That warning comes not from a wild-eyed street-corner prophet, but from some of the nation's most prominent logistics experts—high-ranking public officials, heads of trade groups, and executives from several of the country's largest carriers. And what has them concerned is not the approach of Armageddon, but the likelihood that the United States' physical infrastructure is nearing the breaking point.
Take Mike Eskew, for instance. Eskew, who is CEO of UPS, the nation's largest transportation company, characterizes the current U.S. transportation network as shockingly inadequate. "Our highways, waterways, railroads and aviation networks are simply not keeping up with ordinary demands," he told business leaders in Houston during an address in March.
Eskew says he worries that continued neglect of the transportation infrastructure will put the economy at risk. But he adds that he still considers the problem to be solvable ... assuming we act soon. "We can't wait on this," he warns. "We need to move forward now."
Eskew is hardly alone in his assessment. John Bowe made much the same point when he addressed the National Industrial Transportation League's third annual Transportation Policy Forum last month. Bowe, who is regional president for the Americas for APL and its sister company, APL Logistics, warned his audience that the clock is ticking. In fact, he said the nation's logistics system could enter a "crisis zone" as early as 2008 to 2010.
No time to waste
Speaker after speaker voiced similar concerns over the two days of the Transportation Policy Forum. For example, Jeffrey Shane, the Department of Transportation's under secretary for policy, called clogged roads, rails and ports a threat to the nation's economy. "We have to address supply chain issues, and we have to address them now," he said. "If we don't, economic growth will be compromised."
Patrick Quinn, co-chairman of truckload carrier U.S. Xpress Enterprises and current chairman of the American Trucking Associations (ATA), was even more blunt. "Congestion, in my opinion, is a cancer on our economy," he said. "We have 233 million hours of idle time each year. [Yet] we have accepted congestion as being part of life. It is criminal that we haven't taken more action. It is time to build roads again."
Joni Casey, president and CEO of the Intermodal Association of North America, also spoke about the congestion problem. In her speech, Casey emphasized congestion's financial toll on business, citing a study by the Texas Transportation Institute that estimates congestion now costs the economy more than $65 billion a year in the 85 urban areas studied.
Too little, too late
As for the government's efforts to address the problem to date, no one had much good to say. Several speakers at the policy forum disparaged the most recent highway funding bill, characterizing it as too little too late. For example, in his keynote address, John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers and former governor of Michigan, urged the federal government to do a better job of planning for long-term capital projects like highway construction. "In the United States, we pass a highway bill two years late, then think we don't have to worry about it for five years. We cannot think that way," he said. "To compete, we need every edge possible. If we get this wrong, we will make ourselves less and less competitive."
Casey was equally candid in her criticism of the highway bill, charging that its funding for critical infrastructure improvements was woefully inadequate. Casey said she was particularly perturbed by a last-minute decision to eliminate funding for intermodal connectors. "We need to improve the policy process," she said.
Tim Lynch, vice president of the American Trucking Associations, agreed. "A popular expression in Washington is that freight doesn't vote," he said. "That was clear in the last highway bill. There was clearly a lack of attention to freight transportation."
Lynch urged shippers and others to begin thinking about the next reauthorization in 2009, noting that the ATA will focus on ways to expand highway capacity and make better use of the system. "The trucking industry will make a major effort over the next three years," he said. "[But] we need all the players to participate in this. If we miss this opportunity, the next bill will be in 2015 or 2016."
Erik Autor, too, encouraged shippers and others to get into the act. "We need a national goods movement policy," said Autor, who is vice president and international trade counsel for the National Retail Federation. He reminded his audience that they must take the initiative and begin prodding Washington to take action. "Government action," he said,"is not going to happen until retailers and others make this a priority."
In the meantime, it appears that the DOT, at least, has taken preliminary steps toward developing a national policy. Shane told the forum that his department had unveiled the initial draft of its proposed Framework for a National Freight Policy. Shane noted that the DOT is now soliciting comments on the framework. The full policy has been posted on the DOT's Web site, www.dot.gov. Viewers can use a link at the end of the document to submit comments.
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.”