My friend Jerry Hempstead has been traveling out west with his bride and yesterday emailed me something that was a cross between a travel log review and a rant.  I found it humorous, but somehow reflective of Obama administration pending policy on health care.    Read on.

"In an effort to help stimulate the economy and to keep the Mrs. happy we spent the first 10 days of July touring Mt. Rushmore, Little Big Horn, Yellowstone and Grand Teton.

The trip had been one of my wife's dreams as she is a fairly accomplished photographer and this part of the country offers opportunities for great photos. I was taken aback while here to find that our government through the contractor here has learned the art of improving yield the way the transports do.  Accessorial fees...and not small ones.

When you check into your hotel at Yellowstone, for example, they offer you the use of a card so that you can charge things to your room such as meals in the dining facility. Well if you do use the card they charge a fee. I learned my lesson after the second day when I came to find out that the fee for a dinner of $56.06 was $8.50 and the fee for using the card for a $27.40 breakfast was $4.

Now that's not the best of it. They charge a "Utility Fee" for just about everything you buy here at the National Park. An it appears the utility fee is in some instances subject to a minimum charge just like the transports do. So that breakfast for $27.40 had a $1 "utility fee" applied to it. There was also the sales tax of $1.55. Now recall that I charged this to my room and got hit with the $4 fee for doing that. To add insult to injury when I checked out they charged me tax and a another utility fee on the grand total.

When I inquired as to what this utility fee was (at all three Yellowstone hotels I stayed at) nobody could explain it. They handled me a card with some mumbo jumbo about environmental stewardship and thats why I need to "participate" in the utility fee.

The reality here is that the services in the national parks are a monopoly managed by our government for "we the people".

The hotel room prices are some of the highest I have ever paid, and I've traveled the world over in 32 years of peddling freight.  The hotel at Lake Yellowstone is in my humble opinion a dump that should be demolished and rebuilt. It is past the point of repair for historic sentimentality.  $216 a night for a small room with the wallpaper pealing and a bathroom so dirty even the bugs would not go in it.

In an effort to be good stewards the light bulbs in the room I think were 25 Watt, just enough that you would not bump into things but not bright enough to recognize who was in the room with you.

Gasoline costs $3 a gallon here because there is no competition. That's true of the overcharging for everything.  All the stores are managed by the same company that manages the hotels and the dining. All overpriced.  So here I am on independence day in our national parks - which I as a citizen am told belongs to me, and I'm being ripped off by the government that I have elected to run the place."

Somehow this makes me think the Obama health care plan will be similar.

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This has been an interesting first two days of the week.

Kings Point cranks out experienced young people with more sea time than any other Maritime academy including Annapolis.   It was my first time to KP.  What an impressive place.  With a motto of "Acta non Verba" (Action, Not Words),  The USMMA trains young people who are ready for the operational end of our industry.  

The graduating class of 2009 was composed of only about 150 graduates.  However among them were an impressive number of young women. In fact the valedictorian of the class as well as the class president were both female, one of which was matriculating with a degree in intermodal logistics.   It's not unusual to find that the senior management of shipping companies, terminal operators and related firms all have Kings Point grads at or near the top.

My cousin will go directly to a destroyer based in Yokosuka, Japan for active duty with the Navy.   Given the crazies in North Korea, I worry our young man will be in Harms Way, sooner rather than later.

Kings Point is a small school, but they usually draw important visitors.   The kids graduating Monday received commissions from the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard.  In almost every case, there was a flag or general officer present to commission the new ensigns and lieutenants.    The graduation keynote speaker was US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood.   LaHood is a career politician and Obama appointee new to his job.  As a result his comments were brief.   However, he did report that the 2010 federal budget would contain approximately 12 million dollars for KP to maintain and renovate facilities.   With that being the extent of his salient comments, I'm not sure what that means for our transportation department!

Flying back to Atlanta from New York wasn't without tribulation.   Having spent 20 minutes in a holding pattern over Greenville SC,  the rocket scientists at Air Traffic Control diverted our Delta MD-88 to Birmingham for fuel.   We sat there for an hour, before being vectored back to the ATL.   Total flight time from NY to ATL: 8 Hours.  That one made me wish our Secretary of Transportation could be aboard.  No such luck.  Guys at his level fly in private jets!

