Logistics & Operations

What is "Logistics"?

Many companies have “logistics” within their name but their focus tends to be narrow and only on a small segment of the supply chain. Some still use a combination of spreadsheets (“electric pencil and paper”) along with manual and/or delinked time consuming processes for fleet management, safety and inventory control and measurement.

The more successful companies look at the entire supply chain and have developed sophisticated expert automated systems to manage the flow through the supply chain in a proactive manner. They work with all stakeholders in the supply chain to ensure smooth operations, good value for services rendered and cost reductions for all stakeholders through efficiency gains.

Over the decades in our experience, we have seen this approach proven many times.

Rail and Truck Contract Negotiations

Contract negotiations can become very adversarial especially

Sample Carrier and Shipper Contract Negotiations

These are just a few               examples of carriers and shippers that we have negotiated contracts with and in some cases for. These contracts were across various industry sectors.

when each party wants the exact opposite of the other. Carriers want higher rates and shippers want lower rates and so the win-lose approach is set in motion.

We have successfully negotiated from both the carrier and shipper perspective:

• New complex, long-term, take-or-pay type contracts that sometimes required significant capital investments by both parties
  

• Complex contract renewals
  

• Simple shorter term contracts

Our successes came not from trying to get lower rates from carriers or higher rates from customers but by taking a collaborative approach to make each other’s business more profitable through shared efficiency gains.

We have extensive experience working across many different industries with many different companies or all sizes negotiating shipper contracts. Our experience working in the rail industry gives us a unique view of the economic drivers for Class I and shortline railways.

Let us help you negotiate your next shipping contract.

Transload Terminal Operations

Simple Truck to Rail Transload

We have implemented various transload operations for different commodities from single truck to railcar to unit train operations. We have found through real world experience what works and what doesn’t. We have even co-invented and patented certain terminal processes.

We have automated certain safety and inspection processes.

Let us help review your terminal operations and safety processes.

Dimensional Loads

When you have oversized loads, we can help. We can arrange for securement, clearances and inspections. It is critical in the earlier stages to think about how loads will be transported and the size of the transportation envelope available.

It is possible with slight module design changes or small amount of field assembly to save considerable freight charges.

Let us help you with your oversized loads.

Equipment Fleet Management

So many companies believe that just tracking and tracing their equipment fleets is “fleet management”. This is just a data dump that requires several experts in a time consuming, low value low impact process to determine what the data means.

To manage your fleet of truck or rail equipment, it is imperative that the right processes and expert systems are in place to do so. This needs to be coupled with physical locations where the fleet flow can be modulated to avoid flooding the receipt terminal causing operational problems and potentially incurring demurrage charges.

Let us help you develop expert fleet management systems and processes.

Rail Car Storage

As business ebbs and flows based on seasonal factors or other market conditions, it often becomes necessary to find locations to store excess rail car fleet for longer terms. We believe that rail car storage is an integral part of fleet management. Railways impose heavy demurrage fees on excess cars left on their systems.

Railways are even imposing a requirement for private rail car fleet owners to certify that they have locations to store all of their cars before they will allow them on line.

Let us analyze your equipment fleet management processes and capabilities.

Intermodal Management

Many companies have not used rail intermodal services and instead opt to pay for higher cost trucking. Our experience has shown that this has often been a result of poor supply chain management. If loads were scheduled ahead of time, rail intermodal offers excellent price performance value.

Let us review your shipping patterns to see how rail intermodal can help lower your costs.