Mark Boyer has been promoted to director of operations for Con-way Expedite and Brokerage. He will be responsible for all operations, customer service, intermodal moves and post tender dispatch and service. Con-way Expedite and Brokerage provides time-critical shipment expediting and truckload freight brokerage services as part of Con-way Transportation (a subsidiary of Con-way Inc.).
Another division of Con-way, Con-way Freight, has also announced some appointments to its management team. Dana Boles is the new director-linehaul for Con-Way Freight- Southern. He joined the less-than-truckload carrier in 1990 as a dockworker. And Greg Pawelski was promoted to director of human resources for the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based lessthan-truckload carrier Con-Way Freight-Central.
Voxware Inc., a company that provides voice-based supply chain solutions, has been added to the NASDAQ Capital Market listings. The publicly traded company will conduct business under the symbol VOXW. Last year, the company converted all of its preferred stock into common stock and accomplished a reverse stock split.
Menlo Worldwide has launched a new business entity to provide logistics services to customers in Kuala Lampur and Penang, Malaysia. Operating as Menlo Worldwide (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., the company now offers services such as local and global freight transportation management, distribution and fulfillment, warehousing, and inventory management and control.
CAPS Acquisition Group has purchased the CAPS Division of Kingway Material Handling. CAPS Acquisition Group has also announced that it will merge the Distribution Systems Group (DSG) of Manchester, N.H., into the CAPS organization, which is based in nearby Exeter, N.H. CAPS produces order fulfillment technology, such as pick-to-light systems, while DSG provides warehouse control software and handles warehouse systems installation and project management.
James Childress, president and general manager of LXE Inc., has been elected chairman of the board of directors of AIM Global. AIM Global is a trade association for automatic identification and mobility technologies. Childress succeeds Tom Miller of Intermec in that post.
Daniel Klenkar has joined distribution consulting firm Sedlak as director of business development. In his new role, Klenkar will work to develop new business with existing clients, expand the company's client base in new markets and represent Sedlak at industry events.
Members of the Conveyor Equipment Manufacturers Association (CEMA) have elected Thomas Easterhouse of Lubriquip as the organization's new president. Fred Thimmel of Bryant Products was elected vice president, Daniel Fannin of Emerson Power Transmission was named secretary, and R. Todd Swinderman of Martin Engineering was chosen as the group's new treasurer.
RedPrairie has named Henrik Bloch as this year's "Provider Pro to Know." Bloch is the director of product development for RedPrairie's build-to-order business unit. RedPrairie has also appointed David Mott product marketing leader for its Workforce Performance Management business unit. Mott has been with the company since 1993.
Toyota Material Handling, USA, Inc. has named Kosaku Yamada managing director for Toyota Industries Corp. Yamada, the former chief engineer behind the Toyota Camry, will now oversee the design and production of Toyota lift trucks.
TNT Logistics North America has promoted two of its own to management positions. Allen Melton, previously the project manager serving the BMW account in Greer, S.C., has been appointed division manager. Also promoted to division manager is Jeff Morgan, who most recently served as district manager in Southfield, Mich.
James Ryan, group president of W.W. Grainger Inc., has been selected as the Illinois Institute of Technology's "Outstanding Leader in Industry" for 2006. IIT presents this annual award to recognize companies and individuals who make significant contributions to industry in the Chicago area.
Aires International Inc., a freight forwarding and international transportation company, has changed its name to Aires Global Logistics Inc. The company says its new name better reflects its broad-based capabilities.
NACCO Materials Handling Group, which manufactures lift trucks under the Hyster and Yale brands, has announced that Reginald Eklund, president and CEO, will retire at the end of this month. During his tenure, the company has grown to be one of the world's largest lift truck producers. Michael Brogan, currently executive vice president operations, has been named as Eklund's successor. DHL has named Charles Brewer executive vice president of U.S. Air Products and Services. Prior to this appointment, Brewer managed DHL's country operations in Malaysia.
Warehouse automation orders declined by 3% in 2024, according to a February report from market research firm Interact Analysis. The company said the decline was due to economic, political, and market-specific challenges, including persistently high interest rates in many regions and the residual effects of an oversupply of warehouses built during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The research also found that increasing competition from Chinese vendors is expected to drive down prices and slow revenue growth over the report’s forecast period to 2030.
