Peak Season

LM caught up with Dicom Transportation Group CEO Scott Dobak on various industry trends like freight volumes, inventory levels, and Peak Season.

As is the case with various facets of supply chain management and logistics, it seems like many things these days are more fluid than they used to be. And when it comes to Peak Season, it is clearly not an exception.

The Memphis-based transportation and logistics bellwether said that it is predicting it will move 317 million shipments between Black Friday and Christmas, which, if that number is reached, will stand as a new company record and be up 12.4 percent annually compared to 2014 holiday season volumes.

While nearly one-third of LM survey respondents note Peak Season has a significant impact on operations, industry experts say it will not be much to write home about this year

For the fourth quarter of 2014, UPS said it anticipates adjusted diluted earnings per share of roughly $1.25, with full-year 2014 adjusted diluted earnings per share at $4.75, which represents a 3.9 percent annual gain over 2013’s adjusted earnings per share of $4.57, with full-year 2014 diluted earnings pegged at around $3.28 per share, which is 28.9 percent below 2013’s $4.61.

The topic of Peak Season planning was cited fairly often at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) Annual Conference late last month.

When it comes to efficient and effective planning for Peak Season, transportation and logistics bellwether UPS is leaving no stone unturned.

Even with potential labor gridlock on the horizon, the findings of a Logistics Management reader survey found that there is increased optimism towards a 2014 Peak Season.

Despite similar outlook to last year, slightly more than half of shippers expect a more active Peak Season.

With the first half of 2013 officially in the books, the most recent edition of the Global Port Tracker report from Hackett Associates and the Bremen Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics states that minimal-to-slow growth is likely to remain intact for the foreseeable future.

Things regarding Peak simply are not the same as they used to be in many respects, the biggest one being that in recent years it has failed to live up to the billing for obvious reasons.

The outlook for 2012 Peak Season is similar to the economy; it is slow going.

With Peak Season, or at least the semblance of it underway, August volumes at the nation’s two largest ports—the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB)—were mixed in August.

Total container volume—at 696,847 Twenty-foot Equivalents (TEU)—were up 8.75 percent annually and were below May and April, which hit 731,352 TEU and 707,182 TEU, respectively.

Various factors could tip the scales in assessing how 2012 Peak Season plays out.