With Primary Acceptance Rates At All Time Lows, How Do You Keep Your Freight Moving?

January 2020 continued to ring in historic numbers for freight volumes and tender rejections. Volume was recorded at 40% greater year-over-year, and average tender rejection remained above 20%. To provide context, January rejects were 3X higher than 2020, and 4X higher than 2019. “Carriers are waiting to see if something better comes up, slowing down the process and increasing the cost,” said Mike Edwards, Sleek Technologies VP Sales. “Some shippers are struggling to move goods because contracted carriers are only accepting 50%-60%”. So when your primary, secondary and tertiary carriers reject, what do you do? This is about when you get the call from ops telling you goods need to move at any cost to avoid bottlenecks. Or even worse, you get a call from customer success saying a sales order has arrived late and now a tier one customer is hot! So at this point you must turn to brokers and deal with the nagging headaches of unresponsiveness, rate hikes, and/or poor service. Unfortunately, you’re at a major disadvantage because there are no other options. As other processes within the supply chain have evolved, the systematic process of procuring freight hasn’t changed for decades. Until now! Shippers are achieving 95.5% OTD, and generating savings up to 20% with Sleek Technologies OTS solution, even during extreme market volatility.  Sleek has reinvented freight procurement, turning it from static to dynamic. OTS software dynamically opens a large universe of asset-based truckload capacity, and empowers shippers to avoid costly, non-transparent brokers. So if your primary carriers are passing on loads, and you’re relying more and more on brokers, you really need to evaluate your freight...

New video shows massive scope of California box-ship traffic jam

Originally posted on FreightWaves Newly released U.S. Coast Guard video offers visceral proof of just how extreme the congestion has become at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The new view from above reveals a vast armada of container ships scattered at anchor across California’s San Pedro Bay. As the Coast Guard footage paints the picture, the latest data from the Port of Los Angeles and from the Marine Exchange of Southern California tells the story behind those images. The data confirms that there has been no real let-up in the historic container-ship traffic jam off California’s coast.As of Thursday, there were 25 container ships at berth in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Thirty-two container ships were at anchorage. That’s roughly the same level that has been at anchor since the beginning of this year. (The record of 40 container ships at anchor was hit on Feb. 1). The Port of Los Angeles, via its platform, The Signal, recently began disclosing the number of days at anchor for specific container ships. The numbers confirm that some vessels are spending almost as much time at anchor as it takes to traverse the Pacific Ocean. As of Thursday, the Ever Envoy, with a capacity of 6,332 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), had been at anchor for 11 days. Other ships that had just gone to berth had been waiting just as long: As of Tuesday , the 9,400-TEU MSC Romane had been at anchor for 12 days. The 11,356-TEU CMA CGM Andromeda, 8,452-TEU Ever Liven and 4,888-TEU NYK Nebula for 11 days. The Signal indicated that the average time at anchor for ships calling...

What Can Be Derived From January’s YoY Double-Digit Increase In Intermodel Rail Units?

Wall Street Journal's Logistics Report stated that the Association of American Railroads recorded the highest ever volume of average weekly intermodal units carried by U.S. railroads in January. The number was 293,305 and represented a 12.1% increase year-over-year. So, why did this happen, and what can be assumed from the increase in intermodal rail volume? We all know truckload capacity softens in January and February each year because of supply and demand. Knowing January experienced a double-digit increase in rail YoY, we can assume that truckload capacity is bouncing back slower than it typically would. Shippers are still experiencing higher than normal freight costs and tender rejection rates, so they are tapping into other modes to move goods. We can also assume that shippers are trying to rebound from massive transportation budget overages in 2020. Freight spot rates sky-rocketed in Q3-Q4 2020. Shippers are now looking for ways to generate transportation savings to help recover. Some are willing to sacrifice service levels, like on-time delivery, to cut transportation costs by using less expensive modes. "One way to cut transportation costs upfront is to change your mode from truckload to rail," said Oleg Yanchyk Sleek Technologies CIO. "However, this impacts how fast goods arrive to the end destination. This strategy works for shippers who have excess inventory, but not for others who still require goods arrive on time as originally planned." Either way, one thing is clear. It's become more difficult to manage a healthy balance between transportation/ logistics costs and service levels-- especially during market swings. Shippers need new options to effectively manage soft and tight freight markets to their advantage, not to the advantage of everyone else. In early 2020, shippers overpaid on contracted freight when Covid shut down plants across America. In late 2020, a...