Global macro-economic factors such as high interest rates, political uncertainty around elections, and the Chinese real estate crisis have “significantly impacted sales cycles, slowing the pace of orders,” according to the report.
Despite the decline, analysts said growth is expected to pick up from 2025, which they said they anticipate will mark a year of slow recovery for the sector. Pre-pandemic growth levels are expected to return in 2026, with long-term expansion projected at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8% between 2024 and 2030.
The analysis also found two market segments that are bucking the trend: durable manufacturing and food & beverage industries continued to spend on automation during the downturn. Warehouse automation revenues in food & beverage, in particular, were bolstered by cold-chain automation, as well as by large-scale projects from consumer-packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers. The sectors registered the highest growth in warehouse automation revenues between 2022 and 2024, with increases of 11% (durable manufacturing) and 10% (food & beverage), according to the research.
The Swedish supply chain software company Kodiak Hub is expanding into the U.S. market, backed by a $6 million venture capital boost for its supplier relationship management (SRM) platform.
The Stockholm-based company says its move could help U.S. companies build resilient, sustainable supply chains amid growing pressure from regulatory changes, emerging tariffs, and increasing demands for supply chain transparency.
According to the company, its platform gives procurement teams a 360-degree view of supplier risk, resiliency, and performance, helping them to make smarter decisions faster. Kodiak Hub says its artificial intelligence (AI) based tech has helped users to reduce supplier onboarding times by 80%, improve supplier engagement by 90%, achieve 7-10% cost savings on total spend, and save approximately 10 hours per week by automating certain SRM tasks.
The Swedish venture capital firm Oxx had a similar message when it announced in November that it would back Kodiak Hub with new funding. Oxx says that Kodiak Hub is a better tool for chief procurement officers (CPOs) and strategic sourcing managers than existing software platforms like Excel sheets, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, or Procure-to-Pay suites.
“As demand for transparency and fair-trade practices grows, organizations must strengthen their supply chains to protect their reputation, profitability, and long-term trust,” Malin Schmidt, founder & CEO of Kodiak Hub, said in a release. “By embedding AI-driven insights directly into procurement workflows, our platform helps procurement teams anticipate these risks and unlock major opportunities for growth.”
Here's our monthly roundup of some of the charitable works and donations by companies in the material handling and logistics space.
For the sixth consecutive year, dedicated contract carriage and freight management services provider Transervice Logistics Inc. collected books, CDs, DVDs, and magazines for Book Fairies, a nonprofit book donation organization in the New York Tri-State area. Transervice employees broke their own in-house record last year by donating 13 boxes of print and video assets to children in under-resourced communities on Long Island and the five boroughs of New York City.
Logistics real estate investment and development firm Dermody Properties has recognized eight community organizations in markets where it operates with its 2024 Annual Thanksgiving Capstone awards. The organizations, which included food banks and disaster relief agencies, received a combined $85,000 in awards ranging from $5,000 to $25,000.
Prime Inc. truck driver Dee Sova has donated $5,000 to Harmony House, an organization that provides shelter and support services to domestic violence survivors in Springfield, Missouri. The donation follows Sova's selection as the 2024 recipient of the Trucking Cares Foundation's John Lex Premier Achievement Award, which was accompanied by a $5,000 check to be given in her name to a charity of her choice.
Employees of dedicated contract carrier Lily Transportation donated dog food and supplies to a local animal shelter at a holiday event held at the company's Fort Worth, Texas, location. The event, which benefited City of Saginaw (Texas) Animal Services, was coordinated by "Lily Paws," a dedicated committee within Lily Transportation that focuses on improving the lives of shelter dogs nationwide.
Freight transportation conglomerate Averitt has continued its support of military service members by participating in the "10,000 for the Troops" card collection program organized by radio station New Country 96.3 KSCS in Dallas/Fort Worth. In 2024, Averitt associates collected and shipped more than 18,000 holiday cards to troops overseas. Contributions included cards from 17 different Averitt facilities, primarily in Texas, along with 4,000 cards from the company's corporate office in Cookeville, Tennessee.
