Peak Season

Port Tracker reported for August, the most recent month for which data is available, U.S-based retail container ports handled 2.1 million Twenty Foot Equivalent Units (TEU), marking a 9.7% gain over July and an 8% annual increase. The report said that this is the highest tally for containers imported in a single month, going back to when NRF first started tracking imports in 2002.

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently spoke with Rick MacDonald, DHL Supply Chain, President, Retail Sector, North America, about varous topics, including the COVID-19 pandemic, final mile logistics, and Peak Season, among others.

When asked to assess 2020 Peak Season prospects, a pair of executives at some of the nation’s leading motor carrier and logistics services providers said at this week’s Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) virtual conference indicated things are looking solid.

In this new webinar, Logistyx President Ken Fleming will explore how shippers can leverage multi-carrier shipping systems - and the shipping data within them - to get the most out of their carriers and create the optimal delivery network this peak season.

Total POLA volume—at 961,833 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEU)—were up 11.7% annually, marking the highest-volume month in the port’s 114-year history, topping October 2018, which was above 952,000 TEU. At the Port of Long Beach, total August volume—at 725,610 TEU—saw a 9.3% annual gain, marking the best August tally over the port’s 109-year history and what it called a strong start to Peak Season

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently caught up with Frank McGuigan, CEO of Dallas-based Transplace, a non asset-based third-party logistics services provider. McGuigan offered up his observations on various topics, including the company's aproach to M&A, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on logistics, inventory management, and the upcoming Transplace Shipper Symposium, among others.

The new 150,000 square-foot Atlanta-based facility is based 20 miles away from the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport and has access to some of the main thoroughfares for “speedy air and ground parcel transportation.

With consumers itching to get their holiday shopping going, driven by pent-up demand and more time than usual spent at home, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it does not come as a major surprise that the parcel duopoly of UPS and FedEx have recently announced their respective plans to bring on additional seasonal staffers to handle the increased holiday crunch, otherwise commonly referred to as Peak Season.

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently caught up with Jerry Hempstead, principal of Orlando-based Hempstead Consulting. The pair discussed a wide range of parcel-related topics, including: the impact of COVID-19 on rates and pricing; peak surhcharges; the e-commerce supply chain; and the current status of the United States Postal Service, among others.

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently caught up with Avery Vise, FTR Transportation Intelligence Vice President of Trucking. They discussd various themes and trends in the trucking sector, including market conditions, rates and pricing, and the impact of COVID-19 on trucking, among others.

The company announced that it will hire 7,000 associates through the end of 2020 to meet demand fueled both by the peak holiday shopping season and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Memphis-based transportation and logistics titan FedEx, not surprisingly, issued its “2020 Seasonal Peak Surcharges and Fees.

As the level of COVID-19-related e-commerce activity continues to head in one direction—up—so, too, do peak surcharges for the shipping of orders made online. That was seen today, with Atlanta-based global freight transportation and logistics bellwether UPS announcing today it is implementing a new set of peak surcharges. This is not the first time UPS has issued a COVID-19-based peak surcharge in recent months. In late May, it announced that it would implement peak surcharges that...

Due to a confluence of COVID-19-driven factors, including reduced consumer demand, lower import levels, heavy job losses, the ongoing United States-China trade war, and over all economic unease, a case can be made that the 2020 peak season is shaping up to be much different than normal.

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently spoke with Doug Waggoner, CEO of Chicago-based 3PL Echo Global Logistics, about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the freight transportation and logistics sectors, and other topics, including trucking supply and demand, and Peak Season prospects, among others.