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 Senate Appropriations Committee today approved a fiscal-year 2016 funding bill for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development that includes an amendment requiring states to allow longer twin trailers on the national highway system.
The $55.6 billion bill will now head to the Senate, where it will be taken up toward the end of the year as part of omnibus legislation, according to a source close to the situation. The House has already approved its FY 2016 funding bill that includes the controversial amendment, which would allow 33-foot twin trailers across the entire national highway network, including the 41,000-mile Interstate Highway System, for the first time in 33 years. The current cap is at 28 feet per trailer, though 18 states allow larger equipment on their portions of the network.
The amendment, offered by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., passed by a 16-14 vote, mostly along party lines. One notable exception was Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., the committee chairman, who voted against it. Mississippi does not allow the larger trailers on its roads, and yesterday the state's transportation commission adopted a resolution opposing the Senate measure. The committee defeated a counter-amendment offered by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Tom Udall, D-N.M., which would have allowed DOT to conduct a rulemaking into the effect of the larger tractor-trailers on highway safety and road infrastructure.
The appropriations bill passed the committee by a 20-10 margin. It appropriates $17.7 billion in discretionary spending for DOT, including $572 million for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), a DOT subagency that oversees truck and bus safety. The bill requires DOT to complete its final rule requiring the use of electronic logging devices and its proposed rule governing the use of truck speed limiters. The bill also continues to suspend the reimplementation of the FMCSA's driver "restart" provisions contained in its hours-of-service regulations that force drivers off the road between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. over two consecutive days. FMCSA will conduct further studies to determine the effects of sidelining truck drivers during less-congested intervals and instead putting them on the road during morning rush-hour traffic along with millions of motorists.
The passage of the twin-trailer amendment is a victory for a coalition of less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers, shippers, and business trade groups, companies like Amazon.com, and the American Trucking Associations (ATA). They argued the provision would not increase tractor-trailer weight, would improve vehicle performance because of the stability of longer trailer wheelbases, and would dramatically boost fleet productivity by maximizing trailer space utilization.
By adding 10 feet of trailer cube to each trip, carriers can transport more cargo with the same number of trucks, in fewer trips, they maintain. The increased cubic capacity will primarily benefit LTL carriers because they operate most of the twin trailers; it will also benefit e-tailers such as Amazon that ship massive quantities of lightweight merchandise, which usually cubes out long before it weighs out.
Conversely, it is a defeat for highway-safety advocacy groups, the Teamsters union, and a large swath of the truckload-carrier industry. Safety groups and the Teamsters said the nation's highway network, especially its merge lanes and on-off ramps, is not designed to accommodate vehicles that, if the provision becomes law, would measure 84 feet in length.
Heads of 16 truckload carriers had asked lawmakers to vote against the provision, saying it jeopardizes highway safety and undermines the ability of smaller carriers to compete.
In a statement, Jackie Gillan, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, called the appropriations bill a "lethal assault on public safety" by special trucking interests, adding that it "completely disregards the existing and growing carnage on our highways caused by oversized trucks." Gillan called on President Obama to veto the transport appropriations bill if it contains this and other "antisafety measures."
The Obama administration does not favor increasing truck sizes or weight; a DOT study released earlier this month said Congress should keep current limits in place because there is insufficient data to determine the effect of those changes on the national system.
Federal law sets an 80,000-lb. gross vehicle weight limit—tractor, trailer, and freight—on trucks operating on the national network. A handful of states in New England and the Northeast allow trucks weighing up to 97,000 pounds to operate on their portions of the network. One of those states is Maine, whose senior senator, Republican Susan Collins, spearheaded that drive. Collins chairs the Appropriations Committee's transportation, housing, and urban development subcommittee, the subcommittee that drafted the bill passed by the Appropriations Committee today.
The ATA, for its part, issued a statement hailing the committee's vote. However, the statement made no mention of the passage of the twin-trailer amendment. The truckload carriers that oppose the language constitute some of the group's most influential members.
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.