Electric vehicle (EV) sales have seen slow and steady growth, as the vehicles continue to gain converts among consumers and delivery fleet operators alike. But a consistent frustration for drivers has been pulling up to a charging station only to find that the charger has been intentionally broken or disabled.
To address that threat, the EV charging solution provider ChargePoint has launched two products to combat charger vandalism.
The first is a cut-resistant charging cable that's designed to deter theft. The cable, which incorporates what the manufacturer calls "novel cut-resistant materials," is substantially more difficult for would-be vandals to cut but is still flexible enough for drivers to maneuver comfortably, the California firm said. ChargePoint intends to make its cut-resistant cables available for all of its commercial and fleet charging stations, and, starting in the middle of the year, will license the cable design to other charging station manufacturers as part of an industrywide effort to combat cable theft and vandalism.
The second product, ChargePoint Protect, is an alarm system that detects charging cable tampering in real time and literally sounds the alarm using the charger's existing speakers, screens, and lighting system. It also sends SMS or email messages to ChargePoint customers notifying them that the system's alarm has been triggered.
ChargePoint says it expects these two new solutions, when combined, will benefit charging station owners by reducing station repair costs associated with vandalism and EV drivers by ensuring they can trust charging stations to work when and where they need them.
New Jersey is home to the most congested freight bottleneck in the country for the seventh straight year, according to research from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), released today.
ATRI’s annual list of the Top 100 Truck Bottlenecks aims to highlight the nation’s most congested highways and help local, state, and federal governments target funding to areas most in need of relief. The data show ways to reduce chokepoints, lower emissions, and drive economic growth, according to the researchers.
The 2025 Top Truck Bottleneck List measures the level of truck-involved congestion at more than 325 locations on the national highway system. The analysis is based on an extensive database of freight truck GPS data and uses several customized software applications and analysis methods, along with terabytes of data from trucking operations, to produce a congestion impact ranking for each location. The bottleneck locations detailed in the latest ATRI list represent the top 100 congested locations, although ATRI continuously monitors more than 325 freight-critical locations, the group said.
For the seventh straight year, the intersection of I-95 and State Route 4 near the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey, is the top freight bottleneck in the country. The remaining top 10 bottlenecks include: Chicago, I-294 at I-290/I-88; Houston, I-45 at I-69/US 59; Atlanta, I-285 at I-85 (North); Nashville: I-24/I-40 at I-440 (East); Atlanta: I-75 at I-285 (North); Los Angeles, SR 60 at SR 57; Cincinnati, I-71 at I-75; Houston, I-10 at I-45; and Atlanta, I-20 at I-285 (West).
ATRI’s analysis, which utilized data from 2024, found that traffic conditions continue to deteriorate from recent years, partly due to work zones resulting from increased infrastructure investment. Average rush hour truck speeds were 34.2 miles per hour (MPH), down 3% from the previous year. Among the top 10 locations, average rush hour truck speeds were 29.7 MPH.
In addition to squandering time and money, these delays also waste fuel—with trucks burning an estimated 6.4 billion gallons of diesel fuel and producing more than 65 million metric tons of additional carbon emissions while stuck in traffic jams, according to ATRI.
On a positive note, ATRI said its analysis helps quantify the value of infrastructure investment, pointing to improvements at Chicago’s Jane Byrne Interchange as an example. Once the number one truck bottleneck in the country for three years in a row, the recently constructed interchange saw rush hour truck speeds improve by nearly 25% after construction was completed, according to the report.
“Delays inflicted on truckers by congestion are the equivalent of 436,000 drivers sitting idle for an entire year,” ATRI President and COO Rebecca Brewster said in a statement announcing the findings. “These metrics are getting worse, but the good news is that states do not need to accept the status quo. Illinois was once home to the top bottleneck in the country, but following a sustained effort to expand capacity, the Jane Byrne Interchange in Chicago no longer ranks in the top 10. This data gives policymakers a road map to reduce chokepoints, lower emissions, and drive economic growth.”