Eric Joiner's Freightdawg.com - The Logistics and Supply Chain Blog!

DHL Brussels Farewell Party - June 11, 2010

For many years, DHL's European hub and headquarters was in Brussels, Belgium. In recent times however, the company has relocated it's hub operations and many jobs to Leipzig, Germany. 

Soon, the DHL team in Belgium will transition to new jobs, and in many cases, new careers with other firms. Nevertheless, one heck of a party is planned to close this chapter in DHL's European life.  See below for details!

THE DHL FAREWELL TO BRUSSELS PARTY

 

IT’S STILL NOT TOO LATE TO REGISTER FOR THE PARTY OF THE YEAR!

 

The date is now confirmed for Friday 11th June 2010 at Melsbroek football ground close to the airport starting at 1900 and going on until the early hours.

 

Many thanks to all of those who have registered and more thanks to those who responded to the brufarewell@gmail.com email address advising whether or not you will be attending this event. Also very many thanks to those who have already transferred payment to the BRU Farewell bank account.

 

Please note that, in order to ensure we register you correctly, in addition to registering on this site, please email brufarewell@gmail.com, confirming whether or not you will be attending and with how many people. If people have responded independently of your group, they will be treated individually.

 

Once you have accepted please transfer €55 per person to the BRU Farewell ING bank account 377-0159018-72 (IBAN: BE38377015901872, BIC Code: BBRUBEBB) before 7th May to guarantee your attendance.

 

Once you have made payment for yourself and others in your group, we will send you a ticket showing your name and the total in your group (if more than just yourself) to present to security on the night of the event.

 

The event will feature 4 hours of free bar (thereafter cash will be accepted), a barbeque, a disco and a live band. For those football fans among you, there will be a screen showing the second match of the World Cup (France v Uruguay) although this will be in one corner and will not intrude on those who want to concentrate on partying!

 

The dress code will be casual but, as an idea, if you have any old DHL logo’d items of clothing still hidden away in the wardrobe, it might be fun to dig them out and come appropriately attired!

For those who have any distance to travel or who simply want to party to the max & not worry about driving home, we have a deal on rooms at the Airport Holiday Inn at Euro 75.00 per single or Euro 85.00 per double including breakfast for those who can face it! The reservation form is downloadable by emailing brufarewell@gmail.com and requesting the document. Shuttles will be arranged to take you from the party back to the hotel. More details on that later.

 

Many thanks and best regards,

 

The Organizing Committee

ABS Capital Partners invests in INTTRA

Capital infusion to fund development of e-commerce portal

INTTRA, the carrier-owned portal for ocean-freight bookings, is getting a fresh capital infusion that will enable it to develop new electronic commerce services for new markets.

ABS Capital Partners, a capital fund that specializes in later-stage growth companies, has invested $30 million in INTTRA and is taking a majority stake in it.

INTTRA will use these funds to further develop its platform for electronic invoicing and to roll out a new product that will enable shippers to make bookings and instructions with non-vessel-operating common carriers.

“ABS Capital’s investment will give us the financial strength to accelerate our business plans and operations,” said INTTRA CEO Ken Bloom.

He said INTTRA’s search for new investment was started by its board more than two years ago before the onset of recession.

via www.joc.com

The INTTRA ocean portal is one of two major carrier neutral portals for booking, documentation and tracking of ocean freight.

Originally backed by European ocean carriers such as Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, the portal has grown in sophistication and breadth of membership.

A number of leading NVOCC's including DHL Global Forwarding, Panalpina and UTi, also belong to the portal as a way to provide a common user interface to ocean customers who want a one stop shop for eCommerce.

The ABS investment is interesting because (as far as I know), this is the first VC investment into the portal. Given that the portal is backed by several of the worlds largest ocean carriers, the investment must be viewed as relatively safe. However for cash strapped ocean carriers, this has to be seen as a major win in divesting the majority stake in a non-core business whilst still keeping the portal and its inherent economic benefits intact. 

Venture Capitalists are not known for their long term views nor holdings, so it will be interesting to see how a VC dominant position on the INTTRA board changes the direction of the company over time.  As a late stage investor, ABS may intend to hold the investment for a longer period, but one wonders what the eventual exit strategy of a VC would be in an ocean portal? 

Eric

Airline Boarding Passes - Fail

 Just a quick post to offer a link on an excellent design article I saw on increasing the design efficiency of airline boarding passes. 

Check this article by Tyler Thompson out. http://passfail.squarespace.com/   Tyler captures a number of design changes that might make airline passenger tickets easier to use.   Unfortunately, most of the artwork is fictional.  Ah! what could be! 

The sad reality is tied to cost.  The current version is based on lowest cost to print.  At the airport, this consists of a single black only thermo jet printed document on very low density paper.   The fictional, high color version above, whilst practical and beautiful consists of at least black and WHITE as a printer color.  That additonal color doubles printing costs at a time when the airlines don't want to incur any cost at all for non essential activities. One must also account for the four color printed card stock of the ticket paper and distribution costs of this paper.  In fairness, in Tyler's article there are black and white alternatives giving better ergonomics to the current format and he addresses design only.  Leave it to a logistics guy like me to think of the other stuff.  

