World Trade - January 2009 - (Page 38)

LOGISTICS Highway. An example is a two stop load going 70 miles. If three quarters of the load came off at the ﬁrst stop in 10 miles and then the trailer moved three quarters empty to the ﬁnal stop 60 miles down the road, you haven’t saved much in fuel. Customers are really looking at their distribution patterns and are increasingly interested in doing the right things from a fuel efﬁciency standpoint.” Marked improvements For years, shippers resisted using intermodal freight because they regarded it slow and unreliable. Consequently, it was often a logistics after-thought, considered a weak alternative to trucking. But times have changed and so has the intermodal industry. The most remarkable advancement is the new, cooperative relationship between trucking ﬁrms and railroads in creating systems to make intermodal work. Historically, railroads and truckers have been adversarial. Trucking ﬁrms didn’t cooperate with the lowercost option of the rails because they could take business away. And, the railroads couldn’t serve companies needing to move container loads of goods without truckers providing the ﬁnal leg of the journey since very few warehouses have the luxury of a rail spur to their doors. But tough economic times make for strange bedfel38 WORLD TRADE JANUARY 2009 lows. With fuel prices high, intermodal is the most cost efﬁcient means of shipping product over land, particularly for shipments exceeding 500 miles. “Traditionally, the rule of thumb was to focus on lanes 1,000 to 1,200 miles or greater for intermodal conversion opportunities,” says Marsh. “This is no longer the case. We are now ﬁnding lanes that fall between 500 and 750 miles that are perfect intermodal conversion opportunities.” When trucking companies implemented fuel surcharges beginning last spring, intermodal providers began creating more intermodal opportunities for shippers to move freight in traditional truckload/intermediate length of haul corridors. Whether it’s rising fuel prices or a weak economy, moving shipments via intermodal gives shippers options to more effectively control fuel costs and beneﬁt from less expensive rail transport—especially when a slowing economy places less demand on moving shipments quite as quickly as when demand is high. “Shippers want to go as far as they can on the ﬁrst leg of transportation,” Brashares stresses. “With the downturn in the economy, shippers are looking at every way to cut costs and improve efﬁciency of operations. That includes shorter distribution patterns.” In fact, today, intermodal service can be available for

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Trade - January 2009

World Trade - January 2009 Contents Supply Chain Finance Conference: The Right Stuff at the Right Time! Is the Dollar's 'Exorbitant Privelege' as the Global Standard at Risk? Supply Chain Watch Tradewinds The Rise of the 4PL An Evolving Tech Backbone Makes 4PL Service More Effective The Changing Landscape of U.S. Railroads Intermodal Grows Up Port of Hamburg Grows as Distribution Point to Eastern Europe Outsourcing Without Fear Measuring the Carbon Footprint

World Trade - January 2009

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