Let The Mexicans Have Our Trucking Jobs

Because, in the end, we’ll still be at least 100,000 drivers short in the long run!

What am I talking about?

Last week, CNN ran an article that noted that the program to allow Mexican trucks on U.S. roads [is] off to a slow start, which really shouldn’t be a surprise, considering the onerous, and costly, restrictions that were placed on the pilot program.

A pilot program that is a little ridiculous when you think about it. As summarized by this recent article on MexicoTrucker.com on “NAFTA and Those Unsafe Mexican Trucks: Fact or Fiction”,

  • All Mexican drivers hold a Federal License from the Republic of Mexico, the equivalent of a U.S. CDL. The validity of this license as been recognized in a MOU between the United States and Mexican governments, and this has been upheld by the The United States Supreme Court.
  • As a result of their license, drivers must present proof of identification, residency, and a current medical certification upon request.
  • If they receive authority to operate in the US, they must comply with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety regulations. This means that they must pass a safety audit and be subject to random audits like U.S. drivers.
  • Most do short-haul drayage shipments within the 100 mile radius of the commercial border zone, where the shipments are handed off. Reporting requirements for short-haul are not substantial, and these logs are easily maintained.
  • Unlike many U.S. carriers, major Mexican carriers that wish to do cross-border trucking into the US conduct socio-economic studies and criminal background checks and only hire drivers with at least two (2) years experience.
  • There is a lot of similarity between the U.S. and Mexican regulatory schemes. Some of the similarities are highlighted in this HighBeam Industry Report on “Trucking, Except Local”
  • Mexicans are a proud people and the author of the aforementioned article is not embellishing when he says that the job of a truck driver is viewed as one of importance, responsibility, and trust as well as being a highly desirable, better-paying, job for someone with limited education or white-collar skills. I think it’s important here to point out that the U.S. is #2 in vehicles per capita, at 81% penetration, and that Mexico is #56, at 28% per capita. It’s also important to point out that, per capita, domestic freight by road is roughly 1/3 that of US, as per this study by Matt Drake et. al at Duquesne University*.

When you add all up all of the pre-assessment, assessment, registration, and certification costs associated with the pilot program, it’s a lot of effort for little reward. Especially when you consider that all of the arguments against letting Mexican drivers on US roads, which led to their restriction and this pilot program, are ludicrous when placed under scrutiny. The biggest arguments are national security, safety, and American job loss. From a security perspective, this is no different then letting Canadian truckers on the road. U.S. security legislations, including C-PTAT and 10+2, apply to anyone crossing the border, so there are no additional security concerns once the drivers have been certified. As for safety, Mexican regulations are almost as strict as U.S. and the law clearly states that Mexican drivers and trucks will not be allowed on U.S. roads unless they comply with U.S. regulations, and any carrier that wants to be on U.S. roads will happily comply. This just leaves fear of American job loss, which must be the real reason, but a close examination of the issue should demonstrate that there should be little concern on this front.

First of all, the Mexican trucking industry is near, or at capacity. Then you have the fact that Mexico, like the rest of North America, is facing a driver shortage at least as severe as the US, as per this article on the truck driver shortage. And when you consider the driver shortage in the US is going to exceed 110,000 within 2 years, as per the aforementioned HighBeam article (and a post on SI five years ago advising you to Roll On!), even assuming Mexico could add drivers to its ranks faster than the US, when you consider the relative populations, and relative trucking capacities, it is exceedingly unlikely that Mexicans could fill even 10% of the current driver shortage in the U.S.

So I say we forget the political buffoonery and the non-existent issue of American job loss, drop the pilot program, and let any driver who can meet the requirements on American roads. After all, the only thing the pilot program is doing is driving good drivers away, who have been burned by these programs in the past. The real issue is how we are going to continue to move our freight, and given the serious driver shortages across North America, we have to work together.

* The study is a little dated, but the most detailed I could find.

Canadians Beware! Harper Wants to Throw You In Jail For Clicking a Web Link!


Prescript: It seems that the USA and Mexico are also in these talks and that all North Americans are in jeopardy!

Now that you’re back from summer vacation, take note. Harper wants to throw you in jail just for clicking on a web link! If you were paying attention, back in June the Huffington Post ran an article on the trans-pacific partnership and how Canada would fall into [an] ‘Internet Trap’ under the Asia trade deal. As per this article in the Huffington Post in July, the 13th round of negotiations closed on the TPP in July, and thanks to Harper, we have now entered a new world of threats to our digital rights.

Although we don’t have access to the current, official TPP draft, a leaked agreement would give big media new powers to lock users out of their own content and services, and to shut down websites and remove content, thereby blocking users and entrepreneurs from enjoying the benefits of the open Internet. In addition, negotiators are talking about creating a dispute resolution process that would grant big media and other corporations special authority to challenge state law, regulations and court decisions in international tribunals.

