Category Archives: Rail/Road

The unprecedented COVID-19 impact will lead to quite a few changes in the Indian logistics industry, since the pandemic is now a reality that we all have to live with for a long time. Increased demand for home deliveries is likely to continue in future and logistics companies need to improve their last-mile delivery models. To meet the rising demand for home deliveries, businesses must immediately optimise key assets such as staff and vehicle capacity. They can leverage advanced crowd sourcing technologies to optimise staff capacity by on-boarding temporary or part-time delivery executives from across disparate delivery provider ecosystems.  

CEVA Logistics has launched an all-in-one portal named myCEVA to enable shippers in managing their complete shipping journey online. The online tool provides a seamless customer experience by giving them greater control over every function and a larger range of options whatever the circumstances. The portal has been designed to give customers greater control over the booking process while simultaneously improving efficiency through greater process automation. Customers can instantly receive quotes, make bookings and track shipments in real time, which will enhance the customer experience.   After a successful pilot phase in the US in May 2020, myCEVA is working towards covering all transport modes in every region of the world and has been launched in a phased manner with FCL and LCL ocean freight customers using specific trade lanes from/to the US, China and India.

Maersk’s customer-oriented mobile app witnesses highest usage amongst customers in India. With over 4,000 users, India topped the charts globally amongst the countries where Maersk’s customers are actively using the mobile app. Over 1.8 million actions by customers were recorded on the app in the second quarter of 2020 (April to June). These were more than double of those recorded in the first quarter of 2020 (January to March). These include any action performed by users on the app like booking, tracking, checking schedules, live support etc. “As the pandemic spread across geography, our, as well as most of our customers’ operations, shifted bases to their employees’ homes. It then became imperative for the customers to adopt the digital tools for carrying out businesses from the comforts of their homes. Having invested in digital transformation over the last few years, we could provide this immediately to our customers,” said, Steve Felder, Managing Director – South Asia, Maersk.

As part of its efforts to reduce waiting times at airports, Jan de Rijk Logistics, the road feeder firm, has signed up with Trucking CDM for to manage slot allocation planning mechanism between truckers and handlers. The industry is under pressure to reduce costs but also achieve faster transit times between European airports, because much of the trucking operation is spent waiting at airports. Stefan Pieters, Manager of Operations & Development, Jan de Rijk, says, “Our biggest challenge boils down to the waiting hours spent at cargo handling facilities, caused by lack of communication and transparency. As there is often no contractual relation between the trucker and the handler both parties operate on behalf of the airline but not directly connected to each other. If we could share data about when the freight is available, the status of vehicle combined shipment information we could communicate much better with the handler thus creating, insight and data sharing for all parties involved.” The Trucking CDM platform provides transparency, predictability and a slot allocation planning mechanism between truckers and handlers. It allows data sharing between the involved stakeholders in regard to the truck movement.

Maruti Suzuki India has announced that it has transported more than 6.70 lakh cars via the Indian Railways over the last six years, witnessing a CAGR of over 18 per cent. In this process the company offset nearly 3,000 metric tonnes (MT) of CO2 emissions. Avoiding more than one lakh truck trips on the National Highways has significantly helped reduce carbon footprint and save 100 million litres of diesel, the company claims. In the last financial year, Maruti Suzuki dispatched over 1.78 lakh cars by rail mode, marking 15 per cent increase over previous year. As it further claimed, this accounted for nearly 12 per cent of total sales of the company in the year. Kenichi Ayukawa, Managing Director & CEO, Maruti Suzuki India, said, “Considering the increasing volumes, our team felt the need for large scale logistics flow. We realised, that not only for expansion but also for risk mitigation we have to look beyond road mode logistics.”

