UP: Supply chain challenges need coordinated response (10/5/2021)
10/5/2024Each member of the supply chain must focus on optimizing their part of it and keep communicating with other players both upstream and downstream to address challenges, according to Union Pacific Railroad's Inside Track newsletter.
Changes in consumer spending habits during the pandemic, labor shortages in the trucking and warehousing industries, and final-mile delivery delays are contributing to industry-wide supply-chain shortages in the United States, wrote Elise Gosch, UP's assistant vice president of marketing and sales-premium intermodal.
Everyone in the supply chain must take stock of what they can control and use all available levers to address bottlenecks, the article states.
The Class I hosted an international shipping forum in May to bring together ocean carriers to review problems and work to create solutions. In addition, the railroad's domestic sales team has provided customers weekly — sometimes daily — updates on equipment forecasts.
Moreover, UP added locomotives to its intermodal business to address current network imbalances and has temporarily reopened its Global III intermodal ramp in Rochelle, Illinois, as an inland storage depot.
Additionally, UP will invest in bringing on new chassis in 2022 for the domestic pools that UP manages and equipping its rail-owned containers with GPS units.
"This will help address the current chassis short while also providing better shipment visibility for our customers," Gosch wrote.
Source: Progressive Railroading Daily News