FIRST RULE OF THUMB: BE PREPARED. The Boy Scout motto provides bottom-line relevance when it’s your job to select a company to ship freight all over the world. Much can go wrong on the way to getting the right product to the right place at the right time at the right cost. Preparation is key as you begin your search for a partner with the logistics skills and experience necessary to navigate the increasingly complex workings of custom international shipping. Your “prep work” before…
Oversize, Overweight and Right up our Alley The ICAT Logistics DTW team recently put a particularly large package onto a truck traveling from Detroit to Norfolk, Virginia where it was loaded by crane onto a flat rack and then onto a ship to begin the 10,300 nautical mile trip through the Panama Canal and ultimately to Shanghai, China. Our team called it “The Beast to the East.” How big was it? The package was 30 feet long, 8.5 feet wide and 10 feet high. It weighed 42 tons. Certainly large, but not in a class of its own from ICAT’s…
Brazil to Detroit: Right on Time How do you get from Bahia, Brazil, to Detroit? If you’re moving nine crates of vehicle side panels that weigh three tons, as ICAT Logistics DTW did in August, the answer is: Very carefully. That’s because moving such heavy material 6,000 miles isn’t only about getting the right trucks and airplanes. It’s about planning. In Brazil, and wherever ICAT ships industrial materials around the world, the company maintains a close working relationship with the agents who follow their…
No Need for Big Headaches with Oversize Shipments An oversize freight load doesn’t have to cause oversize problems – as long as you have the right shipping partner. That was good news for a Michigan manufacturer whose experience shipping four-ton dynamometers to international ports had been so poorly handled by a previous shipping company, the freight was arriving in parcels and on different ships. That caused confusion, missed deadlines and unhappy customers. “There is a lot of detailed logistical planning that goes into shipments…
In Difficult Times, Our Industry Rises to the Challenge In the logistics and freight delivery business, finding solutions to the challenges of our clients is all in a day’s work. Recently, however, three names in the news have pushed many in our industry to abandon normal protocols and find new ways to deliver the goods. By now the names are familiar to anyone with a TV or access to the news: Harvey, Irma and Maria — a trio of devastating hurricanes. They closed shipping routes, blocked highways, flooded warehouses and cut off the routine…
Logistics Decisions are Too Important to Make Alone Logistics Decisions are Too Important to Make Alone Researchers tell us that on average, adults make 35,000 decisions a day. Some are less consequential than others – oatmeal for breakfast, or eggs? One egg or two? White shirt or blue? Brown shoes or black? Loafers or boots? Studies also note that as we assume greater responsibilities in our lives, we make more independent decisions that have consequences well beyond a menu or choice of clothing. Children, for example, make about 3,000 decisions…
How to Improve Supply Chain Visibility One of the best ways to enhance the performance of your supply chain operation is to improve visibility. That means knowing precisely the location of products, freight and inventory no matter where they are along the chain. The advantages are obvious: besides controlling your shipments and orders in a complex global environment, real-time visibility introduces opportunities to reduce inventory and mitigate risk that could crop up if you are unaware of the status of your freight. A global supply…
