The Good and The Not so Good

The trucking industry breathed a sigh of relief as freight rates on trunk routes saw an increase of four to five per cent on the onset of the festival season; while truckers welcomed the increase, the service providers felt that it would destroy the margins further for transportation companies on the agreed fixed long-term rate contracts. tries to find out the factors affecting the increase and how supply chain managers are dealing with the upsurge.

With the aim to enhance the state of perishable commodities, AISATS started its trial operations of India’s first integrated onairport perishable cargo handling centre, ‘AISATS COOLPORT’, at the Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru.

On the air front, efforts are being taken by Airports Authority of India on establishing a subsidiary company - AAICLAS to focus its attention on capturing entire value chain in AAI airports and provide ease of doing business to importers and exporters.

The much-talked about Hanjin Shipping bankruptcy created a chaos in the shipping industry. However, there is a need to analyse it from a different perspective as well. It is high time we learnt a lesson to avoid such anarchy in future.

The industry has seen a great deal of activity, especially as e-commerce picks up pace, but is still highly fragmented. Industry experts talk about the global trends and practices of e-commerce supply chain that keep the industry rising.

On the skill front, the industry is aiming to build a platform to give an opportunity to the thousands of skilled youths by providing suitable courses and diplomas with the objective of holding interest while ensuring that they too move on to higher skill job roles in the logistics sector.