The holiday shopping season is here! The holiday shopping season is here! And things are about to get busy. The National Retail Federation (NRF) announced that 151 million consumers shopped online or in-person this holiday weekend and spent an average of $299.60 each. That equates to roughly $45.2 billion spent over the holiday weekend. However, in a major shift in the holiday shopping spree, more people shopped online than in store, with Cyber Monday sales up 12%. More and more shoppers are turning to the Web as retailers are pushing their “Black Friday” sales out to all channels, and not limiting them strictly to the day after Thanksgiving. This is all about appeasing the customer and driving more interest and sales. But let’s be honest, who really wants to deal with the madness of crowding into a mall during the season? I know I sure don’t. That’s why I love to see the Cyber Monday sales continuing throughout the month.
So happy shopping, and now, on to the news.
- UPS forecasts 10% rise in holiday deliveries
- Amazon touts new drone prototype
- PINC Air cleared for take-off by the FAA
- Descartes acquires Oz Development, Inc.
- Omnitracs partners with Drivewyze for weigh station bypass
- FAST Act Highway bill: what’s in and what’s out
- Diesel prices continue to decline
UPS is forecasting a busier holiday season this year. The company’s latest estimates put holiday deliveries at nearly 630 million packages. UPS expects to make a record number of deliveries to residential addresses as well – 60% of all deliveries will go to housing units. This week is certainly one of the busiest for logistics operations, and UPS is feeling the crunch. At the Ontario International Airport, for example, UPS runs three operations around the clock.
Amazon is showing off a new drone prototype for its planned 30 minute unmanned delivery service, dubbed Amazon Air. The new drone contains elements of both a helicopter and an airplane, including a rear-facing propeller. According to Amazon, the drone can fly 15 miles at an altitude of nearly 400 feet. In a new commercial (see below), Amazon demonstrates how the drone stores the package, intelligently navigates to the delivery location, and gently drops the package off before returning to the warehouse. From the looks of it, you’ll need a big back yard for Amazon to effectively use the drone to deliver packages.
Speaking of drones, PINC Air has been granted a Section 333 exemption by the FAA, which clears the product to
initiate commercial operations in US Airspace. PINC Air is an aerial sensor platform that operates both outdoors and indoors to inventory hard-to-reach assets using an array of sensors that include GPS, RFID, OCR and Barcode readers. This means the drones can operate in a number of ways, including yard management to track asset inventory, inventory management to check for finished vehicles in the automotive industry, locating high-value assets, and cycle counting in warehouses. According to Matt Yearling, PINC’s CEO:
“This is a major milestone in the development of PINC Air. With the FAA’s primary concern being safety, this exemption grant supports our design goal of safely collecting supply chain inventory data in industrial environments, away from any residential areas. PINC Air operates in geo-fenced commercial zones, under the supervision of qualified personnel, while following a pre-programmed path to ensure safety and effectiveness.”
Descartes Systems Group announced that it has acquired Oz Development, Inc. Oz is an application integrator geared towards the SMB market, with a focus on integrating ERP, CRM, e-commerce, and supply chain platforms. The company’s key partnerships include NetSuite and UPS, and it has about 7,000 customers. For Descartes, the opportunity is two-fold. First, it has immediate access to 7,000 customers to which it can up-sell additional solutions and services. This could be especially beneficial for those companies looking to expand their transportation footprint. Secondly, it gives Descartes a foot in the door to the SMB world. As we’ve written about here before, the SMB market is severely underserved. With a foothold in this market, Descartes has the opportunity to increase its business in this market that is set to explode.
Living in Massachusetts, I don’t think I’ve actually seen a truck weigh station open. However, for truckers in the other 49 states (and apparently Massachusetts at some times), Omnitracs, a provider of fleet management solutions to transportation and logistics companies, and Drivewyze, a mobility services company, are offering an innovative solution to bypass wait times at weigh stations. Through the integration of the Drivewyze PreClear bypass solution with Omnitracs’ mobile computing platforms, commercial truck drivers are able to bypass weigh stations up to 98% of the time depending on the operators’ safety scores. The weigh station bypass service will adhere to a tiered roll-out early in the new year, starting with Omnitracs’ MCP110 and MCP200 mobile computing units; the MCP50 unit is expected to follow suit soon thereafter. Upon completion, more than 360,000 Omnitracs-equipped trucks in North America will be able to access and benefit from the weigh station bypass services powered by Drivewyze.
FAST Act, the long-term highway bill, has been finalized this week by a joint Congressional committee. One of the key highlights includes the industry-hoped-for removal from public view major components of the DOT’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability carrier scoring and ranking program. Additionally, the bill requires FMCSA to fix the program prior to making the scores public again. Here’s a quick look at what has changed in the now 1,300 page bill:
In: CSA reform, driver drug testing reform, detention time study, insurance rule study, changes to FMCSA rulemaking process, military veterans in the trucking industry, and windshield-mounted technology.
Out: Under-21 truckers, size / weight reform, carrier hiring standards, rebutting court ruling on state labor laws for drivers, and tolling changes.
And finally, diesel prices continue to decline. Diesel prices across the United States dropped an average of 2.4 cents during the week ending Nov. 30, according to the Department of Energy’s weekly report. The national average price for a gallon of on-highway diesel is now $2.421. Fuel prices dropped in all regions except New England during the week. The nation’s most expensive diesel can be found in California at $2.717 per gallon, followed by the Central Atlantic region at $2.567 per gallon. The cheapest diesel can be found in the Gulf Coast region at $2.254 per gallon, followed by the Lower Atlantic region at $2.355 per gallon.
That’s all for this week. Enjoy the weekend and the song of the week, Black Magic Woman, by Carlos Santana.
[…] VIEWPOINTS | FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2015[10] This Week in Logistics News (November 28 December 4)[11]The holiday shopping season is here! The holiday shopping season is here! And things are about […]