Supply Chain Monthly

FreightWaves CEO Craig Fuller and Head of Freight Market Intelligence Zack Strickland discussed unusual freight volume trends in retail supply chains during the latest FreightWaves State of Freight web event. John Paul Hampstead, strategic analyst, recaps the discussion to highlight the most important items for supply chain professionals.

 

Congratulations to our recent SCPro™ Level One Certification recipients: 

• Harish Krishnan


• Richard Wolf


• Filip Ježo

SCPro™ Certification is a three-tiered program that assesses progressive knowledge and skills across integrated supply chain activities. This process validates an individual’s ability to strategically assess business challenges and effectively implement supply chain improvements through the analysis of real-world case studies and developing a comprehensive project plan to achieve results such as a positive ROI.

Congratulations! Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive named Donna Palumbo-Miele as a recipient of the 2023 Women in Supply Chain award, which honors female supply chain leaders and executives whose accomplishments, mentorship and examples set a foundation for women in all levels of a company’s supply chain network.

 

Recipients will be honored at this year’s Women in Supply Chain Forum, set to take place Nov. 14-15, 2023 in Atlanta. 

Roundtable: Southern California Roundtable
"I have been an active CSCMP member since 2019. I got familiar with CSCMP while attending my Masters at USC Marshal School of Business and immediately engaged first as an academic member and more recently as a professional member. Since then, I've been part of the Mentorship program as a mentor of fellow young Supply Chain students and professionals. Now, I want to give a step further and engage even more with other fellow Supply Chain Colleagues. Whether you are a young student or a seasoned Supply Chain professional, there are several ways you can maximize your membership value. For instance, I'm really into the Mentorship Program as a Mentor since I love the possibility to transfer some of my knowledge and experience to young students and professionals and help them to know all the spectrum of our industry going from best techniques in Strategic Sourcing or Procurement for instance till how to prepare for an interview or how to write their resume. The possibility to help other people with your knowledge and leave that as part of your legacy is really grateful. Besides, there are also several opportunities to attend the roundtables or other events promoted by the CSCMP both in person and online. All the students and young professionals that I had the opportunity to somehow help to find the answers to their questions related to supply chain and their professional carrier are definitely the most impactful connections I have been experiencing through my CSCMP membership."

BM2 Freight Services, Inc. is a full-service transportation solutions provider. They offer full truckload—van, flatbed, and refrigerated—freight, and expedited services through their network of trusted carriers throughout the lower 48 states and Canada. BM2 Freight's motto is "shipping with integrity."

BM2 Freight is a CSCMP Corporate Member because they believe in networking and leveraging meaningful relationships.

"BM2 loves being a corporate member of the CSCMP due to the networking events and the relationships that we get through being a corporate member, the chance to be able to network with other top providers in our space is something that is invaluable to us, and we love investing into it every year." - TD Studer, Senior Director of Operations at BM2 Freight.

In August the Logistics Manager’s Index read in at 51.2. This is a marked change for the index as before August’s reading the overall index had registered three consecutive months of contraction and five consecutive months of registering new all-time low scores. In contrast, this is the fastest rate of expansion since February.

Inventory Levels:
The greatest source of increased costs in August are Inventory Costs, which are up (+8.6) to 69.1. This is the highest reading for this metric since last February when many supply chains were dealing with inventories that went unsold during Q4. Factors behind this increase include a lack of storage capacity and a restocking of inventories at large firms. The restocking of inventories at large firms was behind the slowdown in the rate of contraction for Inventory Levels, which read in at 47.9 – up (+6.0) from July’s reading of 41.9, which was the lowest in the history of the index. While it is likely we will see inventories begin to grow again ahead of Q4, it is unlikely they will get anywhere close to what we saw in the buildup to the holiday season in 2020 and 2021. U.S. import data suggests that inventory is likely to remain low this season, with the National Retail Federation predicting imports to be down slightly in September and October.

Economic Impact:
The move back towards a positive overall logistics index was accompanied by other positive economic news in August—particularly in the U.S. For instance, average hourly earnings were up 4.3% year-over-year in August (compared to an increase of 3.2% in the consumer price index over the same period). This is a 0.2% increase from July, suggesting that the economy is slowing to a level closer to what the Federal Reserve is looking for. Because the LMI is an early indicator of economic trends, this could be a small, but hopeful sign for the economy.

Warehousing and Transportation:
In addition to the earnings increases, the U.S. added 187,000 jobs in August. This brings the average jobs added over the last three months to 150,000 per month, increasing the chances that the Fed will hold interest rates steady at their September meeting. Despite the overall increase, both warehousing and transportation employers cut jobs in August; although in the case of the latter, a large part of that was due to the closure of Yellow. Yellow’s impact was significant. The 36,700 employees that dropped out of the transportation industry marks the largest loss of transportation jobs since the start of lockdowns in April of 2020. Overall, transportation jobs are down 43,800 from their peak of 1.61 million in January.