Topic: Columns

Despite decades of improvement in our transportation management systems (TMS), we still have not yet fully realized the value of these systems unless we’ve grasped the concept of settlement” and not just “freight payment.”

At its core, Seller Flex is geared toward making more products available with free, two-day delivery while helping to relieve overcrowded warehouses.

As we have since 2005, we charge into the New Year with our annual “Rate Outlook” cover story and corresponding Webcast where we round up the top analysts in each mode—trucking, air, ocean, rail/intermodal, parcel—to offer the most comprehensive snapshot available of what shippers can expect in terms of freight rates and capacity.

For shippers, the lack of pricing regulation in the various modes they’re dependent upon is causing an increasingly worrisome financial squeeze.

We tend to take it for granted, and it’s not until you stop and really digest some of the numbers that you realize just how dominant trucking is as a mode of freight transportation in the United States.

Our digital world has allowed us to connect with colleagues and business partners over great distances, creating the illusion that time zones and space have evaporated between us—that we’re there in the same room at the same time.

This new generation of buyers and analysts will have more visibility into not only their own order status, but also to a rapidly evolving marketplace and the forces that are making an impact on costs and services globally.

AsiaInspection (AI), a global provider of quality control services for businesses importing from the Pacific Rim, maintains that logistics managers should pay more attention to risk—irrespective of region.

The staff of Logistics Management (LM) is honored to present the logistics and transportation community with the results of the “34th Annual Quest for Quality Survey.”

We’ve seen mergers of brokers and acquisitions by third-partly logistics providers (3PLs) indicating that this is a market with room for margin exploitation.

Logistics Management (LM) has once again devoted a significant portion of its July issue to putting the “Annual State of Logistics Report (SoL)” into context for logistics managers.

According to the Association of American Railroads (AAR), intermodal rail traffic in March 2017 jumped 21% over February totaling almost 1.3 million units, representing a 4% increase over 2016 traffic and a new record in U.S. intermodal volumes.

When you want to take a broad snapshot of the demographics of a particular industry, it’s often best to put research reports aside and simply show up to a few of that market’s bigger trade show or conferences.

According to “Global Logistics 2017,” a recent report released by the London think-tank Transport Intelligence (Ti), the overall contract logistics market is estimated to have grown by 3.9% in real terms in 2016.

This differentiator—this “wow”—lasts for a period of time, but eventually becomes a minimum expectation for the consumer and is later described as a “required feature.”

This marks the 33rd year that Logistics Management (LM) has published the results of our “Salary Survey,” a research project conducted by Peerless Research Group (PRG) that fuels our best-read editorial feature and is the foundation of the most downloaded report that PRG produces over the course of our publishing year.

It’s time to understand your parcel characteristics as well as how the carriers will view your business. If you can position yourself—and partners—to be a shipper that parcel carriers can serve profitably, you will be rewarded with better discounts and have stronger negotiating leverage.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the continued double-digit growth of e-commerce is forcing the hand of nearly every logistics and supply chain professional to re-adjust their day-to-day operations at some level.

While we’re all getting sick of hearing the term “uncertainty,” in the vitally important global logistics arena there’s always been—and always will be—a cloud of doubt hanging over the head of the logistic professional charged with moving freight to, from and throughout distant lands