IN BRIEF: New Services & Solutions-October 2019

Products

• UniCarriers Americas unveiled its BXC65 4-wheel, cushion tire, electric forklift. With a 6,500-pound capacity, the BXC65 features on-board diagnostics and provides immediate truck status to reduce downtime.
• Materials handling company Crown Equipment made its Crown WP Series pallet truck available for purchase through the Crown online store with free, five-day shipping. Crown WP Series pallet trucks maneuver in tight spaces and handle loads up to 4,500 pounds.
• Cold chain management products maker DeltaTrak now offers two FlashLink Real-Time Prime In-Transit Loggers. The real-time monitors feature a 12-month battery shelf life and provide temperature and location information, utilizing GSM cellular technology. Shipments are tracked worldwide using DeltaTrak’s ColdTrak 24/7 cloud service.
• A new thermal barcode printer from Toshiba America Business Solutions lets shippers print high-resolution labels quickly.Toshiba’s B-EX4T3HS prints 600 dots per inch at speeds up to 6 inches per second.
• The e-Wrap 2.0 machine automates and integrates multiple supply chain processes including order fulfillment; online printing of transactional materials; packaging of variable-size products; weighing, printing, and applying labels; and product sorting. The solution is the result of a partnership between packaging line maker Sitma Machinery and weighing solutions provider Bizerba.
• Steel King Industries, a manufacturer of materials handling products and systems, debuted a line of rugged industrial containers for heavy-duty storage applications. Designed to last up to 30 years, the containers come in custom sizes and can store automotive parts and recycled materials.
• ID Label’s Eco Beam Renew can be applied directly over old or damaged warehouse rack labels, eliminating the need to scrape off old labels or chemically treat beams before relabeling. Eco Beam Renew comes in a linerless version, features a metalized backing that eliminates show-through, and has an easy-release surface for future relabeling needs.

Services

• A. Duie Pyle, a provider of transportation and supply chain solutions in the Northeast, now offers a West Coast service. The company partnered with Oak Harbor Freight Lines to expand its coverage area and improve transit times.
• RLS Logistics opened a food-grade ambient storage facility in Vineland, New Jersey. Located adjacent to its current Vineland cold storage facility, the new warehouse offers an additional 36,000 square feet of storage space.
• UniGroup Logistics now provides white-glove final-mile service for over-dimensional items. Household goods carriers United Van Lines and Mayflower operate the UniGroup Logistics Final Mile service, which includes residential delivery, warehousing, fulfillment, and reverse logistics.
• Freight forwarder Wen-Parker Logistics moved into an expanded facility in the Los Angeles area to support an increasing number of vertical markets.
• To meet shippers’ capacity needs, less-than-truckload carrier Old Dominion Freight Line expanded service centers in eight cities across the United States: Columbus, Ohio (pictured above); Central Point, Oregon; El Paso and Lubbock, Texas; Blackfoot, Idaho; Cartersville, Georgia; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Chicago, Illinois.
• Virgin Atlantic’s first flight to Tel Aviv touched down at Ben Gurion International Airport in September 2019 with a full cargo payload. The new daily Airbus A330-300 flights offer 22 tons of cargo capacity to and from London Heathrow as well as connections with Virgin Atlantic’s network serving gateways in the United States.
• 3PL Sunset Transportation extended its cross-border customs brokerage network with a new facility at the Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, border. The Texas-based branch offers customs brokerage and logistics management services, as well as a secure, C-TPAT-compliant and food grade-certified warehouse.

Technology

• TMS provider Transplace now offers real-time visibility as a standard feature, without any extra transaction or integration fees, for all of its managed transportation services and TMS customers. Transplace is leveraging Descartes MacroPoint as its real-time visibility partner.
• Shipping and order fulfillment software company ShipWorks introduced ShipWorks for Warehouse, a product that helps high-volume shippers increase order accuracy and make more intelligent shipping decisions. ShipWorks for Warehouse includes rapid label print speeds and open database connectivity; access to ShipWorks Hub for web-based order management; support for fulfilling orders from multiple sites; and scan and pack quality control.
• Shippers can pinpoint areas to reduce costs in their supply chains while maintaining or improving service with RateLinx’s new Data-as-a-Strategy solution, a system that delivers logistics intelligence on one platform. The solution integrates data across order, shipment, tracking, and cost, letting shippers determine how changes in supply chain strategy impact service.
• CargoSphere, a neutral rate network for container shipping, launched Maersk Spot on its rates platform. The Maersk Spot product offers shippers a loading guarantee and a fixed price at booking.
• A new feature on digital platform Upply helps supply chain stakeholders anticipate transportation price volatility. The Trends tool shows how freight prices have changed over time and predicts prices over the coming months on principal trade routes for air and maritime transport on a global scale, and for road haulage throughout the United States and France.
• Shippers using AscendTMS now have digital freight management capabilities with the recent integration between the InMotion Global TMS and Kleinschmidt, a provider of EDI services. AscendTMS customers are instantly connected to the EDI supply chain network, allowing for electronic load tendering, real-time load updating, and final invoicing.
• Bringg, a delivery orchestration platform, teamed up with Mercatus, a provider of e-commerce solutions, to provide an end-to-end retail solution for grocers. Mercatus-enabled grocers can access the Bringg platform to manage deliveries across internal and third-party fleets and gain real-time visibility into delivery operations.
• Digital freight network Convoy partnered with BluJay Solutions, a supply chain software and services provider, to give shippers direct access to Convoy’s instant market rates with guaranteed tender acceptance via BluJay’s Transportation Management dashboard. Shippers can quickly find reliable coverage from Convoy’s network of tens of thousands of carriers.
• Loadsmart, a digital freight technology company, released its Simple Quote add-on for Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. The integrations allow shippers to price and book truckload shipments in seconds directly from within a spreadsheet—without the need for emails, calls, or a TMS integration.
• Retailers and brand owners can simplify RFID adoption and maximize returns with RFID TotalCare, a package of solutions from provider SML RFID that includes item-level RFID tagging and software. The package provides tag development, source tagging at the factory, improved tagging in distribution centers to increase inventory accuracy, and consulting services to help maximize return on investments across the product lifecycle.
• Airfreight shippers can now book AirBridgeCargo and CargoLogicAir capacity on cargo.one, including general cargo and premium services, originating from Frankfurt, Munich, and Leipzig in Germany, as well as Amsterdam in the Netherlands. With more destinations to be added soon, the digital platform provides shippers with more time-condition choices for air freight.

Transportation

• Yang Ming Marine Transport launched the TIX service (Thailand-Indonesia Service), which calls at Laem Chabang, Thailand; Singapore; and Jakarta. The route connects with Yang Ming’s global service network via Singapore.
• ZIM started a service between Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. The rotation includes Veracruz, Altamira, P. Cortes, Santo Tomas, Kingston, Rio Haina, and San Juan. ZIM operates three vessels for this weekly, fixed-day service.
• OOCL launched a Middle East/Indian Subcontinent—North Europe Service in October 2019.
• Expedited logistics provider time:matters established a new hub in Brussels and extended its services to Africa. The company now offers 81 weekly direct flights between Brussels and 16 African stations.
• The CMA CGM Group launched a direct weekly service between the Black Sea, Turkey, Morocco, and Spain, with connections to the rest of the world via Malta.