This summer in the Boston area has been an interesting one. We have seen temperatures fluctuating in a bizarre pattern that I cannot ever remember, with a few days in August only reaching a high temperature of the upper sixties. So, when the leaves started changing colors in early August and dropping off the trees, I couldn’t help but wonder if the cooler temperatures this summer were bringing an extremely early fall. It turns out […]

Wednesday marked the 22nd anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia’s death. Whether you are a fan of the Grateful Dead, or any of the large number of side projects he worked on, Jerry Garcia is a cultural icon and a very talented guitarist / songwriter. I actually never saw him play, and outside of hearing Touch of Grey hit mainstream radio in the summer of 1987 while on a West Coast road trip with […]

The 2017 Tour de France concluded this past Sunday after 23 days, 21 stages, 2,200 miles, and over 86 hours of riding. To put some perspective on the logistics behind the Tour, the race consisted of 198 riders, 167 of whom would finish the race. There are generally somewhere in the range of 10 to 12 million spectators that will line the roads during the course of the event. There are 40+ team cars, dozens […]

Back to school? My kids are only a couple of weeks into summer vacation and I’m already seeing ads for back to school shopping. I simply can’t wrap my head around that one yet. But, when I hear those words, there are three immediate thoughts that jump into my head. The first is of my own memories of going back to school (the excitement faded as I got older). The second is of Rodney Dangerfield […]

After weeks of seeing “last day of school” posts across social media, the day has finally come for me. And by me, I mean for my kids. In my quaint town just outside of Boston, we had a few more snow days than our neighbors. While my kids loved the extra sledding days at the time, they were certainly ready for school to come to an end. And now that school is officially out, it […]

It’s been a busy week in the battle between Amazon and Walmart. Late last week, Amazon made a lot of noise with the announcement that it had agreed to acquire Whole Foods for nearly $14 billion in cash. This move is an obvious effort to bolster Amazon’s lagging grocery business, while hopefully making a dent in Walmart’s stronghold on the grocery business. Walmart had its turn as well with the announcement that it was acquiring […]

According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), Americans are anticipating spending more on Father’s Day gifts this year than any other year. So just how much are Americans looking to spend? Let’s just say that the amount is insane. To be more specific, the NRF is expecting total spending to hit $15.5 billion this year, which is $1.2 billion more than last year. This isn’t overly surprising given the fact that Americans seem to spend […]

The rise of e-commerce is making its mark on brick and mortar retailing. We’ve seen plenty of big name retailers changing their brick and mortar strategy, including closing or downsizing their stores, carrying less on-hand physical inventory, and using stores as an e-commerce fulfillment channel. We’ve also seen the impact on malls across the country; namely, less people are visiting malls these days. The result is empty storefronts, which can result in the death of […]

Uber’s development of autonomous trucks has been in the news a lot lately. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been for the reasons the company has hoped. First, there was the lawsuit filed by Google alleging that Anthony Levandowski, one of Otto’s top engineers (and formerly an engineer at Google’s self-driving car venture Waymo) downloaded 14,000 confidential files related to automated vehicle tech and then left the company to found Otto. As a result, Uber fired Levandowsi. However, […]

As I work to finish up my latest Transportation Management Systems Market Study, one thing is becoming clear: the cloud is in. This applies to basically all software applications these days as more and more suppliers are offering cloud solutions, and more and more customers are demanding them. For my latest study, cloud revenues have soared past those of on-premise solutions. This wasn’t always a given, as a lot of customers were wary about shifting […]