to act quickly matters,” adds Jason Traff, president and co-founder of Shipwell. “A customer might have to add new carriers or think of new ways to ship goods on the fly. Giving them the tools to toggle between modes in real time is important.” Magann cautions that technology can’t always keep up with highway conditions that change quickly. When his company was delivering generators to the North Carolina coast after Hurricane Matthew in 2016, drivers relying on GPS routes were frequently halted by flooding, barricades, debris, and law enforcement. “We ended up driving at least 300 miles out of route on that trip,” he recalls. “It was like a giant maze with multiple ways to get there, but you didn’t know which ones were open and which ones weren’t.” PRE-POSITION MERCHANDISE AND ASSETS. Pre-positioning during disaster preparation can be tricky—and sometimes near impossible. Place inventory too close and it could get destroyed by the disaster cell. It’s enough of an issue that Campbell and colleague Philip Jones created a cost model that can be used to select the single best supply point location from
conditions so it can make decisions about when—and when not—to safely deploy trucks delivering supplies before and after a storm, and to alert stores to delivery timing. “On the inbound side, we put GPS tracking devices on our pre-strike trailers with generators because customers are lined up waiting for us to deliver them,” says Larkin. The command center team alerts store managers to arrival timing and what’s in the load so they can advise waiting customers. State-of-the-art transportation management systems (TMS) also allow shippers and carriers to monitor road conditions and re-route trucks or identify alternative modes if necessary. During a November 2022 blizzard that brought as much as 6.5 feet of snow to parts of Buffalo, New York, Jeremy Forster, director of logistics at Airlite Plastics Co., relied on supply chain network visibility provided by Shipwell’s TMS. “As we ship these products and move loads around, we can see in real time everything from weather conditions to road conditions, along with the status and location of all of our trailers,” Forster says. “We’ve been able to see road closures in real time and adjust our planning and routing accordingly.” “Any time there’s a disaster, being able
a set of choices. The model described in their journal article, Prepositioning Supplies in Preparation for Disasters , can also be embedded within existing location algorithms to choose multiple supply points. But even with the best planning, pre-positioning isn’t always possible. “The challenge that we ran into with some recent storms is that they form rapidly. Hurricane Ida that went through Louisiana in 2021 made landfall within 24 hours after intensifying, so it’s hard to pre-stage when something pops up that quickly,” says Kathy Fulton, executive director of the American Logistics Aid Network ( see sidebar ). Mercy Chefs expedites its response by positioning its six mobile kitchens in Virginia, California, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee so they’re close to predictable disaster zones. The nonprofit also uses a recently acquired 30,000-square-foot warehouse near Huntsville as a deployment base for non-perishable supplies that include to-go containers and plastic utensil packets. BE FLEXIBLE. Relief providers know to expect the unexpected, even in the sky. Drones are a newer resource helping companies deliver much-needed supplies to disaster areas. In Swoop Aero’s home country of Australia, the drone logistics network provider responded to flooding caused by record-setting rainfall amounts by setting up a pharmaceutical delivery network so people cut off by water could still receive critical medications. “As we continue to experience worsening climate conditions, the need for this type of disaster response will increase,” says Eric Peck, CEO of Swoop Aero. Working with UNICEF, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other organizations, the company’s drone network also aids in search-and-rescue missions and monitors disaster area transportation route conditions around the world.
Next Exit Logistics, a 3PL specializing in disaster relief transportation, transports everything from generators for temporary power to food for a client’s employees in a disaster area.
February 2023 • Inbound Logistics 43
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