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.
Sandy Pope, vying to be the first woman to run the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in its 108-year history, said she could rebuild the union's languishing freight division by organizing subcontractors at trucking companies, including the thousands of independent owner-operators.
In an interview with DC Velocity, Pope, 54, said the Teamsters have in the past succeeded in organizing large blocs of independent drivers. "When I was at Local 407 [in Cleveland], we had hundreds of owner-operators under contract," she said.
Pope said the independent drivers who operate at the nation's ports would be fertile ground for organizing. "These guys make no money, and they experience difficult working conditions," she said. Faced with skyrocketing fuel prices, rising insurance premiums, and costly compliance requirements, many independent drivers are running their rigs just to pay the bills, she said.
The union's freight division, which peaked at about 400,000 members in the 1970s and was long considered the core of the organization, has dwindled to between 60,000 and 70,000 as bankruptcies and mergers in the post-trucking deregulation world decimated the ranks of truckers.
Pope, who spent seven years as a Teamster truck driver, understands the freight division's woes all too well. "I watched my local go from 8,000 members to 4,000 members in a blink of an eye" in the post-deregulation period, she said.
Push for full-time employment
Pope said that as general president, she would also look to reverse the trend toward greater use of part-time freight workers and subcontractors, especially at UPS Inc. and its UPS Freight less-than-truckload (LTL) division. With about 238,000 unionized workers, Atlanta-based UPS is the world's largest employer of Teamster members, employing slightly less than 20 percent of the union's 1.4 million membership.
"What UPS is doing with UPS Freight is making them look like UPS, with unlimited part-time workers," Pope said in the interview. "It undermines the freight division."
Pope said Teamster rank-and-file members at UPS Freight are also upset about being excluded from the Teamsters defined-benefit pension plans, where participants are guaranteed a specific payout upon retirement. Instead, company employees participate in a 401(k) "defined-contribution" plan, whose value is subject to market fluctuations and whose payout is not contractually guaranteed.
The UPS Freight contract is separate from the much-larger labor compact that covers the transport/logistics giant's small-package operations. Both contracts are up for renewal in 2013, along with the National Master Freight Agreement (NMFA) that governs workers and companies in the trucking industry. UPS Freight is not covered by the NMFA.
Pope, who for the past six years has run Teamster Local 805 in New York, said that if elected, much of her time next year would be devoted to gearing up for the national contract negotiations. "UPS and the [NMFA] are the heart of the union, and it's what everybody will be watching," she said.
A threat to Teamster jobs
In what could be a major bone of contention leading up to the next contract negotiations with UPS, Pope said she would focus closely on an arrangement between the company and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), under which UPS turns over shipments to the post office for "last mile" deliveries to relatively remote destinations where UPS lacks the package density to send out is own drivers.
Pope said the agreement is a "violation of our contract, but [UPS] continues to do it."
By law, the post office must serve every U.S. address, and UPS and arch-rival FedEx Corp. have leveraged the USPS network with great success. However, Pope said the agreement with UPS (FedEx's parcel drivers are non-union) is leading to a loss of traditional Teamster jobs.
"Our people in the rural areas are terrified," she said. "If you work in North Carolina for UPS and you see your route getting smaller because of this, and if you look at job options in North Carolina, you are not feeling very good."
Asked about the prospects of another large Teamster employer, YRC Worldwide Inc., Pope said she believes the LTL hauler, which employs 25,000 Teamsters and which is in the financial fight of its life, will ultimately survive. "They've gotten this far," she said, adding, though, that the LTL carrier's prospects are "dicey."
Pope added that she has many supporters among the YRC rank and file and that she "doesn't plan to let them down" if elected president.
Going head to head with Hoffa
Pope is running against incumbent James P. Hoffa, who has been president since 1999, and Fred Gagare, a former Hoffa supporter from Wisconsin. About 1,800 Teamster delegates will convene in Las Vegas from June 27 to July 1 to select the presidential candidate slates, among other business.
Pope said she needs the votes of 85 delegates to be on the ballot. Ballots will be distributed in October and counted in November. If elected, Pope would take office in January 2012.
Pope's candidacy is being championed by the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a Teamster dissident group that pushes for union reforms and with whom Pope has been affiliated since TDU's founding in 1978. She was also number two on an opposition slate in 2006 headed by Tom Leedham, who was eventually defeated by Hoffa.
Pope said her "tiny" campaign staff consists of two part-time staffers and some staff time donated by TDU. She claims a large grass-roots volunteer network and said she holds conference calls at nights and on weekends with Teamster members across the nation.
Pope has spent months hammering away at the differences between her background and Hoffa's, and she reiterated the point during the interview.
"I came up through the ranks. I've been a local officer for the past 12 years and before that I was an international representative. ... I've been in the thick of it for quite a while, and I feel that Hoffa has been above it all, always. He was never a shop steward or a local officer, and he has totally removed himself. He spends most of his time staying in touch with politicians. And looking to Congress right now is no help at all."
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 U.S. manufacturing sector has become an engine of new job creation over the past four years, thanks to a combination of federal incentives and mega-trends like nearshoring and the clean energy boom, according to the industrial real estate firm Savills.
While those manufacturing announcements have softened slightly from their 2022 high point, they remain historically elevated. And the sector’s growth outlook remains strong, regardless of the results of the November U.S. presidential election, the company said in its September “Savills Manufacturing Report.”
From 2021 to 2024, over 995,000 new U.S. manufacturing jobs were announced, with two thirds in advanced sectors like electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries, semiconductors, clean energy, and biomanufacturing. After peaking at 350,000 news jobs in 2022, the growth pace has slowed, with 2024 expected to see just over half that number.
But the ingredients are in place to sustain the hot temperature of American manufacturing expansion in 2025 and beyond, the company said. According to Savills, that’s because the U.S. manufacturing revival is fueled by $910 billion in federal incentives—including the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—much of which has not yet been spent. Domestic production is also expected to be boosted by new tariffs, including a planned rise in semiconductor tariffs to 50% in 2025 and an increase in tariffs on Chinese EVs from 25% to 100%.
Certain geographical regions will see greater manufacturing growth than others, since just eight states account for 47% of new manufacturing jobs and over 6.3 billion square feet of industrial space, with 197 million more square feet under development. They are: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Tennessee.
Across the border, Mexico’s manufacturing sector has also seen “revolutionary” growth driven by nearshoring strategies targeting U.S. markets and offering lower-cost labor, with a workforce that is now even cheaper than in China. Over the past four years, that country has launched 27 new plants, each creating over 500 jobs. Unlike the U.S. focus on tech manufacturing, Mexico focuses on traditional sectors such as automative parts, appliances, and consumer goods.
Looking at the future, the U.S. manufacturing sector’s growth outlook remains strong, regardless of the results of November’s presidential election, Savills said. That’s because both candidates favor protectionist trade policies, and since significant change to federal incentives would require a single party to control both the legislative and executive branches. Rather than relying on changes in political leadership, future growth of U.S. manufacturing now hinges on finding affordable, reliable power amid increasing competition between manufacturing sites and data centers, Savills said.
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.