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.
Chunker’s role in the deal was to lease the six sites from the California Department of General Services for one year, with an option for a second year. They include three armories (in Lancaster, Palmdale, and Stockton), two fairground sites (San Joaquin County and Antelope Valley Fairgrounds), and a former prison site (Deuel Vocational Institute in Tracy).
Chunker will now coordinate between California ports, shipping/trucking companies, and cargo owners to help move containers and free up needed space elsewhere.
The effort is a result of California’s Executive Order N-19-21, which aims to strengthen the resilience of both the state’s and the nation’s supply chains. “California has taken swift action to keep goods moving at the state’s ports, leveraging our strategic partnerships to develop multifaceted solutions, including securing additional storage space for thousands of shipping containers,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a release. “These efforts are a vital investment to help meet the needs of not only Californians, but our entire nation, and we’ll continue advancing innovative solutions to address this global challenge.”
Efforts to ease port congestion over the past year have followed a range of strategies. Those steps have included moves to shift port operations toward 24/7 operations, stack containers in higher piles at the dock, or fine ocean carriers for containers that sit too long at the port complex.
However, the approach that seems to be gaining the most traction is simply opening new storage yards a short distance away from the container terminals themselves. That move allows workers to shift cargo off the crowded docks, thus creating precious space to accept new containers from ships waiting offshore, and offering truckers easier access to move loads on land.
Other examples of these sites include a 22-acre “pop up” container yard announced in January by the Port of Oakland and a similar approach by a South Carolina marine and rail logistics service provider that recently expanded container storage capacity at 18 depot locations throughout the Southeast, Mid-South, and Gulf regions.
More recently, the Los Angeles-based fulfillment provider Taylored Services LLC said on Feb. 11 that it had opened a new location directly at the Port of Los Angeles. Designed to support faster distribution by professional drayage services, the additional yard space in the area will assist Taylored in alleviating pressure from downstream congestion and increasing flow through the port, the company said.
"We intend to provide cross-docking, transloading services, and off-dock container transitioning services (free-flow yard, empty return site, container storage), all designed to assist with the efficient flow of containers to/from the Port of Los Angeles," Taylored CEO Jim DeVeau said in a release.
The initiatives come as freight import backups at west coast ports began to ease slightly in January, helped by a manufacturing pause in China during Lunar New Year celebrations and retailers drawing down inventory after the winter holiday peak shopping season, reports show.
That improvement is encouraging, but experts say it marks just a first step in bringing import and export flows back to pre-pandemic speeds. According to supply chain visibility provider project44, the easing of congestion in the U.S. serves as a reminder of the delicate balance of global trade, since the change has already shifted disruptions to Asian ports. Pointing to fresh rounds of Covid outbreaks and to the Lunar New Year holiday, project44 said delays at Asian maritime ports have increased even as Western nations improved.
According to project44 intelligence, the number of ships waiting per day to berth at U.S. ports, on average, fell from 14 ships in December to 7 in January. European ports also noted a month-to-month average decline from 7 ships per day in December to 6 ships per day in January. However, from December to January, Asian ports on average recorded an increase from 13 ships per day to 17 per day.
“In January there were signs of improving conditions at some ports, however, we still have a ways to go before there is a return to ‘normalcy’,” project44's vice president of Supply Chain Insights, Josh Brazil, said in a release. “Whether or not there will be enough empty containers positioned in the right locations after the Lunar New Year is a big unknown right now. If they are not, we may see further delays.”
Editor's note: This article was revised on Feb. 17 to update the statistics on port delay times provided by project44.
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.