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.
Humanitarian logistics efforts were elevated today as disaster response professionals wrestled with a storm the likes of which the nation has never seen.
Tropical storm Harvey, after hammering a large swath of the Texas Gulf Coast on Friday
and Saturday with rain and "Category 4" hurricane winds, continued today to swamp Houston, the fourth
most populous U.S. city, with rainfall that will likely end up being measured in feet rather than inches.
Moving at only 2 to 3 miles per hour as of this morning, Harvey is expected to head out to the
Gulf of Mexico and gather more moisture through evaporation from the Gulf's surface before returning
to Houston and Galveston by mid-week. In the interim, Harvey will douse neighboring Louisiana, including
New Orleans, so heavily that President Trump has declared the state a disaster area so that it qualifies
for federal aid.
What makes Harvey so frightful is its slow-moving nature and its trajectory over a massive body of
water rather than land. Nearly all storms depart after a day or two and then weaken rapidly as they move over land and are deprived of sources of moisture. Harvey, by contrast, is in an elongated meandering phase and will spend the next two days recharging its batteries over the Gulf. Once it returns to Houston and Galveston, Texas, 50 miles from Houston, it may stall there for two or three additional days.
By the time Harvey leaves for good around week's end, it could dump a staggering 50 inches of rain on the Houston area, about as much as it gets in a year. What's more, Houston is a region of flat topography that's prone to flooding and isn't known to have optimal drainage infrastructure. As a result, it may take a while for floodwaters to recede and for recovery efforts to fully begin.
Federal Emergency Management Administrator Brock Long today called Harvey a "landmark event" for
Texas and for the nation. Kathy Fulton, executive director of the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN), a
nonprofit group that connects logistics resources with disaster relief and recovery efforts, labeled Harvey a
"historic and catastrophic" storm.
The extended rains and flooding, which are swelling waterways, rivers, and bayous and making key
road and rail transport arteries impassable, mean it will take longer for ground transportation to resume,
Fulton said. This hampers response and recovery activities, she said.
ALAN's last communiqué,
issued shortly before midnight Sunday, urged those wanting to help to "donate
and volunteer responsibly so as not to consume supply chain capacity with items that are not needed." Cash donations
made to reputable nonprofit organizations allow them to "purchase exactly what is needed in the right configurations
and quantities, and to help restart the local economy," according to the communiqué.
Dry clothing, food, and assets to be deployed for high-water rescue efforts are in greatest demand right now,
according to state and local officials quoted in news reports.
On Sunday, ALAN said it had coordinated the transportation of cots from San Antonio to Houston and provided
information on sources of swift water rescue teams, drones that can be used for damage assessments, portable medical
clinics, and rotor-powered aircraft for delivery of pharmaceuticals to clinics and hospitals. ALAN said it continues
to request information—which will be kept confidential—on supply chain disruptions.
(More information on requests for aid that ALAN has received can be found
on its website.)
For now, transport providers can do little but wait out Harvey's wrath. The ports of Houston and Galveston
remained closed today, and port officials will assess the situation later in the day and into the evening to
determine if they will stay closed tomorrow. The U.S. Postal Service has suspended regular mail service as well
its Priority Mail Express overnight delivery service until late Wednesday throughout virtually all of Houston.
Atlanta-based UPS Inc. reported this morning that 728 ZIP codes across south Texas, as well as four in Louisiana,
are experiencing service disruptions of one degree or another.
Omaha, Neb.-based rail giant Union Pacific Corp., whose network feeds directly into the affected regions, has
issued embargoes on all traffic destined to Houston and surrounding areas. The railroad said it is not running
scheduled train service to and from Houston at least through Monday, while facility switching in Houston and
surrounding areas will remain suspended for at least another 48 to 72 hours.
According to consultancy FTR, Harvey will "strongly affect" more than 7 percent of U.S. trucking, with about
10 percent of all trucking operations affected during the first week. A portion of the country's trucking network
will be impaired for as long as two weeks, FTR said. After a month, about 2 percent of the national network
and one-quarter of the regional system—skewed heavily towards the Gulf—will be impacted. Regional services will absorb most of the dislocation, FTR said..
"Look for spot [noncontract truckload] prices to jump over the next several weeks, with very strong effects in Texas
and the south central region," Noël Perry, a partner at FTR, said in a statement. "Spot pricing was already up strong,
in double-digit territory. Market participants could easily add 5 percentage points to those numbers."
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.