Tag Archives: forwarding

New Paper in American Journal of Transportation and Logistics

Posted on June 1, 2018 by | 3 comments

My colleague and I and a student recently published a new paper in the American Journal of Transportation and Logistics.  You can see it below.  The paper is based on a presentation made at the International Association of Maritime Economists’ 2017 annual meeting in Japan.

The paper is about Ocean Trading Intermediaries (OTI’s) and their distribution across the US. The data came from the Federal Maritime Commission’s lists of registered US and foreign OTIs, which includes Ocean Freight Forwarders and Non Vessel Owning Ocean Carriers.  WE discuss the history, legal framework, and current conditions facing OTIs and make special reference to the Chicago area, in which a cluster of these businesses has arisen.

We used statistical cluster analysis to show that despite the belief that ocean freight forwarding is becoming more technology driven and thus able to locate anywhere, the businesses still choose to form clusters in major ports.

AJTL logo   via Built to Last? The Changing Role of Ocean Transportation Intermediaries: Disintermediation and Reintermediation – eSciPub Journals: Open Access Peer Reviewed Journals

You can get the pdf here.  AJTL-2018-01-0201 published

How to cite this article:
Christopher Clott. Built to Last? The Changing Role of Ocean Transportation Intermediaries: Disintermediation and Reintermediation.  American
Journal of Transportation and Logistics, 2018,1:5.

 

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Posted in Logistics, My Research, Strategy, Supply Chains

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Analysis special: a Q&A with Panalpina board member Peter Ulber – The Loadstar

Posted on September 28, 2017 by | 1 comment

An excellent interview with a top exec in the forwarding field.  Notice his comments near the end on the technology based new breed of forwarders coming from Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

His position is that shortly everyone will have the technology. It’s the rest of the business that is hard to replicate.  Thus he sees much more consolidation ahead.

I tend to agree with his view– much of the new tech is simply more visibility of what’s going on in reality.  That can, over time, be duplicated; though with substantial risk. Most of us know that IT projects have a 70% risk of unsuccessful implementation.  This makes buying tech often look attractive. But people, particularly execs, tend to underestimate the difficulty of integrating tech into the existing business and tech processes.  It’s a good story worth following, and will provide many object lessons for IT pros and scholars in the years to come.

 

Source: Analysis special: a Q&A with Panalpina board member Peter Ulber – The Loadstar

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Posted in Advanced Computing, Logistics, Strategy, Supply Chains

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