Ferag, the Zurich-based leader in advanced conveying and sortation solutions, has launched its hi-tech, Swiss-engineered overhead pouch and sorted systems into the UK market

With the air freight industry in the midst of another boom, international logistics provider cargo-partner has expanded its charter program by adding a new weekly part-load service between Vienna and Chicago O’Hare International Airport

Transaction marks PS Logistics’ fifth acquisition of 2022, further establishing the company in the Southeast by adding a terminal in Brookhaven, Mississippi

P&S Transportation LLC, a PS Logistics subsidiary, announced today that it has purchased all substantial transportation assets of Clay’s Transport Inc. and Clays Logistics LLC, or, together, “Clay’s,” a privately-owned interstate trucking and brokerage company that specializes in flatbed shipping in the Southeastern United States.

Headquartered in Brookhaven, Mississippi, Clay’s maintains a fleet of 35 tractors and 50 trailers. The company primarily hauls general flatbed freight, including lumber, metals, and steel, the types of freight in which P&S also specializes.

The acquisition will provide Clay’s, its customers, and its drivers with additional capacity, new service offerings, and increased economies of scale.

Organizationally, Clay’s will be managed by James Waldrop as a separate division of P&S Transportation under the leadership of Houston Vaughn, president and COO, P&S Transportation. Clay’s will continue to operate under the Clay’s Transport brand name.

The Clay’s acquisition continues PS Logistics’ acquisition strategy of partnering with families and owners within the flatbed trucking segment. Since 2016, PS Logistics has successfully acquired 26 trucking and brokerage operations. Financial terms of the Clay’s transaction were not disclosed.

About PS Logistics

Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, PS Logistics is one of the largest and fastest growing flatbed transportation and logistics providers in the United States. PS Logistics provides full-service transportation services, including asset-based transportation, non-asset-based transportation, brokerage, third-party-logistics-managed transportation, warehousing, and supply chain services. This hybrid model delivers optimal flexibility to address customers’ flatbed transportation needs across various industries throughout the United States.

President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are moving to prevent a looming shutdown of the nation’s freight railroads with the House preparing to take up legislation this week to impose a settlement over the objections of some unions.

The chaos and uncertainty of the global supply chain throughout the past two years has brought the importance of an optimized logistics operation into sharp focus. As transportation costs soared, many executives paid close attention to the effects of the supply chain on their bottom line.

To gain end-to-end visibility into your supply chain, you need a freight audit and payment provider that takes all the data from your freight bills and standardizes it – ingests, cleanses, normalizes, and connects it from disparate systems – to provide you with centralized intelligence and visibility for total transportation spend management.

Supply Chain and Freight Bill Audit Costs

Enterprise leaders need business intelligence to make informed decisions. Without a freight audit process, you have no visibility into which parts of your supply chain need optimization, which parts regularly accrue unnecessary accessorial charges, where you are being charged with incorrect rates, where you could use better route planning, and other crucial KPIs.

A freight audit and payment solution that automates the process of pulling data from every freight invoice across your global transportation network and compiling it into usable data is the best way to gain end-to-end control and visibility into your supply chain.

Freight Audits and the Transportation Industry

In 1980, the transportation industry was deregulated. Before that, freight payment terms were cohesive across the board, and each freight invoice had to be paid in a matter of days.

This changed the way logistics services were paid, and shippers and carriers could negotiate the terms of their freight bills. The freight payment process became more complex, and as technology has advanced over the past few decades, the need for a comprehensive freight audit has increased.

Freight Bill Errors

Accurate and timely accounting, reporting, and freight payment is nearly impossible – up to 25% of freight invoices are estimated to contain errors. With freight bill audit software, your organization can uncover improperly charged fees, avoid double paying invoices, and ensure carriers are paid correctly and on time.

The freight audit process provides your enterprise with more accurate carrier invoices. With accurate invoicing comes accurate data. With accurate data comes insightful analytics on the state of your transportation spend, allowing stakeholders to make informed decisions and track KPIs and other essential business analytics.

Freight Bill Auditing Challenges

Manual freight auditing necessitates a special skill set. Audit staff will need specific training and attention to detail, and they will need to have access to all original bills of lading and carrier contracts to crosscheck any rates, freight weights, and any errors.

When you partner with a freight audit and payment (FAP) provider, auditing becomes an automated process, improving your freight payment and total transportation spend data quality and efficiency.

