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 year was 1990, and Diane Gibson, co-founder of startup Craters & Freighters, was working at her Denver headquarters when a sales representative from American Airlines walked in the office.
Gibson recalls that the male sales rep asked, "Where are the bosses?"—a reference to Gibson's two male co-founders. "I bit my lip, held my tongue, and told him 'They'll be back shortly,'" she says with a laugh.
Fast-forward two decades. Gibson's original partners are long gone, one leaving in 1994 in a dispute over the company's direction and the other bought out by Gibson in 1995 after he refused to agree to expand beyond Denver.
Today, Craters & Freighters, which manages the movements of specialized commodities described by Gibson as "too large, too outsized, and too weird," does $45 million a year in sales, has 60 franchised offices covering 85 percent of the United States, and is looking to expand internationally. Gibson has steered the company solo for 15 years.
If it were any other field, Gibson's story would not be unique. Across many industries, it is commonplace for women to hold leadership positions. But the upper echelon of the supply chain ranks—whether it is transportation, logistics, or warehousing and distribution—has remained the near-exclusive domain of men.
In some ways, little has changed. A survey of "women in transportation and warehousing" released earlier this year by Catalyst, a New York-based organization that promotes women's advancement in business, found no female CEOs at the companies polled. Only 11 percent of the firms had women board members and 12.6 percent had what Catalyst termed female "executive officers." Women represented about 24 percent of the total labor force at the firms Catalyst surveyed.
The status quo is sometimes felt beyond the numbers. "In my career, it's not been uncommon to walk in the room and hear someone say, 'Oh, someone from marketing is here,'" says Kristin Muhlner, CEO of RollStream Inc., a McLean, Va.-based supply chain software developer. Muhlner, whose background is in engineering and not physical distribution, said she sees little pushback today from men at the corporate level, though she acknowledges it may be a different story "down in the weeds" in warehouses and distribution centers.
But in other ways, change has come, or is coming. In January, Judy McReynolds became CEO of trucking giant Arkansas Best Corp., parent of ABF Freight System. No one could recall a woman before her being put in charge of such a large transportation company that was not her own. Tellingly, the announcement hardly created a ripple, and Arkansas Best did little to highlight its significance.
This fall, Barbara Windsor, president of New Market, Md.-based Hahn Transportation, becomes the first chairwoman of the American Trucking Associations in the group's 77-year history. In addition, women today run 11 state trucking associations, the most ever at one time.
In the public sector, Anne Ferro, former president of the Maryland Motor Truck Association, heads the Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Deborah Hersman serves as chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board—only the third woman to do so in that agency's 43-year history.
Long time coming
For women who've spent their careers in logistics, progress can't come too soon. Liz Lasater, founder and CEO of full-service provider Red Arrow Logistics, remembers during her 20-year career at big international transportation firms that "my male peers were more competitive with me than they were with other men."
Lasater, who held upper management roles at her employers, recalls being frequently "kept out of the loop" of need-to-know information filtering down from corporate headquarters. "At one company, this went on for two years," she says.
Lasater says the resistance from men came from within her own organizations, and not from vendors or customers. And it was more prevalent in the United States than abroad, she adds. "Throughout Asia and all the way down to India, it was always about business," she says.
The challenge for women can be compounded if the business is family-owned. Rachel Parker, who is in the management program at trucker Covenant Transportation, the company co-founded by her parents in 1986, says she sometimes has to invoke her lineage to build credibility and be taken seriously by customers and vendors.
Parker says her mother, Jacqueline, like so many so-called trucking wives, was actively involved in the business but in back-office functions traditionally reserved for women while the men were out driving rigs or drumming up sales. "My father makes a point of saying that 'My wife and I founded this company,'" she says.
The consensus is that Parker, 26, is being groomed to run Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Covenant when her father, David, eventually retires. She jokes, however, that David Parker, only 52, "will work until the very end."
Old habits die hard
For an industry facing a "brain drain" as the largely male old guard begins retiring, removing barriers to women's advancement could be considered more than a moral imperative. Fortunately for women seeking a foothold, there's been a proliferation of educational programs enabling professionals of both genders to obtain the specialized skills increasingly required in today's marketplace.
"Women have made tremendous strides, but those who have [done so] possess specific credentials, whether it be in engineering, healthcare, or other fields," says Lasater of Red Arrow. Lasater says that as she was coming up through the industry, "you didn't have advanced courses in supply chain management. You didn't have chief logistics officers. Today, women have the ability to get the credentials needed to advance and succeed."
But women's advocates say that change also needs to happen on a less-tangible front, namely in an awareness that women can be effective transport logistics leaders even though their leadership style may have been perceived as too "soft" for the often rough-and-tumble world of transportation and logistics.
"Many women in leadership roles are consensus-builders, and they encourage open, collegial relationships. That management style has traditionally not been viewed as representing 'leadership' in our business," says Ellen Voie, a former executive at Schneider National Inc. and founder of the Women In Trucking Association, a three-year old non-profit group based in Plover, Wis., that advocates for greater representation of women across all segments of trucking.
Voie admits that women "struggle with an image problem" stemming from the faulty perception that the industry feels they should be seen and not heard. "I don't think people realize that the trucking industry actually welcomes women," she says.
Voie chalks up the current resistance to women's advancement as less a form of deliberate discrimination than a reflection of industry's historic unwillingness to change. "Old habits die hard, so we need to call attention to things that companies are doing" to promote opportunities for women, she says.
Of course, there are some female logistics executives who believe that the old and entrenched ways are not necessarily a hindrance. Gibson of Craters & Freighters, for one, makes no apologies for using certain unique characteristics to her competitive advantage.
"Being a short, blonde, skinny woman has helped more than hurt," she says.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
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.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.