Major Modes Join E-Commerce Mix

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the May-June 2017 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

May-June 2017

Trust hasn’t always been an element in supplier relationships; all too often buyers have been encouraged to carry a big stick and get tough with suppliers to get the best price—no matter the cost. That approach to procurement is beginning to change.

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As Amazon continues its inexorable march toward distribution and order-fulfillment dominance, logistics managers are examining the opportunities all modal players are promising as they build out their e-commerce supply chains. As a consequence, the nation’s industrial transportation networks have been largely transformed.

According to the CBRE Group, the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm, there’s been a proliferation of warehouses and distribution centers (DCs) spanning 1 million square feet or larger across the nation. And while “last mile” carriers receive most of the attention these days, the traditional modal heavyweights are in charge of connecting this ever-growing web of facilities.

“The massive warehouses and DCs have sprouted from Southern California to Philadelphia, clustering around metro areas that provide the combination of road, rail, air and sea access that e-commerce users covet,” says David Egan, CBRE’s head of industrial and logistics research in the Americas.

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