Archive for Transportation – Page 2

One choice international shippers face is whether to sign long-term contracts with ocean carriers or use freight forwarders and pay spot market rates. In the current environment, spot market rates are often lower, but shippers may face a service penalty when capacity tightens. Just as airlines overbook, so do ocean carriers. However, while airlines reward those who give up their spot, ocean carriers don’t. In an overbooking situation, ocean carriers… Continue reading

Everyone wants to know where truckload prices are headed in 2012. To get closer to an answer, there are several factors to consider that may—or may not—affect pricing this year.

For much of 2010 and 2011, the industry anticipated a “perfect storm” of regulation and legislation that would hit the market simultaneously, subsequently raising rates through the roof. But although rates have risen more than their historical average for… Continue reading

Categories : Guest Commentary, Transportation
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There are three bedrooms upstairs, two decent-sized ones and the other the size of a mouse trap, dark and forgotten, its walls painted black, and off to the side an old Singer sewing machine resting on a small wooden desk. “This will be your room,” my parents said to me with a smile (I think it was a smile) and… Continue reading

I am on borrowed time this morning because I am attending an executive breakfast seminar on social media in supply chain management, a topic I’ve written much about the past couple of years (for example, see “Supply Chain Executives Define Social Media Too Narrowly” and “Is Social Media in Supply Chain Management a Waste of Time?”). I’ll share my takeaways from this morning’s seminar in a future posting… Continue reading

In the US we speak about “pallet pooling services,” while in the UK people speak of “pallet networks.” It turns out these are two very different things. The UK and the US — two nations divided by a common language.

“Pallet pooling services” involve shippers renting pallets from companies like CHEP. These service providers collect the empty pallets at the end of the supply chain, inspect them, and efficiently… Continue reading