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State of Logistics 2016: Pursue mutual benefit Holiday season shipment growth is intact, according to Port Tracker report Download the full 2016 Modern Materials Handling Salary Survey Systems Report: Whirpool puts mobile robots to work 9th Annual Salary Survey: Success and Satisfaction Continue to Reign More News Gains in United States-bound retail imports are expected with the holiday shopping season now officially underway, according to the most recent edition of the Port Tracker report issued this week by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and maritime consultancy Hackett Associates. The ports surveyed in the report include: Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Tacoma, Seattle, Houston, New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston, and Savannah, Miami, and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Port Everglades. Authors of the report explained that cargo import numbers do not correlate directly with retail sales or employment because they count only the number of cargo containers brought into the country, not the value of the merchandise inside them, adding that the amount of merchandise imported provides a rough barometer of retailers’ expectations. “Retailers are importing more during the holidays this year than last year and that can only mean one thing – they expect to sell more,” NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said in a statement. “Most of the holiday merchandise is already here, but retailers are still restocking to be sure shoppers will have a broad and deep selection as they hit the stores over the next several weeks.” For September, the most recent month for which “after the fact” data is available, total volume was 1.6 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEU), which marked a 6.6 percent decline from August, which is the busiest month of the year, and was also down 1.6 percent annually. October saw a return to growth, coming in at […]