Ben Ames has spent 20 years as a journalist since starting out as a daily newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania in 1995. From 1999 forward, he has focused on business and technology reporting for a number of trade journals, beginning when he joined Design News and Modern Materials Handling magazines. Ames is author of the trail guide "Hiking Massachusetts" and is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.
With the Trump administration's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports taking effect, some have voiced concern that the policy could dent the sales of steel-intensive material handling products such as racks and shelving.
However, any potential decline in investments in material handling equipment (MHE) will likely be muted by the tremendous demand for warehouse equipment driven by the fast growth of e-commerce sales, one expert said.
The Trump administration has levied a 25-percent tariff on steel and a 10-percent tariff on aluminum imports from the European Union, Canada, and Mexico, saying the move addresses U.S. national security concerns, including a global oversupply of the products. The tariffs follow similar levies on imports from other countries, including Russia and China, in March.
In a statement, the White House said that "current quantities and circumstances of steel and aluminum imports into the United States threaten to impair national security. These excessive imports are driven in large part by the worldwide glut from overproduction by other countries." Imports threaten to impair U.S. national security because further closures of domestic production capacity would make it harder to meet demand for critical raw materials in a national emergency, the Administration said.
Some in the business community are skeptical of that argument, voicing fears that tariffs could trigger repercussions across the U.S. economy, forcing steel and aluminum users to raise their prices to cover the higher prices of raw materials.
That effect could be particularly strong for providers of material handling equipment such as warehouse rack and shelving products, whose prices are directly influenced by the cost of steel, Paul Huppertz, a director at Crimson & Co., a London-based management consulting firm with U.S. offices in Atlanta, said in an email. It could also have a lesser impact on lift trucks, conveyors, and other types of warehouse automation, forcing additional price hikes, Huppertz said.
Yet the overall hit is unlikely to be severe, Huppertz said. "As far as impact on growth and investment, I don't see it making a big dent," said Huppertz. "There will be some projects that fail to be approved since the higher cost exceeds the expected benefit. But the bigger projects, especially in this e-commerce fueled boom, will likely continue."
Pallet-rack products will probably see a the biggest impact in unit cost compared to other categories of MHE, but racking is not usually the "big ticket" cost item in a new DC or expansion project, he said. "Bottom line, the price increase will dampen demand for MHE slightly, but strategic business drivers and expansion of digital channel capabilities will continue to be hot," Huppertz said. However, the tariffs could also send ripples through related parts of the industry if U.S. trading partners respond to the newly-imposed trade barriers by increasing tariffs on American exports, according to the Alexandria, Va.-based freight broker trade group Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA). That could hit the business conducted by third-party logistics (3PL) providers, which play a growing role in increasingly digital global supply chains, the group said.
"TIA strongly supports the removal of barriers to the flow of goods in international and interstate commerce," it said in a statement. "Issues such as the tariffs on steel and aluminum, and the renegotiation of trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement, will have a major impact on 3PLs and their customers."
The German forklift vendor Kion Group plans to lay off an unspecified number of workers as part of an “efficiency program” it is launching to strengthen the company’s resilience and maintain headroom for future investments, the company said today.
The new structural measures are intended to optimize Kion’s efficiency, executives said in their fourth quarter earnings report.
“While internal programs to continuously improve product, production, and services costs were already up and running throughout 2024 and will continue, further structural measures will address a more efficient setup for Kion in Europe. This is expected to have an impact on personnel requirements subject to consultations with the respective employee representative bodies as required by local laws,” the report said.
“The efficiency program is addressing developments in the macroeconomic environment. European economies are struggling to gain momentum – this affects key customer industries in the Industrial Trucks & Services segment, where Chinese competitors have been improving their market position in the aftermaths of the recent pandemics,” Kion said.
The move comes as Kion reported that it finished its 2024 financial year with slightly improved revenue of $11.9 billion (over $11.8 billion in 2023), and profitability (measured as earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT)) that significantly increased to $951 million (over $820 million in 2023).
The company now plans to pay $249 to $269 million in financial year 2025 to implement the cost saving measures. Following that one-time charge, it expects to achieve sustainable cost savings of $145 million to $166 million per year, beginning in 2026.
“In order to maintain headroom for investments ensuring our future, to further strengthen our competitiveness and our resilience, we must manage our cost base. This requires structural and sustainable measures,” Christian Harm, CFO of Kion, said in a release.
By the numbers, fourth quarter shipment volume was down 4.7% compared to the prior quarter, while spending dropped 2.2%.
Geographically, fourth-quarter shipment volume was low across all regions. The Northeast had the smallest decline at 1.2% with the West just behind with a contraction of 2.1%. And the Southeast saw shipments drop 6.7%, the most of all regions, as hurricanes impacted freight activity.
“While this quarter’s Index revealed spending overall on truck freight continues to decline, we did see some signs that spending per truck is increasing,” said Bobby Holland, U.S. Bank director of freight business analytics. “Shipments falling more than spending – even with lower fuel surcharges – suggests tighter capacity.”
The U.S. Bank Freight Payment Index measures quantitative changes in freight shipments and spend activity based on data from transactions processed through U.S. Bank Freight Payment, which processes more than $43 billion in freight payments annually for shippers and carriers across the U.S.
“It’s clear there are both cyclical and structural challenges remaining as we look for a truck freight market reboot,” Bob Costello, senior vice president and chief economist at the American Trucking Associations (ATA) said in a release on the results. “For instance, factory output softness – which has a disproportionate impact on truck freight volumes – is currently weighing heavily on our industry.”
