Today’s pickup: Amazon’s war of attrition; the most badassed trade show in the supply chain

Good day,

Amazon.com, Inc.’s push into one-day delivery as the standard for its “Prime” subscribers will turn into a war of attrition with retailers. The mission appears to be to pull share from existing retailers whose customers will wonder why they, too, can’t get one-day deliveries. It isn’t necessarily to attract new customers who are agnostic about their e-delivery service, or to convert those who haven’t used e-commerce at all. Shrinking transit times in half won’t bring virgin business out of the woodwork. But it will bring business to Amazon that had been purchasing from another company. For retailers not named Amazon, this is a war they can’t afford to lose but, in all likelihood, probably will.

Did you know:

The average clear height of industrial buildings delivered in 2018 was 18.1 percent higher than during the dot.com boom of the late 1990s. (Source: JLL, Inc.)

Quotable:

“I was already in territory I didn’t plan to get, so I just decided to buy a whole lot more stock,” Warren E. Buffett to CNBC on March 28 discussing Berkshire Hathaway’s Inc. 11 percent stake in Delta Air Lines Inc., up from 7.6 percent in the company’s most recent disclosure.

In other news:

Unlikely allies push gas tax hike in Illinois

The traditionally tax-averse Illinois Chamber of Commerce has joined with lawmakers to back two bills to raise fuel taxes for transport infrastructure improvements. (Chicago Daily Herald)

How Technology is Disrupting Shipping and Freight Transportation

How about tools like “vibration monitoring,” which continuously measure vibrations in shipping vessels and help identify when damage occurs? That’s just one of the advancements to make freight moves more efficient. (The Future of Things)

Hartford Bradley Airport discovers freight…

Spurred by e-commerce, Bradley sees significant growth potential in freight business. (HartfordBusiness.com)

…And so does the birthplace of aviation

A bevy of commercial development around the Dayton International Airport is turning the area into a hub for logistics, manufacturing and distribution. (Dayton Business Journal)

Norwegian fund bets on logistics

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, has added to its holdings of logistics buildings in the U.S. and Europe, betting against any escalation of the ongoing trade war. (Bloomberg)

Final thoughts:

Badass takes different forms. In the world of supply chain management trade shows, the title goes to “ProMat,” the biennial event put on by MHI, the leading material-handling trade group. Last month’s event at Chicago’s cavernous McCormick Place drew more than 50,000 attendees, an all-time record for a show that just continues to increase in popularity. The exhibit hall, as usual, was chock-full of whiz-bang systems and equipment designed to delight ‘left-brainers’ everywhere. Material handling is at the hub of the profound shift from traditional palletized fulfillment to the ‘eaches’ and ‘onesies’ that define e-commerce orders. As long as e-commerce continues to grow, so likely will ProMat.

Hammer down everyone!