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.
A large part of the eastern United States today began bailing and digging out from an epic storm that seemingly brought everything but frogs and pestilence to the affected regions and doesn't show any signs of departing the mainland for at least another 24 hours.
As daylight broke and the waters receded from an unprecedented storm surge that hit the New York metropolitan area, it was
clear that the region's infrastructure would return to normalcy in slow, halting steps. The marine facilities operated by the
bi-state agency Port Authority of New York and New Jersey stayed closed today, with no word on when they will reopen. As of
1: 30 pm, seven New York City bridges had reopened; the rest remained closed to all but emergency personnel. The Lincoln
Tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey is open, but others are closed. Additionally, sections of the New Jersey
Turnpike, a road heavily used by trucks, remain closed around Newark, N.J.
The Ports of Philadelphia and Baltimore also remained closed today. Joseph P. Menta, a Port of Philadelphia spokesman,
said officials are assessing the situation to determine a reopening date. He advised port users to check with their
respective marine terminals to get status updates.
Further south at the Port of Virginia, the situation was brighter. The port sustained no damage from the storm,
although it was closed yesterday. All terminals are open, and workers expect to be lading vessels this afternoon,
according to Joe Harris, a spokesman for the Virginia Port Authority. "We expect the next two to three days to be
busy as we clear the backlog," Harris said.
THE CONTINUING THREAT
While the worst of the storm is beyond it, the Eastern Seaboard may experience aftershocks today
in the form of storm surges coinciding with the afternoon high tide. Mark Hoekzema, chief meteorologist
for Earth Networks, a Germantown, Md.-based environmental research firm that also operates a weather center,
said during a morning briefing that the coastline abutting the New York area could see a 7- to 10-foot
storm surge, while Boston could experience a surge of between 5 and 7 feet.
For New York, however, any surge would be less than the record 14-foot wall of water that submerged Battery
Park in lower Manhattan last night, Hoekzema said.
Hoekzema said travel on interstate highways could be hazardous due to debris littering the roads. Most
interstates were closed off yesterday, but many have been reopened. Many state and local roads remain impassible, he said.
The biggest problem for interstate travel will be on the highways that run near or through mountain elevations that should
expect another foot of snow over the next two days on top of 20 to 30 inches of snow already on the ground, Hoekzema said.
RESPONSE FROM LOGISTICS COMMUNITY
UPS Inc. said this afternoon it will continue to suspend scheduled pickups, deliveries, and on-call pickups in
parts of 10 states and the District of Columbia. UPS is gradually restoring service in states like Maryland,
where earlier in the day, service was still suspended statewide. Rival FedEx Corp. said service delays can be
expected in 13 states and the District of Columbia.
Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., a leading real estate services and logistics company, said its industrial properties in the
region came through the storm unscathed except for some minor damage and power outages. The company manages approximately
30 million square feet of industrial property in the area covering New York, New Jersey, and central Pennsylvania,
according to Joanne Bestall, a company spokeswoman.
Meanwhile, the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) said today it has begun working with its relief agency partners to
identify their logistics resource needs and share them with concerned members of the supply chain community. ALAN connects
companies that are willing to contribute logistics goods and services to disaster relief agencies and organizations that need support.
"We are in communication with state, regional, and national Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOADs) as well as
emergency management agencies," said Jock Menzies, president of ALAN, in a statement. "We are standing by to provide assistance
for transportation services, staging areas, storage, expert advice, and other vital resources."
In conjunction with Rutgers University, New Jersey's state university, ALAN is collecting information on supply chain
disruptions to help identify potential resource shortfalls and determine where support from emergency and nonprofit
organizations may be needed most, the group said. To streamline relief efforts, ALAN is aggregating needs posted by
the affected states and listing them on the National Donations
Management Network (NDMN). This will save potential donors from reviewing each state's pOréal individually,
ALAN said.
To make in-kind donations of needed supply chain and logistics goods and services, visit ALAN's website.
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.
RJW is an asset-based transportation, logistics, and warehousing provider, operating more than 7.3 million square feet of consolidation warehouse space in the transportation hubs of Chicago and Dallas and employing 1,900 people. RJW says it partners with over 850 CPG brands and delivers to more than 180 retailers nationwide. According to the company, its retail logistics solutions save cost, improve visibility, and achieve industry-leading On-Time, In-Full (OTIF) performance. Those improvements drive increased in-stock rates and sales, benefiting both CPG brands and their retailer partners, the firm says.
