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.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump highlighted the trucking industry as an example of a hard-core American business populated by middle-class voters who were ready to embrace his populist message. The industry, for the most part, returned the embrace that November.
Thirteen months into the Trump presidency, however, it appears a large faction of the trucking industry, namely the 160,000 or so sole proprietors and micro-fleets belonging to the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), are starting to wonder, "where is the love?"
In a February 5 letter to Trump, Todd Spencer, OOIDA's acting president and CEO and the group's long-time chief lobbyist, said the president must steer clear of representatives of "large, corporate motor carriers," and instead get out and meet with "Americans who actually drive for a living" and "who helped get you elected" to fully understand their needs and concerns, and by extension, trucking's role in the nation's economic and everyday lives.
As of late last week, OOIDA had not received a response from the administration. Nor has Trump sent out any tweets directed at Spencer or his group. OOIDA's headquarters, located in the Kansas City suburb of Grain Valley, Mo., was closed today due to inclement weather.
Trump has spoken before truckers' groups in the past to tout his economic agenda. The most recent was last October in Harrisburg, Pa. to promote his plan for tax reform. Perhaps Trump's most visible interaction with industry folk came last March at the White House, where he met with trucking CEOs and other industry bigwigs to discuss health care reform. The president had various photos taken in the cab of a power unit.
The event got OOIDA's dander up because it was organized by the American Trucking Associations (ATA), which represents large motor carriers that Spencer said have "vastly different legislative and regulatory priorities than the real truckers" that his group represents. ATA and OOIDA have long-standing policy differences which stem from the divergent composition of the respective constituencies.
ELD: NOT FOR ME
Not surprisingly, Spencer's letter focused on the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) mandate, which went into effect Dec. 18 and which OOIDA has fiercely opposed. The mandate ended the use of paper logbooks for virtually all truckers, and required vehicles built after the year 2000 to be equipped with ELDs to ensure compliance with federal driver hours-of-service rules.
Many drivers are "perplexed and disappointed" the Trump administration has not heeded their calls to reverse or, at least delay, the mandate, especially since many of them voted for Trump with the belief that his administration's efforts to provide regulatory relief would begin with the ELD mandate, Spencer wrote.
Into its third month, the ELD mandate shows no signs of being blocked or reversed. OOIDA, which has tried unsuccessfully in the courts and in Congress to stall or prevent the rule's implementation, has asked the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) for a five-year exemption for drivers who meet specific criteria. FMCSA has granted various exemptions to companies and certain types of trucking operations; various states have asked for exemptions to help truckers who transport commodities vital to their state's economies.
Most observers believed that once the courts upheld the regulation, legislative remedies would not be forthcoming because Congress had in 2015 directed FMCSA to craft such a rule. In addition, opponents would find it hard to reverse a regulation whose primary objective was to improve highway safety. OOIDA has argued that the rule is costly, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. The group has called the mandate the most disruptive regulation in the industry's history.
Spencer, who has a reputation for being blunt-spoken, was careful in his letter to laud Trump for demonstrating his support for the trucking industry and for acknowledging that truckers are a "critical component to relief efforts during national disasters and emergencies." He praised the president for the "support and respect you have publicly shown our industry" in his first year in office.
A shorter version of this story appears in our March 2018 print edition under the title "Truckers petition Trump for ELD relief."
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.