Trucking reports busy Black Friday weekend

From Transport Topics.

Black Friday weekend was particularly busy for the trucking industry with strong demand coming from retailers and supply chain issues.

“Normally, all the Black Friday merchandise would be somewhere a consumer could buy it well in advance,” Noah Hoffman, vice president of North American surface transportation at C.H. Robinson Worldwide, told Transport Topics. “Off the ship, out of containers, at a distribution center for online orders or on a shelf. What was different about this Thanksgiving is that some of it was still on its way.”

Hoffman noted that in the month leading up to Thanksgiving truckload freight volume was up 7% compared with last year, much of that driven by a backlog of goods. He noted even Halloween costumes still are coming through the ports.

“Because we serve 7,500 retailers, we saw this coming,” Hoffman said. “In April, we were telling customers to order their holiday merchandise early, and by July, all 25 of the top 25 retailers were pulling inventory forward. They account for more freight than the next 1,000 retailers combined, so that provided somewhat of a cushion for the delays we were expecting. But freight for Black Friday was still moving right up to Black Friday, and frankly still is.”

C.H. Robinson is using its warehouse space in port cities to sort containers and pull out the most urgent products. So things such as toys and wrapping paper can take priority over late Halloween costumes. The company has even brought ocean containers into its employee parking lot in Southern California to help sort them.

See the complete article online at Transport Topics.