Volvo Autonomous Solutions will form a strategic partnership with autonomous driving technology and generative AI provider Waabi to jointly develop and deploy autonomous trucks, with testing scheduled to begin later this year.
The announcement came two weeks after autonomous truck developer Kodiak Robotics said it had become the first company in the industry to launch commercial driverless trucking operations. That milestone came as oil company Atlas Energy Solutions Inc. used two RoboTrucks—which are semi-trucks equipped with the Kodiak Driver self-driving system—to deliver 100 loads of fracking material on routes in the Permian Basin in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico.
Atlas now intends to scale up its RoboTruck deployment “considerably” over the course of 2025, with multiple RoboTruck deployments expected throughout the year. In support of that, Kodiak has established a 12-person office in Odessa, Texas, that is projected to grow to approximately 20 people by the end of Q1 2025.
Women are significantly underrepresented in the global transport sector workforce, comprising only 12% of transportation and storage workers worldwide as they face hurdles such as unfavorable workplace policies and significant gender gaps in operational, technical and leadership roles, a study from the World Bank Group shows.
This underrepresentation limits diverse perspectives in service design and decision-making, negatively affects businesses and undermines economic growth, according to the report, “Addressing Barriers to Women’s Participation in Transport.” The paper—which covers global trends and provides in-depth analysis of the women’s role in the transport sector in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and Middle East and North Africa (MENA)—was prepared jointly by the World Bank Group, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), the European Investment Bank (EIB), and the International Transport Forum (ITF).
The slim proportion of women in the sector comes at a cost, since increasing female participation and leadership can drive innovation, enhance team performance, and improve service delivery for diverse users, while boosting GDP and addressing critical labor shortages, researchers said.
To drive solutions, the researchers today unveiled the Women in Transport (WiT) Network, which is designed to bring together transport stakeholders dedicated to empowering women across all facets and levels of the transport sector, and to serve as a forum for networking, recruitment, information exchange, training, and mentorship opportunities for women.
Initially, the WiT network will cover only the Europe and Central Asia and the Middle East and North Africa regions, but it is expected to gradually expand into a global initiative.
“When transport services are inclusive, economies thrive. Yet, as this joint report and our work at the EIB reveal, few transport companies fully leverage policies to better attract, retain and promote women,” Laura Piovesan, the European Investment Bank (EIB)’s Director General of the Projects Directorate, said in a release. “The Women in Transport Network enables us to unite efforts and scale impactful solutions - benefiting women, employers, communities and the climate.”
Oh, you work in logistics, too? Then you’ve probably met my friends Truedi, Lumi, and Roger.
No, you haven’t swapped business cards with those guys or eaten appetizers together at a trade-show social hour. But the chances are good that you’ve had conversations with them. That’s because they’re the online chatbots “employed” by three companies operating in the supply chain arena—TrueCommerce,Blue Yonder, and Truckstop. And there’s more where they came from. A number of other logistics-focused companies—like ChargePoint,Packsize,FedEx, and Inspectorio—have also jumped in the game.
While chatbots are actually highly technical applications, most of us know them as the small text boxes that pop up whenever you visit a company’s home page, eagerly asking questions like:
“I’m Truedi, the virtual assistant for TrueCommerce. Can I help you find what you need?”
“Hey! Want to connect with a rep from our team now?”
“Hi there. Can I ask you a quick question?”
Chatbots have proved particularly popular among retailers—an October survey by artificial intelligence (AI) specialist NLX found that a full 92% of U.S. merchants planned to have generative AI (GenAI) chatbots in place for the holiday shopping season. The companies said they planned to use those bots for both consumer-facing applications—like conversation-based product recommendations and customer service automation—and for employee-facing applications like automating business processes in buying and merchandising.
But how smart are these chatbots really? It varies. At the high end of the scale, there’s “Rufus,” Amazon’s GenAI-powered shopping assistant. Amazon says millions of consumers have used Rufus over the past year, asking it questions either by typing or speaking. The tool then searches Amazon’s product listings, customer reviews, and community Q&A forums to come up with answers. The bot can also compare different products, make product recommendations based on the weather where a consumer lives, and provide info on the latest fashion trends, according to the retailer.
Another top-shelf chatbot is “Manhattan Active Maven,” a GenAI-powered tool from supply chain software developer Manhattan Associates that was recently adopted by the Army and Air Force Exchange Service. The Exchange Service, which is the 54th-largest retailer in the U.S., is using Maven to answer inquiries from customers—largely U.S. soldiers, airmen, and their families—including requests for information related to order status, order changes, shipping, and returns.
However, not all chatbots are that sophisticated, and not all are equipped with AI, according to IBM. The earliest generation—known as “FAQ chatbots”—are only clever enough to recognize certain keywords in a list of known questions and then respond with preprogrammed answers. In contrast, modern chatbots increasingly use conversational AI techniques such as natural language processing to “understand” users’ questions, IBM said. It added that the next generation of chatbots with GenAI capabilities will be able to grasp and respond to increasingly complex queries and even adapt to a user’s style of conversation.
Given their wide range of capabilities, it’s not always easy to know just how “smart” the chatbot you’re talking to is. But come to think of it, maybe that’s also true of the live workers we come in contact with each day. Depending on who picks up the phone, you might find yourself speaking with an intern who’s still learning the ropes or a seasoned professional who can handle most any challenge. Either way, the best way to interact with our new chatbot colleagues is probably to take the same approach you would with their human counterparts: Start out simple, and be respectful; you never know what you’ll learn.