But an even scarier aspect of the working draft is that it would criminalize some everyday uses of the Internet, including mash-ups (combining different media works to create a new one) and small-scale downloading of music. Under this agreement, there is no distinction between commercial and non-commercial infringement. This means that if you break a digital lock to copy a song for personal use, [you] could potentially face the same criminal sanctions as someone who copied songs to sell pirated music!
Plus, it would force service providers to collect and hand over your private data without privacy safeguards, and give media conglomerates more power to send you fines in the mail, remove online content — including entire websites — and even terminate your access to the Internet. And if you still don’t believe this is a bad thing, consider this — China, which was traditionally considered one of the most oppressive countries in the developing and developed world, is not part of the talks. In other words, the agreement is so oppressive that even China won’t touch it with a 10-foot pole!

And it’s all Harper’s fault that our rights are under threat! We weren’t supposed to be part of the TPP negotiations, and Canada was only admitted to these negotiations after the Harper government lobbied for two years to admit us. That’s right — Harper lobbied to have us admitted to a negotiation that wants to give corporations the power to be your judge, jury, and executioner on the internet. All I can say is, after you have signed the petition to Stop the Trap, that you remember this come election time!

In closing, Obama was right!

You are the biggest prick I have ever met, & I've met George Bush!

Wallmedien: A New Option for North American MultiNationals to Eke Procurement Value out of their ERP

Last week we noted that if you were stuck with an ERP, you do have options! Specifically, we noted that you could acquire a best-of-breed solution that runs on your ERP backbone to automate and enhance Procurement in ways that ERP never dreamed of (and will likely never aspire to) and extract the value that your smaller competitors, not locked into an ERP, are extracting with the big names in stand-alone best-of-breed Procurement, which, with the recent SAP acquisition of Ariba, now include relative newcomers (to this side of the Atlantic) like Coupa, iValua, and GEP (which was formerly Global eProcure and which acquired Enporion).

In addition to the traditional, known options of (CC-)Hubwoo and Capgemini’s IBX, you have a European player by the name of Wallmedien which has been around for fifteen (15) years, has over one hundred (100) customers (with dozens of big names including Johnson Controls, Continental Tire, Syngenta, Ford, Alstom, Bayer, BASF, and Alcoa), has offices on three continents, has enabled over sixty thousand (60K) suppliers globally, and, most importantly, has rolled out their solution in twenty-six (26) languages across forty-five (45) countries! In the sourcing and procurement world, this last feat is rare and somewhat astounding when you consider most of the smaller companies still haven’t hit double digits in the language metric.

Wallmedien has a powerful Procurement Automation Suite that includes all of the standard features in a new, consumer-inspired, easy-to-use cart-based UI which allows for easy catalog-based purchasing (whether it be through EDI, cXML, or a custom database), punch-out to a supplier’s online store, and services procurement as well as straight forward RFX capability which can be used with our without their private supplier network portal. Their portal is a standard web-based supplier interface that allows for easy supplier communication and document exchange. And it all runs seamlessly on top of SAP, with or without SAP SRM, and Oracle (although most of their customers are currently SAP, as that is the ERP platform they cut their teeth on).

And like BravoSolution, which is rapidly becoming a global best-of-breed leader in (e-)Sourcing, especially now that IBM has scooped up Emptoris, Wallmedien backs all this up with an extensive suite of end-to-end services that cover implementation, integration, hosting, catalog and application management, benchmarking, and, most importantly, a wide-range of consulting services including process improvement, technical backbone improvement, sourcing integration, and getting the most from your SAP (SRM) (or Oracle) ERP implementation.

And the new North American team of Wallmedien consists of the market leaders who previously brought you ground-breaking sourcing and procurement innovation at GE, TPN Register, B2EMarkets, VerticalNet, and Vinimaya … just to name a few. This company is going to become a force to be reckoned with in the global procurement space, especially since their platform works just as well if you don’t have SAP and they have pretty much been-there, done-that where all of the international (e-)procurement headaches are concerned. Keep your eye on ’em. On this side of the ocean, they’re movin’ on up.

BizSlate, an ERP for the Small to Mid-Size Distributor

If you’re a small to mid-size distributor, with revenues under 100 M who is still running on QuickBooks (or even Microsoft dynamics), BizSlate is an ERP solution that you should be looking at — right now! BizSlate is doing for small-and-midsize distributors what Compiere and Made2Manage, are doing for small-and-midsize manufacturers — bringing usable, affordable ERP with exceptional supply chain support to the masses. And even though the official release of V1 doesn’t come out until Q4, BizSlate is already approaching two dozen distributors who are already using the solution, almost a dozen of which pre-paid for it over a year ago to be part of the usability design team.

