When it comes to international air cargo, nothing is as complicated as making things simple. That's what the founders of Cargo 2000, a non-profit interest group under the Montreal-based International Air Transport Association (IATA), found when, in 1997, they tried to bring the entire international aircargo industry together to agree on standards for electronic documentation and tracking information.
Cargo 2000 co-founders Ron Cesana and Guenter Rohrmann thought they had a great idea. Electronic commerce was a clear business inevitability. Shippers were already complaining that their aircargo forwarders and carriers couldn't provide the kind of door-to-door tracking information they had come to expect from express package carriers like UPS and FedEx.Why not get everyone to agree on what technology to use and how to use it? And get everyone on the same page from the beginning, before carriers and forwarders had invested in incompatible systems?
As Cesana and Rohrmann envisioned it, shippers, forwarders and carriers would agree on a set of transport milestones and units as well as a set of security codes that would be exchanged in a shipment's journey from sender to consignee. MO1, for example, would be "freight collected from shipper and has arrived at freight forwarder's facility"; S02 would be "shipper's [security] certification number." Once the system got off the ground, so to speak, all parties involved in aircargo shipping would exchange information not just on pallets and shipments, but on individual items. It seemed simple enough.
Except it wasn't. Right from the beginning, Cargo 2000 encountered unexpected turbulence. There were technical problems in trying to reconcile competing standards and languages for the electronic exchange of information (Cargo 2000 favors the ANSI FACT and EAN SSCC data-coding standards recommended by the International Standards Organization). There were political difficulties—small forwarders objected to being held to standards they hadn't helped create, large forwarders groused about the slow pace, shippers complained that they didn't have a voice.
Most serious of all, there were cost problems. "In the beginning, we wanted to take a Big Bang approach and get into controlling everything at the bar-code piece level," recalls Cesana, Cargo 2000's project director, based in Westport, Conn. "We looked for a technology provider who could do that. But when we got to the point of selecting one, half of the members said they couldn't afford it and walked out. It nearly killed us."
Faced with a revolt, Rohrmann and Cesana retrenched. As the year 2000 dawned, they abandoned their grand vision to concentrate on what could be thought of as Cargo 2000 Lite. Instead of choosing a technology vendor, they would let airlines and forwarders choose their own. Instead of putting the full operating plan into motion at once, they would adopt a much less ambitious phased-in approach.
A long, hard slog
It's taken nearly five years, but today, Cargo 2000's founders can finally point to visible signs of progress. The first phase, post-shipment audit of airport-to-airport movement at a master air waybill level, is in effect at 250 locations, involving service in 65 cities and 4,000 individual trade lanes worldwide. Once a booking is made, a plan is automatically created with a series of checkpoints against which the movement is managed and measured. This enables the system to alert the Cargo 2000 member if any exceptions arise. Phase Two—which involves the interactive monitoring of the door-to-door movement of shipments at the house waybill level—is ready to go, with two as yet unnamed Cargo 2000 members implementing it.
That's not the only sign of progress. In a stunning turnaround, some of the defectors have begun straggling back. In May 2004, Singapore Airlines (SIA), one of the air carriers that walked out in 2000, announced with a fanfare of publicity that it was rejoining the Cargo 2000 initiative. Not only did SIA return, but it sent one of its high-ranking executives to Cargo 2000's July conference in Singapore to talk about its corporate change of heart. "Why are we returning?" asked Sudheer Raghavan, senior vice president of sales and marketing at SIA Cargo. "[We're returning] because there's no alternative to collaboration; the reasons for leaving exist no more; the new team at Cargo 2000 means business; and we subscribe to any serious effort to improve service and efficiency in the industry. Cargo 2000 today is focused on that. It has SIA Cargo's support."
The team that means business includes a new chairman, Mick Fountain, chief executive of Exel's global technology and freight management division, based in San Francisco. When Fountain talks about Cargo 2000, he makes it sound more like a religious calling than a business endeavor. "You have to understand the magnitude of this," he says. "The objective of Cargo 2000, which is a very noble one, is to become the accepted platform for shipment information all over the world—for airlines, logistics providers and customers." Fountain considers the support of the shipping community, as yet largely uninvolved in Cargo 2000, to be absolutely crucial to the initiative's success. "It's obviously the right thing to do to bring some sort of order to data management in the aircargo industry. It will make the world a lot better for the shipping public."
