No matter what your company sells, you’re in the logistics business. From receiving and storage of your products to getting them out to customers, there are many logistics operations that your business handles or oversees daily.
But, unless logistics is your business’s core focus, these key supply chain operations may be better left to the experts – while you focus on the elements (e.g., manufacturing and sales) within your realm of expertise.
Conventional wisdom tells you not to put all your eggs in one basket. In the logistics industry, however, this isn’t always good advice. By leaning on one third-party logistics provider (3PL) for each leg of the distribution cycle, you may find greater efficiency and improved operational success than you would sourcing à la carte.
In this article, we’ll examine the benefits of an integrated logistics services approach.
Drayage is technically just another transportation service. A driver picks up a load and then delivers it.
With port drayage, however, this simple process becomes much more complex. Navigating seaport terminals is a tricky business on a good day and can become extremely difficult as rules change from terminal-to-terminal, or even hour-to-hour. To navigate the ports effectively – and avoid wasting time and money – shippers need to ensure the drayage carriers they work with have a roster of experienced drayage drivers.
When it comes to Southern California logistics, there’s never a dull moment. The region is home to the busiest ports in the country, while the state continues to dramatically alter the way logistics gets done through an array of unique regulations. In this article, we’ll get you up to speed on some of the recent SoCal supply chain developments during the first half of 2019.
When you entrust your food and confectionery products to a food warehousing provider, you’re relying on that company to be much more than a provider of space. You’re really relying on them to be a partner that will work to protect the integrity of your products through every step of the supply chain. And, while every 3PL warehousing company will promise to be just that, you must find one that truly “walks the walk.” In this article, we identify 5 things that you should look for in a warehousing provider before entrusting them with your food or confectionery products.
California may be the Golden State, but its green initiatives are the most far-reaching in the U.S. The state has a host of agencies and regulations whose aim is to substantially reduce greenhouse gases and other emissions. At the heart of these efforts is the California Truck and Bus Regulation, which seeks to reduce emissions from heavy trucks and buses.
The three states that border the Pacific Ocean are home to 48 million people, with the states just slightly inland adding millions more to the population of the “Western U.S.” With such a sizable chunk of the U.S. population residing in these Western states, West region distribution is a vital part of the supply chains of companies whose products originate in the Central and Eastern U.S.
In recent years, however, multiple factors – the truck driver shortage chief among them – have made long-haul truck runs to the West Coast increasingly unreliable and inefficient. The response of many companies has been to focus less on shipping West and, instead, store products in a West Coast distribution center operated by a third-party logistics provider (3PL).
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: we’re in the midst of a truck driver shortage.
While we may feel that we’ve reached the saturation point in hearing – and reading – about this shortage, the related headlines aren’t going away any time soon. That’s because the shortage isn’t going away any time soon. In fact, we can only expect to hear more about it as the impact to the trucking industry and the nation’s economy continues to worsen.
With logistics in California, one of the major areas where this impact is being felt is container drayage. The shortage of drayage drivers has recently returned to the headlines as there aren’t enough drivers to handle rising volumes in advance of tariffs and an interest rate hike. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at this shortage and what you, as an importer, can do to keep your drayage freight moving to and from the ports.
Many companies will choose to have their ocean carrier perform “port-to-door” drayage services. While this approach may be convenient, it can also be detrimental to your port-to-market distribution speed as it’s easy to become a small fish in a big ocean carrier pond. When you turn to an asset-based carrier such as a 3PL provider for drayage, its assets are as good as yours.
Your company has made a cost-driven decision to manufacturer in Asia and import from Asia back into the U.S. The by-product of that decision is a much lengthier supply chain and cash cycle. Your job, in logistics, is to mitigate the negative impacts of your import supply chain by designing an efficient U.S. distribution strategy. And one of the first things you will need to decide is your destination port. For this decision, you’ll need to look at the impact of port location on time-to-market, customer satisfaction, freight costs and inventory costs.
