Post-vacation thoughts on the rest of 2015

The first day back from a much anticipated summer vacation has lived up to its billing as one of the most difficult days of the year….for me, anyhow. It is not that I don’t want to return to my office. Instead, it has more to do with the fact that I had a terrific week off.

Well, now that the dust has settled and (most of) the post vacation cobwebs are out of my head it is back to the grind.

As the calendar turns to September tomorrow and we approach 2015’s final third, there are, as usual, many things that require our attention from a freight transportation, logistics, and supply chain perspective.

A few of these things include:
-the truckload capacity environment, which is not as tight at the moment as it has previously been but continues to be closely watched by shippers, carriers, and industry stakeholders for good reason (think rates, spot market activity, driver shortage and availability);
-long-term transportation bill, where are thou? Hiding, apparently, and clearly not in plain sight either. To say a new bill is long overdue would be an affront to the words “long overdue” at this point. Something has to give here, right? Maybe there will be a Congressional moment of clarity and the federal gasoline tax will be raised for the first time since 1993, right? Yeah, I did not really think so either;
-ongoing 3PL truckload brokerage consolidation. Not long ago, we saw two major deals, with UPS acquiring Coyote and Geodis buying OHL. Both these deals were for a large sum and head-turners for sure. But were they entirely surprising? Not really and the reason why is that they were preceded with many similar big names/big money deals. In other words, they can be viewed as part of an ongoing series of industry M&A activity, which appears to have an unknown number of parts;
-West Coast ports are starting to see normal volume trends in advance of the holidays while East Coast ports are holding on to the share they gained from the West Coast fallout earlier this year. Is this a lasting trend? Perhaps we will have a better idea closer to Christmas;
-Railroad and intermodal service continue to see improvements coming off of another bad winter that is now a memory (at least for us here in Maine). But we will be talking about winter again before you know it, so this clearly requires attention; and
-the ongoing advent of the e-commerce supply chain, which is replete with multiple supply chain and logistics-related ramifications, including last-mile logistics, inventory planning and adjusting, and site selection and location for fulfillment centers and DCs, among others

While I was on vacation, the many market segments we cover were not (except for Congress anyhow). That is not surprising. What would be surprising would be if the final months of 2015 were dull. Given the things mentioned above and other things that were not, don’t count on a dull moment. Looks like I need to get back to work.