TMC Blog

If we could eavesdrop on the freight industry’s water cooler conversations the chances are that we’d hear a lot about traffic congestion. Transportation managers deal with it and talk about it all the time, yet there is one vital aspect of this topic that they tend to overlook: how trucks idled by traffic snarls work against the fuel efficiencies that the industry is working hard to achieve.

More awareness of this conflict and the associated costs might help to persuade the industry to address infrastructure investment needs that are at the root of these delays.  Read More...

Are you surprised by how regularly you have to educate people on the dynamics of a truckload market? We often see many shippers spending time educating their internal constituents on the subject. This dynamic isn’t new, but it can still be more than frustrating; it can throw a transportation management strategy off track.  Read More...

Is it possible to create a fuel surcharge program that is consistently fair to shippers and carriers?

As we have seen over recent months, the cost of motor vehicle fuel is a national preoccupation. Perhaps this is one reason why rising prices at the pump, and mechanisms such as fuel surcharges that are designed to spread the pain between shippers and service providers equably, attract so much attention. Read More...

Global growth has become such an integral part of supply chain management that it is easy to forget just how challenging it can be. This is particularly true in the freight transportation space, where concepts such as deploying a control tower to manage international freight movements are still evolving (for more on this see Control Tower for Freight Management Catches the Global Train, by Adam Davis, December 17, 2010, and Five Features that Define a Global TMS, by Jordan Kass, June 15, 2011). Read More...