Supply Chain and Logistics Update for the week of March 31 . Here are few things you should know if you’re continuing to ship freight domestically or internationally throughout the COVID19 emergency.
Critical Capacity is getting more expensive.
As unplanned spikes in demand are catching supply chains off guard, these spikes are transmitting to drops in capacity on certain lanes. This signals a very volatile pricing situation that could last over the next month as the COVID19 situation changes rapidly.
Air Freight
As the nation’s airlines both passenger and freight are decreasing capacity in a huge way, some airlines are operating charters and new scheduled flights on critical cargo routes to aid in the fight against coronavirus. Several US passenger airlines have operated their first all cargo flightly in twenty years or more.
Import Volumes are way down
Many seaports are experiencing drastic drops in freight volume and cutting their hours as a result. If your company relies on international components or products, you will need to be patient as supply chains deal with the near daily changes to international freight.
Fruit and Perishables
Mid spring means that southern produce producing regions will soon start to harvest their crop, this will result in a rush on available capacity throughout these regions with higher prices expected.
Local disruptions due to COVID19
As the virus continues to spread and the United States reacts, many firms will be closed or have adjusted hours. Communicate more than usual with your suppliers and logistics partners to hopefully reduce delays and minimize extra charges that might result. We’ve talked to numerous manufacturing facilities that are operating on nonstandard hours with a large portion of workers either not working or working from home, so this creates complications for freight that is still being loaded or unloaded at these locations.
Intermodal for Cross country
As of yet, the nation’s rail network has not been operationally hurt by COVID19 due to the massive effort the class 1 rail carriers are taking to make sure their strategic capacity remains available. If you are shipping cross country, there has never been a better time to consider moving some freight by intermodal. This will alleviate any regional pricing spikes by over the road trucking carriers.
International Road Crossings
Non essential traffic is prohibited to cross the Canadian and Mexican borders to and from the United States as a measure to curb the rapid spread of COVID19. Expect delays if you are routing cross border freight.
We are doing our best to continue to provide first class service during this national emergency. If we can be of any help to you, let us know! We’ll do everything we can to keep you operating 24/7!
