While demand for transportation services is intrinsically linked to volumes and demand, transloading has proven to be a resilient segment of the industry in the past. How has demand at facilities held up during the pandemic?
Depending on the transload facility and what materials are typically moving through, demand has either increased or decreased.
Obviously, the supply chain for the food industry is mostly still full, but some of the other commodities have slowed. Where transloads have had the opportunity to provide a storage-based business model, this has been a quick and easy method to maintain revenues during the velocity slowdown.
Unfortunately, a lot of transloads have limited storage capacity under their current operating model as they are heavily manual, resulting in a significant amount of underutilized capacity. Automated transload solutions which offer the opportunity to optimize storage capacity through precision automation, removal of floor-based material handling & personnel, as well as any optimization algorithms, provide the ability to swing a business quickly from a velocity to a storage model.