"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."
A report from the company released today offers predictions and strategies for the upcoming year, organized into six major predictions in GEP’s “Outlook 2025: Procurement & Supply Chain” report.
Advanced AI agents will play a key role in demand forecasting, risk monitoring, and supply chain optimization, shifting procurement's mandate from tactical to strategic. Companies should invest in the technology now to to streamline processes and enhance decision-making.
Expanded value metrics will drive decisions, as success will be measured by resilience, sustainability, and compliance… not just cost efficiency. Companies should communicate value beyond cost savings to stakeholders, and develop new KPIs.
Increasing regulatory demands will necessitate heightened supply chain transparency and accountability. So companies should strengthen supplier audits, adopt ESG tracking tools, and integrate compliance into strategic procurement decisions.
Widening tariffs and trade restrictions will force companies to reassess total cost of ownership (TCO) metrics to include geopolitical and environmental risks, as nearshoring and friendshoring attempt to balance resilience with cost.
Rising energy costs and regulatory demands will accelerate the shift to sustainable operations, pushing companies to invest in renewable energy and redesign supply chains to align with ESG commitments.
New tariffs could drive prices higher, just as inflation has come under control and interest rates are returning to near-zero levels. That means companies must continue to secure cost savings as their primary responsibility.
Freight transportation sector analysts with US Bank say they expect change on the horizon in that market for 2025, due to possible tariffs imposed by a new White House administration, the return of East and Gulf coast port strikes, and expanding freight fraud.
“All three of these merit scrutiny, and that is our promise as we roll into the new year,” the company said in a statement today.
First, US Bank said a new administration will occupy the White House and will control the House and Senate for the first time since 2016. With an announced mandate on tariffs, taxes and trade from his electoral victory, President-Elect Trump’s anticipated actions are almost certain to impact the supply chain, the bank said.
Second, a strike by longshoreman at East Coast and Gulf ports was suspended in October, but the can was only kicked until mid-January. Shipper alarm bells are already ringing, and with peak season in full swing, the West coast ports are roaring, having absorbed containers bound for the East. However, that status may not be sustainable in the event of a prolonged strike in January, US Bank said.
And third, analyst are tracking the proliferation of freight fraud, and its reverberations across the supply chain. No longer the realm of petty criminals, freight fraudsters have become increasingly sophisticated, and the financial toll of their activities in the loss of goods, and data, is expected to be in the billions, the bank estimates.
Specifically, 48% of respondents identified rising tariffs and trade barriers as their top concern, followed by supply chain disruptions at 45% and geopolitical instability at 41%. Moreover, tariffs and trade barriers ranked as the priority issue regardless of company size, as respondents at companies with less than 250 employees, 251-500, 501-1,000, 1,001-50,000 and 50,000+ employees all cited it as the most significant issue they are currently facing.
“Evolving tariffs and trade policies are one of a number of complex issues requiring organizations to build more resilience into their supply chains through compliance, technology and strategic planning,” Jackson Wood, Director, Industry Strategy at Descartes, said in a release. “With the potential for the incoming U.S. administration to impose new and additional tariffs on a wide variety of goods and countries of origin, U.S. importers may need to significantly re-engineer their sourcing strategies to mitigate potentially higher costs.”
A measure of business conditions for shippers improved in September due to lower fuel costs, looser trucking capacity, and lower freight rates, but the freight transportation forecasting firm FTR still expects readings to be weaker and closer to neutral through its two-year forecast period.
Bloomington, Indiana-based FTR is maintaining its stance that trucking conditions will improve, even though its Shippers Conditions Index (SCI) improved in September to 4.6 from a 2.9 reading in August, reaching its strongest level of the year.
“The fact that September’s index is the strongest since last December is not a sign that shippers’ market conditions are steadily improving,” Avery Vise, FTR’s vice president of trucking, said in a release.
“September and May were modest outliers this year in a market that is at least becoming more balanced. We expect that trend to continue and for SCI readings to be mostly negative to neutral in 2025 and 2026. However, markets in transition tend to be volatile, so further outliers are likely and possibly in both directions. The supply chain implications of tariffs are a wild card for 2025 especially,” he said.
The SCI tracks the changes representing four major conditions in the U.S. full-load freight market: freight demand, freight rates, fleet capacity, and fuel price. Combined into a single index, a positive score represents good, optimistic conditions, while a negative score represents bad, pessimistic conditions.