In another apparent vote of confidence, Descartes Systems Group, a Waterloo, Ont.-based logistics technology company, has christened its air-cargo tracking service Cargo 2000. As yet, this is used only for communication between forwarders and carriers, but Allan Harsbo, senior vice president for air cargo at Descartes, argues that shippers are already benefiting.
"It doesn't involve shippers directly," Harsbo concedes, "but you may say that there's an impact on the shipper in the commercial sense. ... This initiative is the first one that brings the carrier and the forwarder close together. The result will be that the shipper or consignee will get a close to perfect product, and in that sense it involves the shipper. So I see it as a large step forward."
Coming in from the cold
In any event, shippers won't be out in the cold for long. Phase Three of Cargo 2000, where cargo will be tracked door to door in real time at the piece level, will definitely involve shippers. But Fountain wants to take some time to build credibility with shippers before rushing into it. For him, that means gathering information about the service providers' on-time performance and making it public—a delicate subject among the group's membership. Cargo 2000's 18 airline members and nine forwarder members have traditionally kept the data confidential, even from each other.
But Fountain's undaunted. Though he says he doesn't want to take anyone's pants down in public, he's convinced that a performance score sheet is what it will take to get shippers on board.
"[The] one thing that will get Cargo 2000 going faster than anything is shipper recognition," says Fountain. And though he dreams of the day when shippers will automatically open the aircargo bidding process by asking 'Are you Cargo 2000 compliant?', he acknowledges that it's an ambitious goal. "This is a very fragmented business.Not everybody is able [to or] wants to get behind it," he says. "But someone's got to do this stuff. [Otherwise] nothing will ever get done, and shippers will still be complaining in 10 years' time."
States across the Southeast woke up today to find that the immediate weather impacts from Hurricane Helene are done, but the impacts to people, businesses, and the supply chain continue to be a major headache, according to Everstream Analytics.
The primary problem is the collection of massive power outages caused by the storm’s punishing winds and rainfall, now affecting some 2 million customers across the Southeast region of the U.S.
One organization working to rush help to affected regions since the storm hit Florida’s western coast on Thursday night is the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). As it does after most serious storms, the group continues to marshal donated resources from supply chain service providers in order to store, stage, and deliver help where it’s needed.
Support for recovery efforts is coming from a massive injection of federal aid, since the White House declared states of emergency last week for Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Affected states are also supporting the rush of materials to needed zones by suspending transportation requirement such as certain licensing agreements, fuel taxes, weight restrictions, and hours of service caps, ALAN said.
E-commerce activity remains robust, but a growing number of consumers are reintegrating physical stores into their shopping journeys in 2024, emphasizing the need for retailers to focus on omnichannel business strategies. That’s according to an e-commerce study from Ryder System, Inc., released this week.
Ryder surveyed more than 1,300 consumers for its 2024 E-Commerce Consumer Study and found that 61% of consumers shop in-store “because they enjoy the experience,” a 21% increase compared to results from Ryder’s 2023 survey on the same subject. The current survey also found that 35% shop in-store because they don’t want to wait for online orders in the mail (up 4% from last year), and 15% say they shop in-store to avoid package theft (up 8% from last year).
“Retail and e-commerce continue to evolve,” Jeff Wolpov, Ryder’s senior vice president of e-commerce, said in a statement announcing the survey’s findings. “The emergence of e-commerce and growth of omnichannel fulfillment, particularly over the past four years, has altered consumer expectations and behavior dramatically and will continue to do so as time and technology allow.
“This latest study demonstrates that, while consumers maintain a robust
appetite for e-commerce, they are simultaneously embracing in-person shopping, presenting an impetus for merchants to refine their omnichannel strategies.”
Other findings include:
• Apparel and cosmetics shoppers show growing attraction to buying in-store. When purchasing apparel and cosmetics, shoppers are more inclined to make purchases in a physical location than they were last year, according to Ryder. Forty-one percent of shoppers who buy cosmetics said they prefer to do so either in a brand’s physical retail location or a department/convenience store (+9%). As for apparel shoppers, 54% said they prefer to buy clothing in those same brick-and-mortar locations (+9%).
• More customers prefer returning online purchases in physical stores. Fifty-five percent of shoppers (+15%) now say they would rather return online purchases in-store–the first time since early 2020 the preference to Buy Online Return In-Store (BORIS) has outweighed returning via mail, according to the survey. Forty percent of shoppers said they often make additional purchases when picking up or returning online purchases in-store (+2%).
