WHITE HOUSE UPDATES TRUCKING ACTION PLAN

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President Joe Biden addressed multiple important issues facing the trucking industry as part of an update on his Trucking Action Plan (TAP), including ensuring female driver safety from sexual predators and the lack of safe parking for big rigs. The plan initially launched last December by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and U.S. Department of Transportation was to “increase the supply of truck drivers by creating new pathways into the profession, cutting red tape to expand high quality training… and laying the foundation for improving job quality to keep people in the profession.”    Read more…

TRUCKING EMPLOYMENT ENDS TWO YEAR GROWTH STREAK

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Though preliminary numbers might change in the next two months, a two year streak of trucking employment growth has come to an end, “perhaps indicating the economy hitting the brakes after unprecedented consumer demand.” According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 5,000 trucking jobs were lost in March, which “marks the first month-to-month decrease since April 2020, when the start of the pandemic wiped out nearly 80,000 trucking jobs.”  Read more…

BOSTON DYNAMICS LOGISTICS ROBOT ALREADY SOLD OUT

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Boston Dynamics’ logistics robot “Stretch,” which can unload trailers and maneuver containers of all shapes and sizes, has officially sold out for 2022, with deliveries now only expected for 2023 and 2024.  Stretch can also “access tight spaces and even recover packages that might shift or fall during the unloading, thanks to its advanced vision system and custom vacuum gripper.”  The robot can not only do all of this on its own, but it can also decide what to do next in real time.  Read more…

AUTOMATION WON’T HARM LOGISTICS JOBS

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Most experts believe that despite the rapid rise in automation, jobs will largely remain in the warehousing and logistics industries. While many e-commerce giants, including Amazon and Chewy, have begun to utilize automation to improve efficiency, their warehouses will continue to create thousands of jobs for the workforce.  While automation helps with not having to rely on any one single person, there will be a continued need to have the right balance between people and machines for companies to remain fecund.   Read more..

MACY’S BRINGING 2,8000 LOGISTICS JOBS TO NORTH CAROLINA

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Macy’s Inc. is planning to build a distribution and online order fulfillment center in Rowan County, North Carolina that “ultimately will employ about 2,800 people.” The $584 million dollar investment will open in 2024 in China Grove, which is only 35 miles northeast of Charlotte, and will “handle 30% of Macy’s digital supply chain when fully operational.” The state of the art facility will further build Macy’s inc. as one of the leading omnichannel retailers in the country.  Read more…

LOGISTICS HELP DRIVE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA’S JOB GROWTH

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Southern California has seen an explosive boom in job growth since the recent decline of the Omnicron variant, with logistic sectors joining hospitality and healthcare in aiding the economic recovery.  In particular, the logistics center of the Inland Empire has been especially successful, nearly recovering all jobs lost since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 .    Read more…

LOGISTIC JOBS COMING TO KENTUCKY

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Total Quality Logistics, a major North American logistics provider, is set to expand at its offices in Lexington, Louisville, and unincorporated Boone County, “adding 525 jobs across those locations. It will add 300 positions in Lexington, 125 in Boone County, and 100 in Louisville.”  These new openings will help the company meet the demand for transportation services such as “ freight brokerage and third-party logistics to both domestic and international markets.”   Read more…

THE NEXT GENERATION OF LOGISTICS TALENT

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Finding and retaining talent in the logistics and warehousing space remains a massive concern countrywide due to the demand coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the rapid rise in e-commerce, “the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the transportation, warehousing and related fields will add close to 735,000 jobs by 2031.” Companies such as Prologis are helping to find and create these skilled logistics workers.   Read more…

STATE OF SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES

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Though we didn’t start experimenting with self-driving vehicles until the 2000’s, we’ve created incredible strides with the hardware in the last 15 years, but the early estimate of 2025 as when most new vehicles would drive themselves won’t become a reality. There are still harder issues being tackled, including the fact that the vehicles’ systems don’t work 100% of the time.  Though almost all “long haul trucker jobs would be eliminated,” and “the effects would be felt across the country as truckers can account for significant income to several rural areas,” this bleak future for truck drivers is still many years away.    Read more…

IT’S A PAY SHORTAGE, NOT A TRUCKER SHORTAGE

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With long stretches away from home and family already making truck driving jobs less than desirable, low pay has compounded the trucker shortage even further.  As drivers around the country “quit their jobs en masse, the trucking industry needs an estimated 80,000 more drivers to operate optimally. That’s a historic high, according to the American Trucking Associations.” Many believe that the only way to fix this issue, as with many other industries across the pandemic-stricken economy, is to re-evaluate wages and benefits for these applicants.    Read more…