Where this creative stuff gets fun however, is in online log on and check in.  Why not use the artsy format for online tickets?  I printed my check in ticket for my flight today on my own color printer.  It costs the airline nothing to both lay the keystokes off on me as well as the color printer ink.   

Delta Airlines at least is semi-close to this.  When I print an online boarding pass, I get the standard black and white boarding card with bar codes as well as other non essential stuff that prints below the boarding pass, like weather and a lot of advertisements.  For these, the marketing gurus have no problem using my color printer ink.  Why not redesign the boarding card I actually paid for in order to improve its usability and spare me the BS I won't use and don't care about?  

Almost certainly that will translate into lower cost remedial customer care.

Why not give passengers yet another reason to do all the work themselves in exchange for additional convenience and speed at the airport?  The airport is the difficult, physical bottleneck to travel.  Giving passengers ways to alleviate that pain at home before travel only increases brand loyalty in ways that are FREE to most air carriers.   DUH.   

Eric

Dang it. Clinton May be Right.

This blog is about logistics. You will find almost 500 posts here and only one or two that are politically related.  That's on purpose.  I try to stay within the boundaries of my business.

In this case however politics is my business. Former President Bill Clinton gave a speech recently at the University of California, Berkeley,  warning about the power of words and the potential of rhetoric to incite harm.  Specifically Clinton referred to the strong negative discourse today between Tea Party Republican /conservatives and supporters of the current government over a host of issues, with healthcare being at the center.  

In this case, I think Clinton meant to align the Tea Partiers with radicals, which I disagree with, but I think he still has a bigger point worth noting. 

Clinton reminded the audience that in 1995 similarly strong sentiments were running when Timothy McVeigh and accomplices bombed the Federal building in Oklahoma City.  His point was that words have strong meaning and what may be political rhetoric for elective purposes for some, may incite violence from others with a more literal interpretation.  Speech is free, but it is not without cost. 

The key point with which I agree with a president I did not support,... is that the words we say to each other matter.  As Americans, political balance is one of the  reasons our democracy has been successful. I also believe it's the reason our economy has been as successful as it has for almost 235 years.  Weights and balances allow dialog, even difficult dialog, to take place.  Political dialog allows a free market economy to work.

What happens nowadays though, especially amongst we bloggers, is that information and opinions, regardless of viewpoint, are now as free as electrons.  Crazy can travel as freely as traditional.  Words incite actions, even unintended actions.  What's dangerous is that what's crazy to you may be both sane and logical to me.  Even more so, cultural collisions now happen instantly thanks to the Internet.

Where that comes back home to my world is that it costs the global economy serious money to scan freight shipments and packages for explosives.  It also costs big money in airline and shipping company practices and policies on security.   Doubtless, much of this is borne on the back of 911 related terrorism, but domestic terrorism is also a factor.   I suspect your office building has different security measures now than it did in 1990.   That's a result of both domestic and international attacks on our country. 

Ultimately, I think this comes down to respect.   Difficult to enact other than through restraint. I'm not talking about being politically correct.  That's only a way of masking true feelings with obtuse words.  What I'm talking about is being educated on the issues and speaking in a way that engages discussion.

I'm about driving costs out of supply chains, which means finding a safer world.  I hate to think the only way to do that is to ramp up the security investment while the rhetoric takes the same arc.

I don't have all the answers here, nor am I sure my opinion is completely coherent.  But I know that the ramped up conflict increases risk, and risk costs money.

Eric

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Elvis has Left the Building: Memphis Chamber goes For Freight

 Most people think of Memphis as the home of Elvis, Blues and Barbecue.  That's all good, but that ain't all there is. Not according to the Memphis Chamber of Commerce anyway. 

Freight is also important in Memphis Tennessee.  How many metropolitan Chambers of Commerce have a Vice President of Logistics? Memphis does.

Jim Covington is the Vice President of Logistics for the Greater Memphis Chamber, and he wants new business.  Air, ocean, intermodal, river traffic...the works.   In this regard, the Greater Memphis Chamber has started a marketing campaign dubbing Memphis as "Americas Aerotropolis".  

America's Aerotropolis

Memphis has the blessing of being centrally located in the United States.  Its location on the Mississippi River also gives it access to the biggest riverine domestic corridor in the country.

Freight transportation companies can obviously read a map.  A well known purple express company has its largest global hub in Memphis, making it the busiest cargo airport in the country.  Additionally several major railroads have intermodal hubs in Memphis.  All this makes for a great place for companies to set up distribution facilities in the region.  Retailers like Williams Sonoma, Dell, and others have facilities nearby in order to leverage the infrastructure.

Nevertheless, Memphis wants more.  See this linked White paper that the Greater Memphis Chamber has put out on the benefits of the city and surrounding areas.   The local TV stations are in line with the effort. Check out this news story that includes some video as well. 

At the end of the day, the Chamber of Commerce in Memphis wants jobs.   Whether employment comes from additional transportation company investment, warehousing or retailer investment, the community wants to grow and is leveraging its best assets to make that happen.