• Consumers are extremely reliant on mobile devices when shopping in-store. This year’s survey reveals that 77% of consumers search for items on their mobile devices while in a store, Ryder said. Sixty-nine percent said they compare prices with items in nearby stores, 58% check availability at other stores, 31% want to learn more about a product, and 17% want to see other items frequently purchased with a product they’re considering.
Ryder said the findings also underscore the importance of investing in technology solutions that allow companies to provide customers with flexible purchasing options.
“Omnichannel strength is not a fad; it is a strategic necessity for e-commerce and retail businesses to stay competitive and achieve sustainable success in 2024 and beyond,” Wolpov also said. “The findings from this year’s study underscore what we know our customers are experiencing, which is the positive impact of integrating supply chain technology solutions across their sales channels, enabling them to provide their customers with flexible, convenient options to personalize their experience and heighten customer satisfaction.”
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Two European companies are among the most recent firms to put autonomous last-mile delivery to the test with a project in Bern, Switzerland, that debuted this month.
Swiss transportation and logistics company Planzer has teamed up with fellow Swiss firm Loxo, which develops autonomous driving software solutions, for a two-year pilot project in which a Loxo-equipped, Planzer parcel delivery van will handle last-mile logistics in Bern’s city center.
The project coincides with Swiss regulations on autonomous driving that are expected to take effect next spring.
Referred to as “Planzer–Dynamic Micro-Hub w LOXO,” the project aims to address both sustainability issues and traffic congestion in urban areas.
The delivery vehicle, a Volkswagen ID. Buzz battery-electric minivan, will feature Loxo’s Level 4 Digital Driver navigation software, a highly automated solution that allows driverless operation. The van was retrofitted to include space for two swap boxes for parcel storage.
During the two-year pilot phase, Loxo’s Digital Driver will navigate a commercial vehicle several times a day from Planzer’s railway center to various logistics points in Bern's city center. There, the parcels will be reloaded onto small electric vehicles and delivered to end customers by Planzer’s parcel delivery staff.
Following the completion of the pilot phase, Planzer and Loxo will build on the program for rollout in other Swiss cities, the companies said.
The partners said the project addresses the increasing requirements of urban supply chains and aims to ensure the “scalability of their disruptive solution.” With largely emission-free delivery, it contributes to greater levels of sustainability for the city as a living space, they also said.
“The uniqueness of this project lies in the fact that it will have a direct impact on society,” Planzer’s CEO and Chairman Nils Planzer said in a statement announcing the project. “We didn't just want to integrate automated technology into existing systems, we wanted to develop a completely new concept and a new business model.”
As the hours tick down toward a “seemingly imminent” strike by East Coast and Gulf Coast dockworkers, experts are warning that the impacts of that move would mushroom well-beyond the actual strike locations, causing prevalent shipping delays, container ship congestion, port congestion on West coast ports, and stranded freight.
However, a strike now seems “nearly unavoidable,” as no bargaining sessions are scheduled prior to the September 30 contract expiration between the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) in their negotiations over wages and automation, according to the transportation law firm Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary.
The facilities affected would include some 45,000 port workers at 36 locations, including high-volume U.S. ports from Boston, New York / New Jersey, and Norfolk, to Savannah and Charleston, and down to New Orleans and Houston. With such widespread geography, a strike would likely lead to congestion from diverted traffic, as well as knock-on effects include the potential risk of increased freight rates and costly charges such as demurrage, detention, per diem, and dwell time fees on containers that may be slowed due to the congestion, according to an analysis by another transportation and logistics sector law firm, Benesch.
The weight of those combined blows means that many companies are already planning ways to minimize damage and recover quickly from the event. According to Scopelitis’ advice, mitigation measures could include: preparing for congestion on West coast ports, taking advantage of intermodal ground transportation where possible, looking for alternatives including air transport when necessary for urgent delivery, delaying shipping from East and Gulf coast ports until after the strike, and budgeting for increased freight and container fees.
Additional advice on softening the blow of a potential coastwide strike came from John Donigian, senior director of supply chain strategy at Moody’s. In a statement, he named six supply chain strategies for companies to consider: expedite certain shipments, reallocate existing inventory strategically, lock in alternative capacity with trucking and rail providers , communicate transparently with stakeholders to set realistic expectations for delivery timelines, shift sourcing to regional suppliers if possible, and utilize drop shipping to maintain sales.