Live on Bloomberg TV

00:00Under great duress I would have thought to the moment in terms of their own bottom lines in terms of navigating what has been a very difficult supply chain and what are people saying to you at the moment in terms of how they are seeing supply chains come on snarled or worse enough. Yeah. Well I'll be a buyer and thank you for having me by the way. Be reporting you all are doing is incredible. You've been following this issue from the outset. We appreciate the attention that you paid to this because it's a critical issue for American competitiveness. Our members. Yes I have had the most stressful two years because as you know the demand has been unprecedented for as long as a sustained period of time. And we have had such a capacity crunch. And now you're seeing at the West Coast ports where the ocean shipping sales have. They are correct. There are there is a little bit more fluidity. There aren't as many stacked outside on the oceans but it still is a very stressed environment and we would hate to see it deteriorate further. Are you seeing your members able to pass on their higher costs onto the consumers into their own customers. I have to tell you we've been eating a lot of our costs because as I mentioned the capacity is such a dear dear it is so tough to find truck drivers to find you know the intermodal services as you know have been very unreliable this the last couple years. So we have been paying more to get capacity consistently and to get those drivers will pay really anything to try to get it. And as you know they have fuel surcharges et cetera that that just they are charging as much as they can. And then we talk a lot about China about Shanghai lockdowns. They're potentially easing. I mean how much would that impact some of your members. How much of a real boost would that be at this point. Well so our members connect with one of every three of those large ocean carriers shipping vessels and they use us to either help with their warehousing with their truckload services drainage or connecting to intermodal. And so yeah it has some. But if that Shanghai down just turns around and we are releasing those ships back into the economy that will actually strip our members all the way up again. I was talking to a member of mine yesterday who connects to two dredge and intermodal. And he says that he can see his container sitting there but he can't get it to go. And it partially is because of rail service being what it is. And partially it's because it's the chassis pool is not always available. So it's any number of issues that have snarled it and made the system stressed. And I think that's what some of this reporting and what your real expertise gives us is this understanding that this isn't just one quick fix. There's so many parts of the supply chain that about bottlenecks and we need to address. But from your perspective when you are hearing the president the United States go to L.A. and talk about the what they have done. Is it enough. What more could the administration do you think. Well I think the administration should be credited for their port infrastructure development grants. That was part of the infrastructure bill that passed last year. Having that money to invest in the nation's ports is so valuable and it's a critical resource again if we go back to American competitiveness. We have to make our ports as efficient as effective as they are worldwide. And currently I think we have two ports of the top 20. Wouldn't it be great if we had more. So I credit them for doing that. I think they also are paying attention to this West Coast port strike which is a credit to them as well because they know if there were a slowdown or if something happens and God forbid a strike occurs it would be devastating to the economy. I want to talk though about inventory. Target is certainly a company that comes to mind in the last few weeks highlighting maybe the double ordering and then the over inventory after not having inventory a year ago. And then of course the discounting that comes with that. When do you start to see normalization of that inventory. I think we're actually starting to see it now. But you know when we say normalization it's exactly right. Normalization. We're not cratering down into into sort of a recession. What we're seeing is that demand is actually becoming pre coated. So 20 19 whatever you bought. And that kind of thing. That's what we're seeing. We're not seeing it go away. People are now spending more money on services naturally because if they can get out more but they are still spending money on goods. But to that end. Yes. I don't think the volumes are going to be as high as we have seen.

No schedule data available.

Transportation Intermediaries Association CEO on Supply Pain

Transportation Intermediaries Association CEO Anne Reinke discusses how the port labor strike would impact the logistics industry with 'Bloomberg Markets' Caroline Hyde, Romaine Bostick and Taylor Riggs. (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology
The only daily news program focused exclusively on technology, innovation and the future of business from San Francisco. Hosted by Emily Chang.
More episodes and clips