Portall Infosystems has collaborated with GOCON in order to provide trucking services on PCS1x; a cloud based new generation technology with user-friendly interface The service is already live on PCS 1x. GOCON, a digital transport aggregator platform that connects operators (Trailers and Truckers) with shippers, has on-boarded the collaborative P-CaSo platform. The company is known for its ability to deliver effective transportation solutions vide their own and leased fleet across the country. Shirishchandra Shah, Chief Product Officer, Portall, said “Coming from the well known transportation fleet owner Roadwings – Portall has good reason to believe GOCON will serve the trade well. We thank IPA for their support to add trucking services as a functionality on PCS 1x to better serve the ecosystem.” “We have an established transport company with a large owned and leased fleet who have now embraced digital business. We are pleased to tie up with Portall whose work in the digital landscape of India is well known and appreciated.” Pratyaksh Sureka, Founder, GOCON. IPA (Indian Ports Association), an autonomous body under the Ministry Of Shipping, which launched the PCS 1x in Dec 2018 has been working closely with the trade to expand functionality and features and the addition of this service has ensured that the users can get attractive rates which can help bring down the logistics costs.

“Unless innovative transportation models are executed, high logistics management cost will remain,” says, Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways, addressing an e-symposium on logistics management under the e-symposia series on emergent North East India. Speaking specifically on logistics management, Gadkari stresses the need to augment water transport considering its cost effectiveness as compared to road or railway mode of transportation while sharing his insights on possibility of boosting Ro-Ro and Ropax water travel mode for easy connectivity, and cutting short distance coverage using the mighty Brahmaputra. Gadkari believes that institutes have a relatable responsibility to oversee the socio-economic growth of the region. He says, “This can only be achieved through cooperation, coordination and communication with stakeholders of the region.” Also ruing on the country’s extensive import requirement despite the presence of minerals like copper, aluminium, gold, and coal as examples, Gadkari felt that impetus is on management institutes to contribute management strategies and solutions by comprehensively assessing the strengths and weaknesses related to industrial uplift.

In order to bridge the supply and demand of road logistics via a digital marketplace, Kuehne+Nagel has launched its AI-enabled road logistics platform eTrucknow in India in a webinar with the participation of top company officials and its vendors and distributors from across the country. With eTrucknow, shippers get access to a simplified quotation and booking process for domestic road logistics shipments. Once the shipper provides the shipment details, the AI-enabled engine streamlines and automates the quotation comparison process by validating multiple data points and presents the customer with the most competitive quotation and route. “The intuitive and easy-to-use digital solution has been developed based on our customers’ needs and market trends. The platform’s functionalities are continuously evolving to create an optimal customer experience from an ad-hoc shipment to the regular large volume of shipments,” says Chellan Ganesan, Senior Vice President – Road Logistics, Kuehne+Nagel, Asia Pacific.

“The most striking thing that has emerged from this entire lockdown is that it has given every company an opportunity to improve their performance, way of working and re-understanding the entire operations and possible marketing as well,” says, Chander Agarwal, Managing Director, TCI Express at the third edition of CargoTalk digital conclave. Interestingly, with the use of technology we have had the lowest cost ever in the history of the company in spite of the fuel prices going up. This crisis has made us much stronger; all the things which were left undone were able to be done now for the betterment of the company and this has made our foundation stronger.

Talking about the challenges faced by industry when the lockdown was announced, Aditya Shah, Executive Director, V-Trans India, says that the period of end of March and mid of April which was filled with uncertain times, at the CargoTalk’s third digital conclave. He continues, “Business came to a standstill, trucks were stranded, and cargo was held up whether it is road, airport or seaport. However, logistics being such an essential industry for the backbone of the country, it had to bounce back very fast. The government has ensured the delivery of essentials, right from the beginning, and slowly and steadily also enabled the entire ecosystem around essentials. Things have started moving pretty fast for the industry, however, it was filled with challenges; from obtaining local permissions to ensuring the safety of people and also if people are in place to operate. The challenges which we as an industry have faced have been immense but still the resilience and hard work with which each one of us stood up deserves some acknowledgement.”