Eric

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Game Over: No More Heavy Letters on UPS

My friend Rich Palarea of PA Associates has some interesting comments and observations about UPS's recent change in its parcel letter rating policies.  

It used to be that a UPS letter envelope could contain as much paper as you could stuff in the envelope.  It traveled at the same rate. FedEx meanwhile charges by envelope weight up to 8 oz. then actual weight.  UPS is now changing the rules to be closer to the FedEx model.  Shippers who use UPS for letter traffic better watch for an increase in the freight bill.

Read Rich's article in part below.

No More "Unlimited Weight" UPS Letters - a 44% Increase in Your Shipping Costs For years, UPS has made sure that shippers comparing their express envelope shipping with FedEx, or even premium US Postal Service offerings, know that a shipper can stuff as much paper as they would like into the UPS letter and legal-sized envelopes without any restriction on weight and still obtain the "letter" rate. In contrast, the FedEx terms place a limit on letter and legal envelopes at eight ounces and everything more than eight ounces is billed at the actual weight. For shippers or organizations like PA & Associates, which help shippers with their spend management strategies, special consideration needed to be given when negotiating and comparing UPS envelope shipments to FedEx envelope shipments to ensure that shippers considering a move from UPS to FedEx did not realize an increase in shipping expenses in this area. However, UPS changed this policy for 2010. As noted in the UPS Tariff/Terms And Conditions of Service for Package Shipments in the United States, UPS will now charge by scale weight (rounded up to nearest pound) for letter and legal envelopes weighing more than eight ounces (see page 23, section 35.3). Interesting to note that the Terms and Conditions document is buried four clicks into the UPS.com website. It isn't surprising that UPS changed its policy for this segment of shipments given their intensive focus on package yield which began in 2009 (more about this fundamental, strategic change in managing profit margins which has already begun to affect end-user pricing and discounts in a future blog post). What some may find surprising is how UPS has (or has not) conveyed this change to their users. Check this link to read more.

Eric

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Spirit to Charge for Carry Ons? What Next?

 Jerry Hempstead of Hempstead Consulting is a great friend and former colleague of mine. After 32 years in the express and parcel business in the United States, Jerry "retired" a few years ago only to become one exceptionally busy guy. Jerry's expert knowledge of the parcel business has led him to some very interesting consulting engagements in China and the United States.

The article below is an Opinion/Editorial reflecting Jerry's personal insights. Jerry can be reached at gmhempstead@aol.com

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I read an article today that began with "Spirit Airlines will charge as much as $45 each way for a carry-on bag starting Aug. 1. Personal items like purses and laptop computers that fit under the seat will still be free."

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/spirit-airlines-to-charge-up-to-45-for-carry-ons/19429714

As any who know me will tell you, I am and have been a staunch defender of free market capitalism and the forces that allow companies to live (or die) by their business decisions. Although, as a frequent flier, I am annoyed by Spirit Airlines decision to charge for carry ons, I think they have every right to price their capacity any way they desire in order to achieve an acceptable profit for their investors. The freight carriers have been very successful over the last year adding new and creative accessorial's that allow for yield improvement. The passenger carriers are just taking a page from their book.

As for me, a free market purchaser of service, I will do everything I can to avoid this airline. There are other carriers that are not charging for carry on bags (for which the airlines don't do any work) and I have a right to fly on other airlines (or even drive as I am doing more frequently now).

So let us not fault Spirit for what they are trying to do (make a profit). I am sure they are trying to signal the other carriers, by their move, to introduce their version of the carry on fee, just as FedEx and UPS mimic each other, every time they increase an accessorial charge or add a new one.

If people quickly catch on and avoid purchasing tickets on Spirit because of this new fee, then perhaps they will back off and try to put the cost in the price of the ticket where it belongs, so that we can really know what a flight is going to cost us when we book and compare. This new fee just adds confusion to that process and may be a way to trick comparative shoppers into thinking that Spirit is the low cost choice.  

They are legally allowed to do this, and we are legally allowed to vote with our feet and find an alternative way to get to our destinations.

EJJ adding to Jerrys thoughts...

I have to admit as a traveler, Im seriously concerned about the issue of bags.  Some airlines want you to check bags and advertise that its free to do so. (Southwest)., Some airlines discourage checked bags and charge you a fee to do so (Delta and most majors),  while now Spirit is going to charge a hefty fee to carry bags on. 

While Jerrys point that it is the carriers right to charge whatever they want to make a profit and maximize their operational efficiency, Spirits approach seems a clumsy way to gain revenue.   The saavy traveler is going to vote with his feet where possible on this.  Spirit however caters to vacation travelers to Florida in particular.  Those folks tend not to be experienced travelers.  I guess this will be a way to keep Joe Banana from taking the three coconuts and a case of rum he picked up from the Caribbean cruise on board the airplane?. 

Either that or its Spirits way of charging what looks like a cheap airfare only to pop the holiday traveler in the mouth when he gets to the airport. 

There is at least a little evidence that airlines lose money by charging baggage fees. Check out this article from Portfolio.com.  I have to think this will apply to either the main deck or baggage compartment. People just dont like it. 

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