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accolades: awards and recognition

  • Yale's hails. Yale Materials Handling Corp. has honored 15 top dealers with its 11th Annual Dealer of Excellence Awards. The dealers are Alta Lift Truck Services, Berry Material Handling, Black Equipment Co., E.D. Farrell Co., Eastern Lift Truck Co., Hy-Tek Material Handling, Key Material Handling Equipment Co., National Lift Truck Service, Northland Industrial Truck Co., Riekes Equipment Co., Yale Equipment & Services, Yale Industrial Trucks - Gulf/Atlantic, Yale Industrial Trucks - Pittsburgh, Yale Materials Handling - Dougherty Equipment, and Yale Materials Handling - Green Bay.
  • Crowning achievements. Crown Equipment Corp. has honored two of its top dealers with the James F. Dicke Pioneer Award, Crown's highest award and one designed to acknowledge outstanding achievement. NorthWest Handling Systems Inc. of Seattle and Crown Lift Trucks of Miami received the recognition, named after Crown's chairman emeritus.
  • Women at the top. The Robart Companies, a third-party transportation and logistics provider headquartered in Georgia, has received several recent honors. They include being named Logistics Partner of the Year by Kemira Chemicals, receiving Women Looking Ahead magazine's 2005 BluePrint Award for its quality service to Coca-Cola Enterprises, and being recognized with The Woman-Owned Business of the Year award from Delta Air Lines. In addition, Diversity Business.com named Robart as one of the top 500 woman-owned U.S. businesses and the Georgia Secretary of State recently honored Robart president and CEO Sharon Burton as an Outstanding Georgia Citizen and The Robart Companies as a Goodwill Ambassador Corp.

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Survey: older generations are unaware of holiday shipping deadlines

As holiday shoppers blitz through the final weeks of the winter peak shopping season, a survey from the postal and shipping solutions provider Stamps.com shows that 40% of U.S. consumers are unaware of holiday shipping deadlines, leaving them at risk of running into last-minute scrambles, higher shipping costs, and packages arriving late.

The survey also found a generational difference in holiday shipping deadline awareness, with 53% of Baby Boomers unaware of these cut-off dates, compared to just 32% of Millennials. Millennials are also more likely to prioritize guaranteed delivery, with 68% citing it as a key factor when choosing a shipping option this holiday season.

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E-commerce retailers brace for surge in returns

As shoppers prepare to receive—and send back—a surge of peak season e-commerce orders this month, returns will continue to pose a significant cost for the retail industry, with total returns projected to reach $890 billion in 2024, according to a report released today by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Happy Returns, a UPS company.

Measured over the entire year of 2024, retailers estimate that 16.9% of their annual sales will be returned. But that total figure includes a spike of returns during the holidays; a separate NRF study found that for the 2024 winter holidays, retailers expect their return rate to be 17% higher, on average, than their annual return rate.

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HappyRobot lands $15.6 million backing for its agentic AI

San Francisco startup HappyRobot has gained $15.6 million in venture funding for its AI platform that automates the communication needs of freight brokerages and other logistics users such as third-party logistics providers and warehouses.

The “series A” round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Y Combinator and strategic industry investors, including RyderVentures. It follows an earlier, previously undisclosed, pre-seed round raised 1.5 years ago, that was backed by Array Ventures and other angel investors.

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RJW Logistics gains private equity backing

RJW Logistics Group, a logistics solutions provider (LSP) for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands, has received a “strategic investment” from Boston-based private equity firm Berkshire partners, and now plans to drive future innovations and expand its geographic reach, the Woodridge, Illinois-based company said Tuesday.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the company said that CEO Kevin Williamson and other members of RJW management will continue to be “significant investors” in the company, while private equity firm Mason Wells, which invested in RJW in 2019, will maintain a minority investment position.

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GEP: six factors could change calm to storm in 2025

The current year is ending on a calm note for the logistics sector, but 2025 is on pace to be an era of rapid transformation, due to six driving forces that will shape procurement and supply chains in coming months, according to a forecast from New Jersey-based supply chain software provider GEP.

"After several years of mitigating inflation, disruption, supply shocks, conflicts, and uncertainty, we are currently in a relative period of calm," John Paitek, vice president, GEP, said in a release. "But it is very much the calm before the coming storm. This report provides procurement and supply chain leaders with a prescriptive guide to weathering the gale force headwinds of protectionism, tariffs, trade wars, regulatory pressures, uncertainty, and the AI revolution that we will face in 2025."

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