Freight Forward - Inland Distribution Day 1

Welcome to Freight Forward, where each Monday, I’ll recap what happened in supply chains the previous week through JOC.com articles and additional sources and also what to expect for the week ahead.

Just in case you’re wondering, I’m Cathy Roberson, a supply chain writer, and researcher. For this weekly series, I serve as a research analyst for the Journal of Commerce (JOC), for whom I identify trends, provide thoughts and input into stories and assist with parcel last-mile queries.

Hello from Chicago and welcome to this special issue of Freight Forward in which I’ll share some of Day 1 highlights from the JOC Inland Distribution Conference.

First off, what a crowd! The Shippers’ Round Table on Monday afternoon was packed with shippers ranging from retail to manufacturing discussing such concerns as poor communication with carriers, intermodal and rail issues and the need to collaborate and work together to solve problems.

Michael Murphy, Chief Development Officer of Centerpoint Properties opened the conference with welcoming remarks, describing the current environment as a “fascinating time for opportunities and issues.”

Indeed, Mr. Murphy is right and it was demonstrated throughout the sessions and conversations in the hallways.

The first panel session was on the North American Outlook with Paul Bingham, Director, Transportation Consulting, S&P Global Market Intelligence kicking the session off with an economic overview. The economy is slowing with the world likely falling into a shallow recession in Q4 and probably into the first two quarters in 2023.

Next up was Dean Croke, Principal Analyst, DAT Freight & Analytics spoke on the trucking spot and contract markets. A big takeaway from Dean was that for TL RFPs, DAT is seeing shippers going to fewer carriers and going deeper, with more volumes, with these carriers who partnered well.

Larry Gross, President and Founder of Gross Transportation Consulting discussed the intermodal market noting that peak season will be muted with small gains from current levels and chassis disfunction will be a continuing challenge.

The next session was a great conversation between JOC’s Bill Cassidy and Joe Jaska, Head of Land Product, Region Americas, DB Schenker. Back in June, Germany-based DB Schenker acquired USA Truck giving it a presence in the US domestic ground market. As Jaska noted in the conversation, DB Schenker is one of the largest road freight providers in Europe. By acquiring USA Truck, they can offer this service to international customers. Interesting note is that DB Schenker is planning more acquisitions once they integrate USA Trucks and are looking to the APAC and EMEA regions.

Some other sound bites coming from the sessions were:

Crystal Anderson, Director-North American Logistics, Ingredion: Strategic Partnerships =Riding the storm together

Sam Niness, President, Triple Crown Services, Norfolk Southern: Attitude of working together is spreading

Tom Schmitt, Chairman, President, and CEO, Forward Air: COVID forced us to do good things faster.

Mark Yeager – CEO, Redwood Logistics: The Pandemic was a wakeup call on fragility of long supply chains.

Andy Moses, Senior Vice President-Sales and Solutions, Penske Logistics – Rea estate vacancy rate of only 0.1% in Savannah thanks to the success of the port of Savannah.

Barbara Hall, Director, International Operations, Bunzl International Services: Last year transloading was a necessity. Today it is an option for us.

Daniel Maffei, Chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) stopped by and chatted with JOC’s Mark Szakonyi.

“Evidence does show the ocean carriers deployed almost all the capacity they could and there was capacity deployed by small so-called pop-up carriers also. I have not seen such capacity increases from America's railroads,”

“You’ve got to be ready for anything and that’s tough.”

It was really great seeing everyone yesterday. While there lots of serious discussions and networking going on throughout the sessions, we had alot of fun as well. (Matthew Leffler, Samantha Jones and Eric Johnson).

Bill Cassidy 'wins' the spiffiest shoe contest

Stay tuned for another special Freight Forwarder tomorrow. As always, please be sure to hit the subscribe button to receive the latest updates.

Thanks,

Cathy