry experts that many food haulers still are not ready to implement these new rules. During a panel discussion at the 2015 Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Kentucky, lack of carrier preparedness was a major concern. Contamination incidents and outbreaks of food borne illness have a significant impact on public health.

The North American trucking industry is a roughly $700 billion-a-year market, and yet its use of technology does not reflect that capitalization. This is especially evident in the way shippers and logistics services providers manage their freight with the thousands of LTL and Truckload carriers operating today. Even in today's technology boom, the majority of shippers still don’t use Transportation Management Systems (TMS) to automate the planning and execution of their domestic freight shipments. Utilizing a transportation management system to manage domestic freight shipments can measurably increase your efficiency.  In this article we'll examine the benefits of using a TMS for things like carrier selection, visibility and freight spend reduction. Our source material will be a study, conducted by American Shipper between mid-August and mid-September, which incorporates feedback from 190 shippers and LSPs, as well as 21 domestic trucking carriers about their perspectives on domestic transportation management systems. The impact of this study is to understand why shippers and Logistics Service Providers use a TMS system and the benefits derived from such systems.

As we as consumers all know, e-commerce is a huge and vital part of the retail industry in 2015. How do the outlooks on e-commerce differ or align between some of the top retail giants in the nation?