Mark Solomon joined DC VELOCITY as senior editor in August 2008, and was promoted to his current position on January 1, 2015. He has spent more than 30 years in the transportation, logistics and supply chain management fields as a journalist and public relations professional. From 1989 to 1994, he worked in Washington as a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, covering the aviation and trucking industries, the Department of Transportation, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he worked for Traffic World for seven years in a similar role. From 1994 to 2008, Mr. Solomon ran Media-Based Solutions, a public relations firm based in Atlanta. He graduated in 1978 with a B.A. in journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.
The federal government's proposed rules to measure a motor carrier's fitness to operate will not identify any more potentially unfit carriers than does the government's current system, a prominent carrier-safety consultant said today.
Portland, Ore.-based Vigillo LLC said in comments filed with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) that based on the size of the country's motor carrier fleet as of April, FMCSA's new proposal would be able to identify only 67 more interstate carriers as unfit that might have escaped such a rating under the current system. The parameters set by the agency to capture unfit carriers will represent only a 0.4-percent improvement above the current threshold of 15,000 carriers that are typically investigated each year on fitness grounds, it said.
In the comments, Vigillo compared the extent of the increase to being asked to work 0.4 percent more during a 40-hour week and clocking in at just nine additional minutes. The program is "ineffective in identifying a significant population of high-risk motor carriers," Vigillo wrote.
The comments, submitted by Vigillo's founder and CEO Steve Bryan, come on the last day of a federally mandated comment period on what is known as the FMCSA's "Safety Fitness Determination," or SFD, program. Proposed in mid-January, the directive would replace a three-tiered rating system of "satisfactory, conditional, and unsatisfactory," with a single rating called "unfit." A carrier's fitness would be based on its performance under five of the seven so-called BASIC categories that are the agency's data measuring stick, along with the results of carrier investigations and crash reports. The proposed rule would require written proof of a "significant pattern of noncompliance" for a carrier to fail in one of the categories.
In a nod to industry concerns that carriers are graded on a curve that includes others with poorer scores, FMCSA said a carrier's status would not be affected by the performance of other truckers. The agency will, for the first time, allow certain data from truck-related crashes into its calculations, and will also give carriers credit in its determinations for developing safety initiatives.
FMCSA, which is part of the Department of Transportation, said its goal is to remove as many unfit motor carriers as possible from the road with a relatively modest number of inspectors. The agency oversees between 530,000 to 620,000 interstate carriers. Carriers found to be unfit under the new formula will be ordered out of service and not reinstated until they've shown sufficient improvement, FMCSA said.
The battle to revamp the government's carrier-fitness determination process began in 2007, and was amplified three years later when FMCSA rolled out the "Compliance, Safety, Accountability" program, better known as CSA. One of the most controversial trucking policies ever put forth, the program has been attacked from the start by shippers, carriers, and brokers as being based on flawed and incomplete data that tars safe carriers with the same broad brush as unsafe ones.
Last December's five-year federal transport spending bill directed FMCSA to commission a study of the CSA program by the Transportation Research Board. It also ordered the agency to remove comparative scores and analysis from public view, but to retain the raw data used to compile the scores for viewing on its web site. However, industry groups have said the accuracy of the data remains dubious, and all the agency is doing by posting just raw data is showing the numbers in a different way.
For its part, Vigillo is selling a software program it said eliminates the inherent flaws of CSA and provides an accurate and reliable scoring standard.
Dexory’s robotic platform cruises warehouse aisles while scanning and counting the items stored inside, using a combination of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), a tall mast equipped with sensors, and artificial intelligence (AI).
Along with the opening of the office, Dexory also announced that tech executive Kristen Shannon has joined the Company’s executive team to become Chief Operating Officer (COO), and will work out of Dexory’s main HQ in the United Kingdom.
“Businesses across the globe are looking at extracting more insights from their warehousing operations and this is where Dexory can rapidly help businesses unlock actionable data insights from the warehouse that help boost efficiencies across the board,” Andrei Danescu, CEO and Co-Founder of Dexory, said in a release. “After entering the US market, we’re excited to open new offices in Nashville and appoint Kristen to accelerate our scale, drive new levels of efficiency and reimagine supply chain operations.”
The deal will create a combination of two labor management system providers, delivering visibility into network performance, labor productivity, and profitability management at every level of a company’s operations, from the warehouse floor to the executive suite, Bellevue, Washington-based Easy Metrics said.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Easy Metrics is backed by Nexa Equity, a San Francisco-based private equity firm. The combined company will serve over 550 facilities and provide its users with advanced strategic insights, such as facility benchmarking, forecasting, and cost-to-serve analysis by customer and process.
And more features are on the way. According to the firms, customers of both Easy Metrics and TZA will soon benefit from accelerated investments in product innovation. New functionalities set to roll out in 2025 and beyond will include advanced tools for managing customer profitability and AI-driven features to enhance operational decision-making, they said.
