Welcome to Check Call, our corner of the internet for all things 3PL, freight broker and supply chain. Check Call the podcast comes out every Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. EDT. Catch up on previous episodes here. If this was forwarded to you, sign up for Check Call the newsletter here.
In this edition: Fraud takes no breaks for the holidays, it takes a lot of semi-trucks to move Thanksgiving, and lots of businesses can profit from the parcel rate wars.
It’s the end of the year and with it comes a more laissez-faire approach to work — something that hackers and thieves are hoping to cash in on.
The most recent trick is a phishing email on behalf of what appears to be DAT, the loadboard we all have varying feelings about. The email looks like it’s a Carrier411 FreightGuard report that requests that the user respond to at onedatfreight.com. Seems legit right? Wrong. DAT’s actual website is one.dat.com.
Basically the scheme is to get your login information on the fake DAT website so that the person doing the phishing can then log in to your DAT account and broker loads that way under a false Motor Carrier number. At the risk of sounding like IT, check who emails are from and if you get something with a link on it, maybe don’t click the link and instead go to the website directly.
While fraud on load boards is at an all-time high, it will remain a team approach to prevent fraud from winning at the end of the day. Annabel Reeves said in a FreightWaves article, “If customers think they have received a phishing email impersonating DAT or believe their DAT credentials have been compromised they should reach out to their customer service department right away and report the bad actor. She also suggested they send a screenshot of the message to customer service and not forward the actual phishing email to them.”
Also important to note: DAT has enabled multifactor authentication for logins on its accounts.
It’s Thanksgiving this week and as we all prepare to eat our weight in food and fall asleep to the sounds of family members shouting at the football game, it raises the question: How many pounds of turkey are eaten? Let’s find out.
According to the National Turkey Federation, more than 46 million turkeys are eaten on Thanksgiving. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the average turkey weighs 16-18 pounds at the store. So 46 million turkeys multiplied by 18 pounds is 828 million pounds of turkey each year that Americans consume on the holiday. That translates to about 20,700 semi-trucks loaded to 40,000 pounds apiece to get just the main dish on the Thanksgiving table.
If we branch out to the sides, which let’s be honest sometimes are better than the bird, it gets a little more insane. According to Ocean Spray, Americans consume 80 million pounds of cranberries plus 5 million gallons of jellied cranberry sauce, which breaks out to about 3,482 trucks loaded at 40,000 pounds. Sweet potato consumption, according to infoplease.com, comes to about 2.4 billion pounds or about 60,000 trucks. And what is Thanksgiving without the iconic pumpkin pie? About 1.5 billion pounds of pumpkin actually, which breaks down to 37,500 trucks.
All told, to get a portion of Thanksgiving delivered to grocery stores, it takes 121,682 trucks.
Market Check. The Houston market has experienced strong volume growth in November, including in the past week as volumes have grown by 8.19% week over week (w/w). Rejection rates largely haven’t reacted to the higher volumes as carriers are accepting over 98% of tendered freight. Tender rejection rates in Houston are down just 9 basis points in the past week, currently at 1.69%. Spot rates out of Houston are largely lower w/w, according to FreightWaves TRAC spot rates, including from Houston to Chicago, where the spot rate is down 2.4% at $1.66 per mile.
Who’s with whom? It seems only fitting that the last month of 2023 leads to a rate war between FedEx and UPS. Those who are brave enough to learn the ins and outs of parcel rates find themselves in a unique position as FedEx and UPS fight for business. Each carrier has been aggressively passing off deeply discounted rates for parcel freight in an effort to win back business. For UPS, the goal is to win back business that left from the union dispute fallout, while FedEx aims to win back any business that left for UPS after the fallout.
The best part? The discounts aren’t reserved for mega-shippers. Just about any size business can take advantage of the aggressive price drops. What a holiday miracle as shippers look to cut back on spending.
That said, in case your UPS and FedEx sales reps weren’t hounding you enough, imagine the savings that could be had should a broker or 3PL do some contract negotiations about this time to set itself up for a successful year. The customers with a bulk amount of parcel shipping would no doubt love to take advantage of some deep discounts for as long as possible.
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See you on the internet.
Mary
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