Rolling into 2024

Past as Prologue

We end 2023 with a look back at how we bridged the past year and, natch, with an eye toward 2024.

We started the year with statistics. As the Department of Transportation’s Guide to Transportation highlighted, between 2010 and 2020:

• We added nearly 14,000 bridges, 14 new Amtrak stations, and 16 heavy rail stations.
• We added nearly 28,000 trucks to our roads and fleets.
• The condition of our paved highways improved slightly, from 60% to 63% now in “good” condition.
• The value of shipments via truck is projected to go from $13 trillion in 2020 to 26 trillion in 2050.

Some of those statistics don’t include the construction and improvement benefits of the Infrastructure Bill, passed by Congress and signed into law in 2021. Net results are designed to include more bridges and more paved highway improvement and other such things implemented by federal, state, and local programs to increase capacity and sustainability.

We also looked at the states of supply chains. Our VP Cori Eckley often says, “They call it a supply chain for a reason.” She and Team NATCO know the House That Jack Built scenario very well.

One truck stuck in traffic can affect a number of people and operations. Example: The off-loading service learns of a delay and has to rework the schedule. The driver needs to reconfigure his or her next pickup. And everybody might be late for dinner.

The major responsibilities of third-party logistics are coordination, communication, and delivery. NATCO’s three-plus decades managing freight movement have given us the perspective to anticipate scenarios and determine how to best get your load from Point A to Point B.

We’re always mindful that first definition of “best” is safety for our drivers and their freight.

And with that, we close our 2023 with a huge shout-out to our drivers. They deal with roads and egos, electronic logging devices and back pain, the long hours and the grumpy short-order cook. And still: they keep delivering, time and time again.

To our drivers, our customers, and our associates, we wish you a peaceful, happy, healthy new year.