Supply chain

Momentum toward digital quoting and booking in ocean shipping is undeniable, but it remains to be seen whether shippers and forwarders will demand — and container lines are actually capable of delivering — truly dynamic pricing.

Container visibility provider ClearMetal said demand for its product aimed at helping shippers improve shipment delivery date accuracy ballooned in 2020 as “customer promise date” becomes a more important logistics metric.

Given the challenges around container tracking data collection and quality, forwarders could one day become the clearinghouse for all the various components of an end-to-end visibility picture, as well as the provider of quality control for that data.

A new funding round for logistics automation software provider Slync.io is meant to enable the company to expand in Europe and Asia as it seeks to solve long-running manual process issues for forwarders and shippers.

A new technology-based parcel company, founded by an ex-Amazon and Walmart executive, emerged from stealth development Tuesday with aims on serving retailers spurned or inadequately served by UPS and FedEx.

California’s request for the Federal Maritime Commission to take immediate action on export delays shows political pressure is mounting to deal with Southern California port congestion that began over the summer.

Software providers say the proliferation of integrations between transportation management systems and domestic freight brokers in 2020 hints at a future in which a TMS will no longer be merely a static system, but a living platform.

JAS Worldwide has purchased e-commerce specialist Tigers to expand beyond its traditional international freight forwarding services and better address its customers’ e-commerce needs

London- and Vilnius, Lithuania-based Cargo Stream is launching a container booking application that looks to address systemic issues around equipment availability and exchange.

Another new entrant in the small carrier TMS space, Dallas-based Axele, portends more market structure and available capacity for shippers to tap into.

A surge in demand for Shipwell’s technology-focused managed transportation approach, with freight under management tripling in 2020, is a sign of shippers’ increased reliance on an outsourced approach to logistics.

Companies such as Werner Enterprises, Schneider National, and U.S. Xpress are taking an active role in the development of autonomous trucks, but not, they say, to replace drivers.

The World Bank and International Association of Ports and Harbors are urging ports and maritime ecosystems to quickly find public and private solutions to digitize operations and build data-sharing initiatives to bolster trade growth.

Shippers sending goods across the English Channel will only have their cargo accepted by DB Schenker if all customs information is correct.

Shippers facing a challenging ocean freight environment in 2021 are being urged to develop a plan to tackle a particularly thorny operational aspect in the industry: container allocations.

Startup SILQ is aiming to provide apparel retailers with an alternative to buying houses, which act as agents that find suitable suppliers in overseas locations.

As author of the Q&A column, Colin Barrett answered detailed and often obscure legal questions on shipping for 48 years, educating generations of shippers.

European truckload broker sennder has vaulted into the upper reaches of venture capital-based logistics startups with a $160 million funding round and a $1 billion valuation.

A partnership between widely used rate management software provider Portrix and container line digital quoting platform BlueX Trade is yet another sign of the need for forwarders to get direct access to digital quotes offered by carriers.

Shippers have used the spot trucking market to account for volume surges in 2020, but they can use data to better calibrate their contracts, including short-term deals, freight procurement expert Heather Mueller tells JOC Uncharted.

New customs formalities came into effect on Jan. 1, when the Brexit transition period ended and the UK effectively became a “third country,” but DB Schenker says incomplete documentation was creating significant delays.

A new administration and Congress offer a new chance to break infrastructure spending gridlock, the head of the US Chamber of Commerce says. Meanwhile, the American Society of Civil Engineers fixes a $13 trillion two-decade cost on delaying repairs.

Budget limitations are forcing forwarders to choose between investing in customer-facing tools that could help grow their market share or back-end automation that could help them extract more profit from existing business.

Post-Brexit trade changes will add an extra layer of complexity to the UK’s cross-border e-commerce market.

A growing number of forwarders are taking the bold step of chartering ships as a way to directly control shipping capacity and provide more reliable services.

Federal Maritime Commissioner Carl Bentzel is looking into ways that Houston could handle larger vessels before a widening project is complete, given a Texas law that puts size limits on port calls.

A new law that requires the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop a plan to use X-rays or similar technology to scan all cars, trucks, and freight trains entering the country could cause a flare up of chronic congestion issues at the southern border.

The third party logistics provider SEKO Logistics has its eyes on tripling revenue over the next five years, leading it to turn to the private equity market for investment for the second time in five years.

Marianne Rowden, the longtime public face of a key importer-exporter lobbying group, is stepping down at the end of March as e-commerce growth makes the interaction between shippers and the public sector all the more vital.

Frustrated shippers and forwarders want European competition authorities to take action against what they have labeled market distorting practices by container carriers.

Logistics managers that saw their organization's supply chains disrupted and transportation budgets blown out of the water in 2020 will be at the epicenter of make-or-break decisions in the coming year.

Migrating away from traditional spreadsheet-based freight procurement is becoming a priority for shippers as they move toward more frequent bids and seek to avoid data silos.

Third-party logistics provider GlobalTranz saw a strong increase in demand for managed transportation service in 2020 and expects the outsourcing trend to continue as supply chain disruption spills into 2021.

The backdrop to the Maersk statement is how the supply chain meltdown has reverberated politically in the US and the potential for where it could lead next.

Technology provider Turvo has attempted to redefine what a transportation management system is since it emerged in 2017, and now it’s targeting big shippers and logistics providers dealing with multiple systems.

The as-yet-unfulfilled promise of expedited cargo clearance for shippers under US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) trade facilitation programs may soon come at a cost of compulsory self-regulation

A logistics technology provider for US importers is taking a counterintuitive approach to driving adoption of software by making its system function similarly to Microsoft Excel while gradually driving customized modernization in the background.

The integration between AscendTMS’s widely-used transportation management software with predictive pricing and historical benchmark trucking data from DAT Solutions is a signal that users of such systems want more value piped directly into the platforms on which they rely.

Visibility provider project44 has raised $100 million in its latest funding round to build out its multimodal platform while hinting it may seek to go public in the next two years.

Freightos has developed an application programming interface (API) to allow e-commerce marketplaces to plug international freight services directly into their broader offerings to business-to-business sellers.