There seems to be no end to the demand for nearly instant delivery gratification of today's consumer. Interestingly, price doesn't seem to water down their desire to have what they ordered on their doorstep as soon as possible. In response, retailers are betting big on delivery services to drop off packages faster. Current delivery services are pretty much maxed out on capacity. Just last week Amazon announce it would form its own fleet of delivery vans, in addition to their existing fleet of trucks and planes, that would be operated by independent contractors to compliment, and eventually replace, current transportation providers.

The Trump administration on Friday escalated a trade war between the world’s two largest economies, moving ahead with tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods and provoking an immediate response from Beijing. Today Trump suggested possibly moving forward with additional tariffs which may exceed $200 million. The shipping community has been on edge about the impact the tariffs may have on the logistics market since the tariffs were proposed some 18 months ago. Before we examine the potential fallout lets outline precisely what industries will be affected.

Expedited transportation is something to know about. When to request it. How much weight are your shipping. What is the protect time. These are all considerations when something goes wrong in either the manufacturing timeline, finished goods refinement or shipping scheduling.  It doesn't matter where in the supply chain the problem occurred. It matters how you make up the time to avoid the ultimate disaster...a plant or partial plant shut down. At this point you are talking big money.  I know if we shut down any portion of an automotive plant in the 80's it was $10,000 per hour for every hour the truck was late. Extrapolate that to today's standards and you can appreciate the severity of tardiness in our business.

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) International Road check will take place June 5-7, 2018. Over that 72-hour period, commercial motor vehicle inspectors in jurisdictions throughout North America will conduct inspections of commercial motor vehicles and drivers. This year’s focus is on hours-of-service compliance. Here is a quick summary of the HOS rules:

Just as the domestic manufacturing sector is enjoying a strong and steady growth a 6.1-cent jump in diesel fuel prices across the country, during the week ending April 16, have diesel at its highest point of 2018, and its highest since the beginning of 2015. The U.S.’ average price for a gallon of on-highway diesel now stands at $3.104, the highest since the week ending Jan. 5, 2015, when diesel averaged out at $3.137. The increase was spurred by significant increases in all regions across the country, with the most significant increases being seen in the West Coast, which saw a 7-10 cent jump.

Toys R Us was very late to the e-commerce party at the turn of the millennium. To compensate for their outright short sightedness, they made a deal with what may have been the devil. In early 2000 Toys R Us signed a 10-year contract to be the exclusive vendor of toys on Amazon instead of investing in its own e-commerce platform. After the agreement ended, amazingly, Toys R Us was unsuccessful in implementing an in-house e-commerce presence. This coupled with over-dependence on a single vendor, a scary scenario, and draining debt servicing spelled eventual doom for one of the nation’s largest toy retailers.

The robotics market serving logistics and transportation companies is primed for rapid growth over the next five years. There is a myriad of routine, repetitive tasks common to warehouse and distribution systems that are well suited to robotic technology. Much of today's warehouses are manually operated, meaning they have little or no automation support. 

Coming off a strong 4th quarter in 2017 and riding a firm economic wave, demand for transportation services are expected to be strong in 2018. Preliminary estimates released by the government last week showed that the nation’s output increased at an annual rate of 2.6 percent in the final quarter of 2017. Although that performance amounts to less than the optimistic 4 percent annual growth that President Trump has promised, it is further evidence along with a sinking jobless rate and surging consumer confidence, of the economy’s resilience. All these positive trends along with tax breaks and incentives are expected to increase investment and production levels in the U.S. and increase the demand for transportation services. 

In one of the first reports dealing with detention the U.S. DOT has concluded that time spent detained at shipper or receiver facilities cuts truck driver pay by between $1.1 billion and $1.3 billion annually. An underlying concern is also the effect on driver safety. An extra 15 minutes spent detained beyond the standard two-hour window causes industry crash risk to climb 6.2 percent, the DOT has estimated. That’s an average of about 6,500 additional crashes annually, the report notes.

Industry experts agree that costs across all sectors worldwide will continue to rise in 2018, and the most successful shippers will be those that are able to mitigate their impact on profitability. The right technology will play an increasingly vital role in driving efficiencies across the global logistics network.