John’s Blog

2-15-10

Dear Friends,

The economy continues to affect the world of transportation logistics with a lot of interesting news from the last week.

Consumer confidence fell this month from a 2 year high to a 73.7 from 74.4 in January. The experts had expected the number to increase to a 75 reading. In that consumer spending accounts for 70% of the economy this is an unfortunate dip.

The Commerce Department reported that business inventories rose 0.4%. The trucking industry is positively impacted when sales grow as restocking increases.

The Commerce Department also reported that US Retail sales increased a half percent (0.5%) which was better than the 0.3% forecast. If one excludes car sales the real increase is 0.6%. It looks like everyone with a gift card went shopping in January.

The Department of Energy said that diesel fuel’s national average dropped 1.2 cents to $2.769 a gallon. This is the forth consecutive decline.

At Wagner we are implementing our RedPrairie systems for an existing e-commerce client who decided to abandon their legacy system in order to gain the superior functionality of Wagner’s system.

The Wagner team is also moving forward with the project plan for our new Cleveland OH distribution center.

Wagner’s transportation logistics group is working on some new interesting projects as we begin to see a change in the economy. A slow change from dealing with headwinds to a little bit of tailwind is under way.

Stay positive and have a great week!

John