Eyefortransport 3PL Summit, Atlanta Georgia

On Tuesday,  I attended the Eyefortransport 3PL Summit here in Atlanta.  I'm on the board of the American Society of Transportation & Logistics, so I was asked if I would attend if given a free ticket.   I've attended various eyefortransport events over the years including events in Hong Kong and Amsterdam.  They are usually well attended by important folks on both the 3PL and customer sides of the fence.  Not so much this year.    Only about 145 people attended.   I suppose this is a result of the tight travel and entertainment budgets most firms have in place today.   Nobody has the extra cash to attend a business conference.    That would have been the case with me, but I live in Atlanta and the ticket was free!

On the whole the conference was valuable, with keynote speakers from Maersk Logistics (soon to be Damco), MeadWestVaco and other firms, subjects like compliance and risk management were discussed and presented.  These conferences are about people however.  It takes a quorum of industry professionals sharing their knowledge that keeps these things interesting and valuable.   In this regard I think EFT missed the mark this year.   For the most part I think that's not their fault.   In case you haven't noticed...the economy sucks.

In Obamaland All You Need Is The Willing Suspension Of Disbelief

Some people are just pathologically honest.  Check out the blog article written by my friend Mike Regan of Tranzact Technologies.   Mike calls em like he sees em.   I typically agree with his positions.  Check out his excellent article today at Logistics Managements web site.  Mike is a Chicagoan and highly familiar with the ways of our President.  Given that our SecTrans is also a Illinois career politician, some comments apply to Ray LaHood as well.

Eric

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Today,  rail operations and security teams must not only protect rail assets and the public, they must defend against unknown and unseen threats from terrorists.     After 9/11, the rail industry established industry standards for rail security and the sharing and reporting of threats.   The key mantra of that initiative was "Recognize, Record and Report". CSX has taken that industry standard and built upon it.

As a class 1 railroad, CSX operates 1000 trains a day over 21000 miles of track.   If it moves from Chicago eastward in the United States, there's a good chance its moving on a CSX train.  To protect the rail  network, CSX has developed a web based workstation application called SecureNOW.  SecureNOW stands for Secure Network Operations Workstation. 

Using SecureNOW, rail operations teams can see, in real time, the location of every train and every rail shipment on the CSX network.   Further, they can isolate hazmat shipments within the train consist to determine geographic location, shipment details, rail car type and class as well as hazmat emergency information.   

SecureNOW also uses GoogleMaps type technology to allow zoom in geographic mapping to allow operations teams to see exactly where a rail car is relative to cities, towns, shipper plants and  facilities etc.     Suppose there is a fire at a shipper rail facility.  Also suppose that there is a tank car of hazardous toluene on the rail siding.    CSX can immediately see where that car is located and report the threat to local fire and police authorities.

  The beauty of SecureNOW is that this system is designed to share information.   CSX has made it available to state and federal authorities in many states with intent to share with all agencies across its network.  For law enforcement authorities this is great technology for understanding both potential and actual risk in their communities.   The railroad has SecureNOW active in 5 states within the CSX network

Future versions of SecureNOW will allow display of information on intermodal and ocean containers.  With the TSA focused on 10+2 and other information transparency initiatives, the railroads will have to develop this capability in order to show hazardous or high risk shipments within ocean containers.  For doublestack train consists, the ocean carrier is the shipper of record as far as the railroad is concerned, but the manifest for the container and shipping information will need to be available to systems like SecureNOW in due course.

 Eric

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Coverage is based on Japanese news agency film and commentary.

The FedEx press release can be read here.

Eric

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Do you use Twitter?  This is the social networking tool that allows users to tell multiple followers exactly what they are doing at any given moment. 

Frankly I see little business use for this tool, but apparently there are some. There are also some good reasons NOT to use this tool.  A great friend of mine who is also an attorney, once told me that anything you write down in email or any form of written communication can be used as admissible evidence in a court of law.   I can only think that Twitter now puts that rule on steroids.  All electronic communications are stored somewhere for perpetuity. 

Check the link out here on what happened to an Ad agency executive who shared his personal opinions on twitter prior to a meeting with FedEx.  Good on the FedEx folks for their reaction to this event.

 Eric

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