With the sheer amount of data an organization needs to keep track of these days from an e-procurement, e-sourcing, spend analysis, risk management, and compliance perspective, it’s almost impossible for an organization with more than 10 Million in revenue to do without an ERP, but given that the annual total cost of the big ERPs still end up being in the seven figure range once implementation, training, maintenance, and infrastructure are factored in, these solutions are not affordable for the average small or mid-sized business. And while there are a number of SaaS best-of-breed solutions in each of the aforementioned supply management areas (like Coupa, iValua, Iasta, BravoSolution, BIQ, SupplierSoft, Vendormate, Lavante, etc.) that will allow an organization to collect and retain all relevant data, this data still needs to get into a centralized data store for inventory, warehouse, and logistics management; accounting; and spend analysis — a central data store that should probably take the form of an ERP solution. (And we recently pointed out how best of breed on an ERP backbone provides the best of both worlds.)

But not any ERP will do if you’re a small to mid-sized distributor. It has to be lightweight (as small to mid-size organizations don’t have the needs of large multi-nationals), SaaS (as they don’t have the IT departments either), low-cost (as they also don’t have large software budgets), and come in default configurations appropriate for distributors in different verticals (apparel, food & beverage, pre-manufactured components, etc.). And while Compiere and Made2Manage do well in the manufacturing world, and for the distributors who handle manufactured components and electronics, it can require some consulting and effort to customize them for apparel and food and beverage distributors, especially for certain organizations with certain processes.

Enter BizSlate. Before they spun it off from Ezcom software, the founders of BizSlate — who were focussed on low-cost EDI solutions for retailers — noticed the lack of appropriate ERP support for the small and mid-sized retail and distribution space, and decided to do something about it. Over the past year, they have designed a new SaaS-based ERP from the ground-up that addresses the everyday accounting, inventory, catalog management, and order management / e-procurement requirements of small and mid-sized distributors through a simple web-interface that is as easy to use as most of the new SaaS enterprise e-Procurement systems on the market. And they did it with the unique needs of the retail distribution space in mind.

The importance of their focus on the retail space, and the apparel space in particular, cannot be overlooked. In this space (as in food and beverage, but to a much greater extreme), it is generally the case that each distinct instance of a product (which is often a combination of colour, size, and style) needs to be its own line item and have its own SKU. As a result, setting up a clothing line in a traditional ERP system can often require days of manual entry as a user often has to create up to 100 products just to handle one shirt (10 sizes * 5 colours * 2 styles). If an average clothing line contains six shirts, two sweaters, four pants, three jackets, etc., and four new clothing lines are being carried, it is easy to see how thousands of new product records might need to be created in a traditional ERP, making the data entry so egregious that the ERP is almost unusable. In BizSlate, an administrator can batch-create new products simply by entering all the base product information and then defining the characteristics that define different instances and the set of values for each characteristic. A user can create hundreds of combinations in a matter of minutes.

In addition, they also looked at how orders were created and came up with bulk order template functionality that allows a user to quickly generate an order form for a product group, with a line for each instance of each product in the group, and a default order quantity for each group, or product. As a result, a user can generate an initial start-of-season order in a matter of minutes as all the user will have to do is change a few order quantities.

And this focus on process support is not limited to product and order creation. They also looked at the inventory management and accounting processes and made each step as easy as they could for the average user, focussing on collecting only the information that is required and only when it is required. The entire goal of the design is to keep the user out of the system as much as possible as success in this space depends on selling and generating orders, and then optimizing the inventory levels and logistics, not on mucking around with an ERP or trying to optimize pennies when the volume doesn’t exist to achieve FTL discounts from a big carrier.

As they are only in the process of releasing V1, there are still a few week areas, such as reporting which is limited to canned reports and accounting which only supports GL integration with QuickBooks, but even the functionality in these areas supports 80% to 90% of the needs of a typical distributor in retail or a related channel. V2, slated for Q2 next year, will have a fully integrated report writer, a (punch-out enabled) shopping cart, and support for carrier integration. But from an efficiency perspective, which was their goal, they’ve hit the nail on the head. The manpower savings alone will more than pay for the solution, and the value that a company will be able to generate through even the most basic spend analysis effort after deploying the solution for a year will be substantial.

In summary, if you are a small to mid-sized distributor, with revenues under 100M, in a retail vertical, and you don’t have an ERP, BizSlate is one company that you have to check out. They’re on the right track, and once you have your data in a centralized data store, bolting on a best-of-breed e-Sourcing or Spend Analysis engine will be a breeze, and your savings will multiply. (And yes, the doctor hasn’t been this impressed with an ERP effort since the early days of Compiere.)