As retailers seek to cut the climbing costs of handling product returns, many are discovering that U.S. consumers shrink their spending when confronted with tighter returns policies, according to a report from Blue Yonder.
That finding comes from Scottsdale, Arizona-based Blue Yonder’s “2024 Consumer Retail Returns Survey,” a third-party study which collected responses from 1,000+ U.S. consumers in July.
The results show that 91% of those surveyed acknowledge that a lenient returns policy influences their buying decisions. Among them, Gen Z and Millennial purchasing decisions were most impacted, with 3 in 4 consumers stating that tighter returns policies deterred them from making purchases.
Of consumers who are aware of stricter returns policies, 69% state that tighter returns policies are deterring them from making purchases, which is up significantly from 59% in 2023. When asked about the tighter returns policies, 51% of survey respondents felt restrictions on returns are either inconvenient or unfair, versus just 37% saying they were fair and understandable.
“We're seeing that tighter returns policies are starting to deter consumers from making purchases, particularly among the Gen Z and Millennial generations," Tim Robinson, corporate vice president, Returns, Blue Yonder, said in a release. "Retailers have long acknowledged that they needed to tackle returns to reduce costs – the challenge now is to strike a balance between protecting their margins and maintaining a customer-friendly returns experience."
Retails have been rolling out the tighter policies because the returns process is so costly. In fact, many stores are now telling consumers to keep unwanted items to avoid the expensive and labor-intensive processes associated with shipping, sorting, and handling the goods. Almost three out of four consumers surveyed (72%) have been given this direction by a retailer.
Still, consumers say they need the opportunity to return their purchases. Consistent with last year’s survey, 75% of respondents cite the most common reason for returns is incorrect sizing. Other reasons cited by respondents include item damage at 68%, followed by changing one's mind or disliking the item (49%), and receiving the wrong product (47%).
One way retailers can meet that persistent demand is by deploying third-party returns services—such as a drop-off location or mailing service—the Blue Yonder survey showed. When asked what factors would make them use a third-party returns service, 62% of consumers said lower or no shipping fees, 60% cited the convenience of drop-off locations, 47% said faster refund processing, 39% cited assurance of hassle-free returns, and 38% said reliable tracking and confirmation of returned items.
“Where the goal is to mitigate the cost of returns, retailers should be looking for ways to do more than tightening their policies to reduce returns rates,” said Robinson. “Gathering data and automating intelligent decision-making for every return will bring costs down through more efficient transportation and reduced waste without impacting the customer experience. That data is also incredibly valuable to reduce returns rates, helping retailers to see the patterns of which items are returned, by which customer segments, and why; and to act accordingly.”
Based on a survey of 200 TIA members representing the diversity of the industry, 98% of respondents identified truckload as their most vulnerable mode. And those thieves are in search of three most commonly stolen goods—electronics, solar panels, and household goods—due to their high value and ease of resale.
Criminals commit those crimes through a variety of methods. The survey highlighted eight fraud types, including spoofing, unlawful brokerage scams, fictitious pickups, phishing, identity theft, email/virus, inbound phone calls, and text messages.
Stopping those thefts demands extra work from companies in the sector, as nearly 1 in 5 respondents indicated that they spend an entire day each quarter on fraud prevention, while 16% reported spending more than 4 hours a day, and 34% said they dedicate more than 2 hours a day to these efforts. This considerable time investment in monitoring, verifying, and responding to fraudulent activities diverts attention from other essential business operations, affecting overall productivity and increasing operational costs, TIA said.
In response, Alexandria, Virginia-based TIA also examined the critical steps the industry must take to protect itself from fraud schemes. "We are an industry under siege right now and we are not getting the support from government and law enforcement authorities to help us combat this scourge on the supply chain," Anne Reinke, president & CEO of TIA, said in a release. "When people think of fraud in the supply chain, they only see what is happening to a business, they are not seeing the trickle-down effect to consumers and economy. Fraud is a multimillion-dollar problem that needs to be addressed today."
By the numbers, overall retail sales in August were up 0.1% seasonally adjusted month over month and up 2.1% unadjusted year over year. That compared with increases of 1.1% month over month and 2.9% year over year in July.
August’s core retail sales as defined by NRF — based on the Census data but excluding automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants — were up 0.3% seasonally adjusted month over month and up 3.3% unadjusted year over year. Core retail sales were up 3.4% year over year for the first eight months of the year, in line with NRF’s forecast for 2024 retail sales to grow between 2.5% and 3.5% over 2023.
“These numbers show the continued resiliency of the American consumer,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said in a release. “While sales growth decelerated from last month’s pace, there is little hint of consumer spending unraveling. Households have the underpinnings to spend as recent wage gains have outpaced inflation even though payroll growth saw a slowdown in July and August. Easing inflation is providing added spending capacity to cost-weary shoppers and the interest rate cuts expected to come from the Fed should help create a more positive environment for consumers in the future.”