New Shipper/Carrier Relationships

With recent global supply chain turmoil, shippers are currently experiencing difficult times. The shipper/carrier dynamic has shifted. For the first time in recent memory, the market favors the carrier. Carriers have more options and more power than ever in recent history.

Shippers are in a unique position, grappling with rising fuel prices, changing tariffs, capacity restraints, and unpredictable service. These factors can result in delivery delays, expensive spot transactions, and unhappy customers due to empty shelves and backorders. Further, shippers don’t have much leverage.

These aspects of the current market add up to shippers facing the challenge of keeping carriers happy. On-time freight bill payments to carriers are the best way to do so. Carriers are spoiled for choice, and if they are going to be paid late, they will prioritize other shippers without much thought, regardless of negotiated contracts.

Increasingly, carriers are demanding shorter payment terms, and shippers are having difficulty retaining capacity commitments from suppliers. This impacts shipper days payable outstanding (DPO) and working capital objectives, creating more financial risk.

Bottom line?

On-time carrier payments are imperative.

Freight Audit and Payment Software

Freight auditing software analyzes freight invoices for inaccuracies, ensuring you pay carriers on time, while ensuring you pay only what you were quoted in contract negotiations. You gain better visibility and control over the entire billing process and other aspects of business that affect your bottom line — cost allocation and timely accruals, for example.

When powered by a credible platform, freight audit and payment software gives you visibility into freight costs across your entire business operations, which can reveal smarter ways to maximize trade routing (also decreasing your carbon emissions and supporting your organization’s ESG goals) and predict future transportation costs.

 Auditing, Freight, and the Future of Supply Chain

Complete Freight Audit software, powered by Transportation Spend Management, empowers global enterprises with the predictive tools needed to future-proof transportation operations.

 Chris Cassidy is the chief revenue officer for Trax Technologies, the global leader in Transportation Spend Management (TSM) solutions. Trax elevates traditional Freight Audit and Payment (FAP) with a combination of industry leading cloud-based technology solutions and expert services to help enterprises with the world’s more complex supply chains better manage and control their global transportation costs and drive enterprise-wide efficiency and value. For more information, visit www.traxtech.com.

The Port of Houston has enjoyed a 13 per cent year-on-year container growth in October, continuing its positive trend seen throughout 2022.

The port moved a total of 371,994 TEU during the month.

Loaded container TEU reached the highest volume ever, up 21 per cent compared to the same month last year.

Overall, container volume is up 18 per cent year-to-date at Port Houston’s terminals and has surpassed the 3 million mark thus far, with 3,333,924 TEU.

“Although the import demand in the US appears to be softening, we have not seen any slowing in Houston in recent months,” said Roger Guenther, Port Houston Executive Director.

“We are handling record amounts of cargo and remain focused on aggressive infrastructure development to optimise capacity and efficiently handle current and future demand through our port.”

The Port Commission recently voted to introduce a sustained import dwell fee and an optional excessive import dwell fee to cope with record-breaking volumes.

The port had long considered the introduction of a fee as containers keep flowing in at its terminals with no signs of imminent softening in import loads.

“The additional dwell fees are intended to minimise storage of containers on terminal. Boxes need to move through the terminal quickly to maintain a fluid environment and superior level of service for our customers,” Guenther said.

Total tonnage across Port Houston’s facilities was up 18 per cent in October and 25 per cent for the year as compared to last year.

In September, the Port of Houston registered its second-highest month ever for containers following a surge in demand for imported goods.

Total throughput reached 353,525 TEU, a year-on-year increase of 26 per cent

US trucking is entering a tumultuous period that will likely reshape the $875 billion industry.

In spite of the recent improvements concerning shipping container shortages and similar, the capacity crunch is still a real concern. In fact, it is likely to remain one indefinitely. So, coming up with viable solutions to the problems is one of the foremost tasks for any business involved in the shipping and transporting of goods. To contribute, we have prepared a guide on the top strategies for coping with the capacity crunch!

Work on your efficiency

The first way of coping with the capacity crunch is to make it easier for carriers and logistics companies to work with you. Since the capacity crunch makes it necessary for them to be slightly pickier with their partners, choosing someone who helps them do their work quickly and effectively will always be a priority. Meaning they likely won’t choose to work with you if your handover of goods is not optimally organized. Besides, some effort to optimize your distribution center will also help your own business, as well. It is only better to invest time and resources into such a project.

