In our continuing series of discussions with top supply-chain company executives, Donnie Burris of Burris Logistics discusses the challenges of Covid-19 and running a family business, as well as the advantages of diversification.
David Maloney has been a journalist for more than 35 years and is currently the group editorial director for DC Velocity and Supply Chain Quarterly magazines. In this role, he is responsible for the editorial content of both brands of Agile Business Media. Dave joined DC Velocity in April of 2004. Prior to that, he was a senior editor for Modern Materials Handling magazine. Dave also has extensive experience as a broadcast journalist. Before writing for supply chain publications, he was a journalist, television producer and director in Pittsburgh. Dave combines a background of reporting on logistics with his video production experience to bring new opportunities to DC Velocity readers, including web videos highlighting top distribution and logistics facilities, webcasts and other cross-media projects. He continues to live and work in the Pittsburgh area.
Donnie Burris became the CEO of Burris Logistics in 2010, after serving in a variety of management and operations roles at the company. With 25-plus years of experience at the organization, he is part of the fifth generation to work in the family business. Based in Milford, Delaware, Burris Logistics provides customized supply chain solutions with an emphasis on frozen and refrigerated products. The company has 2,000 team members, 16 distribution centers, and a fleet of 200 trucks and 450 trailers. It brokers 350,000 truckloads per year and has annual sales of $4 billion.
Donnie Burris is also a board member of Delmarva Christian High School and a former member of the finance committee of Delaware’s Bayhealth Medical Center. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, and has completed additional study in strategy and finance through Wharton’s Executive Education Center and industrial refrigeration courses through the Refrigerating Engineers and Technicians Association (RETA). He is also a graduate of the WFLO Institute, the educational arm of the Global Cold Chain Alliance.
Q: You are very strong in food distribution, which has been a critical need during the Covid-19 pandemic. How do you view the current state of the industry?
A: The government told the whole world what we have always known, and that is that our team members are essential workers. As a result of Covid-19, the frozen and refrigerated food industry has experienced an incredible increase in demand. Our team members—from our warehouse personnel to our drivers—are fatigued. We have had to focus on our partner demand and the well-being of our team to make sure the supply chain remains intact.
We have experienced increased demand at both the retail grocery and club-store level, while food-service has taken a hit. For Burris Logistics companies, our diverse brands enable us to be successful while experiencing vendor shortages and industry decline. The current state of the supply chain saw our different brands working together, as well as forming temporary partnerships with food-service distributors, to ensure their workforce was supported and our customers remained well-served.
During this pandemic, we worked equally hard to mitigate the risk of Covid-19. We needed additional team members, extra hours, different cleaning tactics, and catered food.
Q: Does your diversification help in weathering a down economy?
A: The diversification of our brands allows us to operate successfully even when specific industries become impacted. We see a countercyclical impact during tough financial times. During the lockdowns, Honor Foods, our food-service redistributor, saw sharp decreases as a result of restaurant closures. Traditional retail and direct-to-consumer fulfillment experienced record volume due to increased consumer demand. Our PRW Plus and Custom brands were able to meet this demand.
Our business has strived to build resiliency no matter the storm. We consistently turn our focus to our customer needs and the well-being of our team members, and it always leads us to an outcome that we are proud of.
Q: What are the advantages to offering customers both warehousing and transportation services?
A: Having a dedicated fleet is a value-added service for our partners, who can depend on Burris Logistics for real-time visibility, on-time deliveries, and consistent customer service. Additionally, our Trinity Logistics brand offers freight brokerage services that allow us to solve transportation needs anywhere in the country. By bundling these services together into one solution, we are able to offer more value and higher-quality service to our customers.
Q: What are the differences in managing a family-run company compared with a publicly held company?
A: Our focus is always on the far horizon. We strive to be the best at what we do ... not the biggest. Our focus is on building great solutions for our customers, taking great care of our team members, and positively impacting the world around us. As a family business, we manage the business professionally with a board of directors, while also being able to move very quickly and efficiently whenever there is a need to do so.
Q: Burris has been recognized for being a great place to work. How do you develop and maintain your culture?
A: It starts in the heart. We are a work-in-progress, but we know what we want Burris Logistics to be. We have taken the time to articulate those values that are important to us. We try to make these a part of our everyday life, and we look for leaders who possess a servant-leadership mentality.
Our business is about people; they make all the difference in the world. If we can create an atmosphere where people know they are cared about, know that their talents are being utilized and their work is making a difference, and know that we are pursuing excellence, then we are well on our way to the type of culture that we want Burris to achieve.
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.