Articles
Transportation

Shopping for a Transportation Management System: Factors to Consider
Is your organization seeking to replace its current Transportation Management System (TMS) or obtain a TMS for the first time? Besides the obvious factors, such as overall cost, functionality that meets your requirements, and the ability to integrate with your current system and trading partners, below are five points to consider when shopping for a […]
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Increased Capacity and Flexibility
Rust-Oleum turned to Celtic International for an intermodal solution to quickly move shipments.
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TMS Launches New Era: Control Tower Visibility
It wasn’t long ago that top executives around the world had to be convinced why they needed accounting software to run their companies. Today it is unthinkable of any company operating without accounting software to manage their company’s finances. The importance of technology in shipping is starting to reach this same critical point for most […]
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Blockchain Set to Shake Up Shipping
International trade is a maze of regulations, and mostly manual, inefficient processes that lack transparency. This is all about to radically change with blockchain technology. Shipping today is riddled with documentation, regulations, and policies that require certificates of origin, letters of credit, bills of lading, vessel manifests, and customs declarations. Blockchain converts documents, such as […]
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Uniformed Booking Platform Improves Vendor Compliance
A retailer needed to bring suppliers together and optimize processes so they teamed up with Unyson for a platform.
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Truck Driver Health Should Drive Business Decisions
Truck drivers are vital to the flow of the supply chain yet this key resource is being drained at an alarming rate. The average life expectancy for long-haul truck drivers is 61 years. As the current truck driver workforce ages and with fewer young people choosing a career as a truck driver, it leaves the […]
Read MoreAdding Value to Your Supply Chain
Demand to provide the optimal customer experience continues to escalate, and companies must continually seek out better ways to deliver customer satisfaction and retention. Many companies find that value-added logistics services help give their supply chain a competitive edge. Once limited to services such as shrink-wrapping, display building, and rainbow pallets, value-added capabilities now include […]
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Most Mid-Market Supply Chains Are Under-Served
On average, mid-market supply chains ($50M to $150M) replace their supply chain providers every two to three years. The two overwhelming reasons why are because they don’t realize continuous return on investment (ROI) improvement and they lack strategic account support. Mid-market supply chain owners are caught in a conundrum: They’re too big for the small […]
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Clear Direction, Abundant Communication
Manny Calandrino got his first job in a trucking company in 1976, in the customer service and overage/shortage/damages department. Working his way from this entry-level position through every department, he discovered that what had started as just a job had grown into his career. MORE TO THE STORY: Wanted: Well-Rounded Entrepreneurs “I fell in love […]
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Trends—March 2017
Freight Rails Make Federal Case for Funding Private funding for infrastructure is a valuable tool that can save money for the American taxpayer, but it isn’t a be-all, end-all solution to U.S. transportation problems. Transportation executives took to Capitol Hill in February 2017 to plead with the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation subcommittee to provide […]
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Mastering Logistics Complexity: How to Take Control With Technology
There was a time when road distribution was either local delivery from local producers, or the ‘final mile’ delivery of goods that had been transported longer distances by rail or interstate highway first. The typical journey was either point to point or a regular circuit of collections and drops. An experienced transport manager, or even […]
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Testing the Quality of Logistics-Critical Applications
Deploying applications quickly and affordably, and ensuring those systems perform as promised, will be a key to success in tomorrow’s freight and logistics sector. You no doubt recognize the need for robust apps testing. Often the challenge is finding the tools and capacity to break the testing logjam—and to accelerate your time to innovation. Software […]
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Today’s Competitive Supply Chain: Digital, Smaller, More Resilient
Historically, the supply chain and manufacturing industry has been relatively slow to embrace the opportunities presented by the digital revolution. Technology is advancing quickly, and it’s time to buck this trend. Whether it’s recognizing the crucial strategic strength and impact offered by the Internet of Things (IoT), taking advantage of the dramatic increase in automation, […]
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Advantages of Digital Technology
Q: INTTRA recently celebrated its 15th anniversary. Can you describe how digitization in ocean shipping has evolved since 2001? A: Some carriers and shippers moved to adopt standardizing form exchanges early on; then bespoke, single-process products (e.g., rates management), and later ERP systems. Cloud-based Transportation Management Systems (TMS) allowing shippers to avoid expensive in-house implementations […]
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The Whole Industry Is Struggling to Define TMS. Here’s My Take.
I’ve been in the transportation sector for more than 30 years and wrote the first transportation management system (TMS) as a developer back in the ’80s. Since then, the term “TMS” has come to mean many different things. Today, it covers different product classes; many transportation software vendors refer to themselves as a TMS provider […]
Read MoreDownload the Inbound Logistics Planner App Today
Find the right solutions, carriers and partners to drive efficiency in your supply chain operations and enable your enterprise to navigate the twists and turns, ups and downs of the coming year. The Logistics Planner, 25 years strong, is updated this month with profiles of leaders in transportation, technology, logistics, supply chain management, education and […]
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Global Logistics—February 2017
Mexican Border Wall Becoming Trade Barrier The battle over NAFTA renegotiation and trade between the United States and Mexico has been tied into the building of the border wall between the two nations promised by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto refused to discuss the idea of Mexico paying […]
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Placing a Premium on Cargo Insurance
Buckle up! Cargo insurance protects your goods if they are damaged, stolen, or lost while in transit.
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6 Simple Metrics for Tracking and Improving Carrier Performance
While transportation service providers vary in size and ability, having an overall strategy to track carrier performance can drive long term operational and financial stability. By relying on simple data captured over time, over the road shippers are better positioned to make informed decisions on the fly or in future bids to ensure their desired […]
Read MoreLeveraging Your Routing Guide
A routing guide plays an important role in setting the strategy for carrier selection. It is essentially a shipper’s guide to choosing a carrier to move a particular shipment. While there are many forms of routing guides, an increasing number of companies switched from paper to online portals and beyond to enhanced transportation management system […]
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