Form long-term cooperative agreements

If you want a guarantee that you’ll be able to ship your goods consistently, the best thing to do is form long-term cooperative agreements. If you know you can rely on your partners for shipping space; you won’t need to worry about a capacity crunch. They will also feel more motivated to provide you with enough space for all your shipping needs. In addition, working more closely together gives you the benefit of knowing your goods are being handled well. And that they will arrive safely at their destination without any damage. Which is not something you can absolutely guarantee when working with new carriers.

Improve your routes

If you rely on your own truck fleet or other transportation methods, one way of coping with the capacity crunch is to optimize your delivery routes. As logistics experts like to point out, working on the improvement of your everyday traveling routes can shave off a lot of time from your schedule. This would, in turn, free up your trucks faster and allow you to make more rounds. It may not be an obvious thing when just paying attention to short-term boosts to your delivery efficiency. However, over weeks and months, it will slowly add up to a significant improvement well worth all the effort to achieve it!

Ship more frequently

Yet another method of coping with the capacity crunch is making more yet smaller shipments. This somewhat synergizes with our previous piece of advice. Of course, there is a serious downside to this, especially if you are doing it yourself. Frequent smaller shipments still use up fuel, which would increase your operating costs. Still, if your goal is to get your goods to the destination as quickly and reliably as possible, this is likely one of your best options. The downside is somewhat minimized, too, if you are working with logistics companies or carriers. The price of their service is, after all, primarily based on the amount of inventory you have them transport. Especially if they are picking up your goods while running their own pre-set routes. In this scenario, you should definitely prioritize making this your preferred mode of operation.

Organize your shipping dates better

If the idea of shipping more frequently does not appeal to you, then there is a decent alternative. Namely, you can simply try to put the dates forward a little. If you ship your goods earlier than the stipulated deadlines, you will have the time required to deal with any delays or issues that pop up. Now, this does cause problems of its own. Namely, it causes potential inventory and warehousing issues. If the goods are delivered too early, the recipient may not have enough space to store them. Or the delivery may overlap with another and cause a delay in unloading the goods. This is why, if you opt for this particular solution, make sure to properly communicate the changes with your partners or customers. This way, they will have an opportunity to fix things on their end, and problems can be largely avoided.

Cooperate with multiple logistics companies

Whether you are doing shipments yourself or have a set partner, another potential solution for capacity crunch is simply working with multiple carriers instead. After all, if a single company cannot properly account for all your needs, then several will. Naturally, this does mean you need to carefully pick and choose whom you want to work with. You would also need to go through the process of fine-tuning your cooperation with them once again. But, if you consider the current state of global logistics, this is not a bad idea at all. If any of your partners run into serious issues, you still have the option to fall back on. As such, working with multiple companies would not only solve your capacity crunch problems but provide you with a sense of security as well.

Invest in your own expansion

The final way of coping with the capacity crunch is to expand your own shipping capacities. Now, this is both the most expensive and most viable solution. Obviously, it requires a considerable short-term investment. And even an increase in your everyday expenses as you work to ensure the maintenance of your trucks. But, consider this: you would have your own solution, which you can have absolute confidence in, and would not be required to deal with agreements, partnerships, or schedule syncing. In other words, you would have complete control over the shipment of your goods. This is by no means a small boon for any company! Especially since you could fine-tune all the deliveries and the expenses associated with them.

Final comment

We hope that the top strategies for coping with the capacity crunch we have prepared will be helpful to you! Of course, whatever solution you settle on, know it will take some time to properly integrate them into your business. So, make long-term plans rather than temporary fixes!

Author Bio

Jacob Fabre is a logistics expert associated with Movers Not Shakers and has over two decades of experience in the field. He draws on this knowledge to produce quality texts and articles on various subjects related to his field of work.

SC Ports reported 9% container growth year-over-year as 256,879 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) moved through Wando Welch Terminal, North Charleston Terminal and Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal in October. When accounting for boxes of any size, SC Ports handled 142,276 pier containers last month.

Imports remain strong, with 121,305 loaded import TEUs coming through the Port of Charleston last month, up nearly 13% from last October. This sustained growth is driven by strong consumer demand and a growing Southeast population.

SC Ports recently handled three 1,200-foot ships simultaneously at Wando Welch Terminal — a first for the 40-year-old container terminal that has been enhanced with big ship capabilities and more cargo capacity.

SC Ports also handled 14,365 rail moves at Inland Ports Greer and Dillon, 17,996 vehicles at Columbus Street Terminal and 24,406 cruise passengers at Union Pier Terminal last month.