Today’s post, when read in isolation, may appear a personal indulgence. I feel it is necessary, however, to describe the colonial cultural & economic conditions that prevailed as critical early Australian transportation infrastructure investment decisions were being made.  By looking to motivation in specific early cases, readers may see better how the broader contemporary environment evolved.
 
The first western trading port established in the continent that was to become the Commonwealth of Australia, was Sydney.  From the earliest days of the colony, the British Red Coats (marines) set about monopolising trade, which at that moment, was primarily inbound to the port.  In order to do so, the “Red Coats” set up gun emplacements located upon the cliffs at the heads into Sydney Harbour.  These sites are today historical features that are well posted and popular attractions for visitors to a preserved and picturesque area of Sydney.
 
These same poorly-paid, yet entrepreneurial British marines, were following a customary practice in which they sought to do personal business by employing their force of arms to establish a monopoly wherever it was politically practicable throughout the British colonial world.  Back in these early days of the New South Wales colony, upon the marine’s sighting of a ship seeking to enter Sydney Harbour, they would embark a whaling boat to meet and discuss terms for the vessels entry into the harbour. 
 
In order to be given safe passage into the harbour, the terms agreed would be that the entire cargo to be landed was to be sold to the said marines.  After the cargo was subsequently sold in the Sydney market (at exorbitantly higher prices) the ships captain would be paid his earlier negotiated sum, and be free to leave Sydney Harbour, without having been disturbed by cannon fire from the marines gun emplacements at the heads.
 
And so entrepreneurial monopolistic practices derived of those backed by governmental credentials were in the ascendancy from the outset, in the land that was to later declare itself the Commonwealth of Australia.
 
Later, with a growing diversity of ports & colonial states being established on the Australian continent, the said monopolistic practices came under threat of competition from those alternate parties.  Another feature was that pioneers themselves became entrepreneurs and traders,.  Many chose to stride out and away from the government controlled ports (towards the inland) at any given opportunity.
 
It is from this point that I will introduce my father’s family history.  My grandmother’s parents were both born in Victoria in the mid 19th century.  My great-grandfather was raised on the goldfields, but when the young couple met it was at Echuca/Moama on the Murray River, which constitutes a western twin town crossing at the New South Wales (NSW) – Victoria (Vic) State border.

"Cobb and Co coaches were invaluable for the transporting of goods. An unimaginable amount of luggage was piled high on top. For anyone who has ridden pillion on these coaches  the swaying is about a foot  up and down."
Source: megalongcc.com.au 


In the 1880’s, my forebears chose to strike north into Far-Western NSW following a trade route that would ultimately see external trade from these same areas move through Victorian ports.  My great-grandparents played their part in facilitating this disruption by eeking-out a living while providing services to travellers & transporters along this route. 
 
At the time, in the 1880’s, there were two primary overland routes running north from Moama.  The route veering slightly north-east through to Cobar & Bourke was where my grandparents first gained the licence for a Hotel nearby an established sheep station and stock route crossing.  It was days of travel away from any township. 
 
Later, they were licensees of government (water) tanks for well over a decade a little further west, those that were established at twelve-mile intervals in the harshest regions along the route from Ivanhoe-to-Wilcannia on what is now the Cobb Highway.  An accompanying Ward’s Horse Exchange operation was a part of their business, this being one of the earliest entrepreneurial franchises in the country.  
 
The overland coach operations were extremely expensive to operate.  By today’s standards Cobb & Co’s passenger ticket prices were exorbitant, as were the dray carrying prices for bulk cargo.  The opportunity for this family, and many others, in providing transport services along this route was derived of the richness of the trade in world market terms. Moreover, it was aided by the fact that the parallel Darling River’s flow was inconsistent, which in turn lessened the lower cost paddle steamer’s opportunity to compete with the ground carriers.  
 
The NSW government, however, wasn’t about to let trade derived of economic activity & production on their NSW soils be diverted from NSW ports for very long.  And given the widespread proliferation and cost advantages derived of rail transportation technology, they chose to drive a rail line from Sydney-to-Bourke via the existing Dubbo line that was completed in 1885. 
 
Consequently, my grandparents chose to move across to that more westerly northern route from Moama to Wilcannia where  the provision of rail access was less economically justifiable at the time.
 
And so it was that entrepreneurial & disruptive transportation efforts provided a family its economic foothold in the NSW colony.  These same disruptive transportation services facilitated production and market based trade in their day.  Such was the state revenue leakage that it subsequently served to encourage capital investment in new more efficient rail technology for the western NSW transportation market.

Being from a small town, the very idea of hundreds of people occupying the one plane landing before me, one that had just flown from the other side of the world, was then a wonderful one in the true sense of the word.  Along those same lines, the very fact that Pan Am had called such planes their “Clippers” was both fitting and remarkable marketing.
 
I was never to get aboard one of those first series B747-100 passenger planes, but on several occasions I was in the jump seats and cabin on the full freighter 100 version. I could not afford to purchase a ticket in order to fly in such a plane until adulthood, but what I could do was to apply for a job in the international freight industry.  I could also decide to work my tail off in order to learn, and then (by way of being productive) get ahead in that industry.
 
As my career flourished in international transport, so too did the proliferation of the Boeing “jumbo” into nearly all of the major air (trunk) routes of the world.  Today, however, we are gradually seeing the B747 passenger planes being withdrawn from service.

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-11/united-s-747-retirement-plan-marks-end-for-iconic-jumbo-in-u-s
 
The above-linked announcement of United’s withdrawal is, for me, significant in that they had taken over Pan Am’s Pacific air routes upon the latter's demise.  In fact, despite all the hard work, it had taken quite some time until I was offered my first business flight across the Pacific in the early-to-mid 80’s; and so it proved that I was to be flown by United on an ex-Pan Am long-range B747-SP.  While the United attendants and cabin crew, might have been described as more than a little tired at the time, this plane’s performance envelope was still one to catch the imagination.  The most significant thing about the shortened SP version of the B747 was that it had sufficient range to overfly Hawaii, and it allowed direct flight from Sydney to Los Angeles.   
 
Flying a regular B747-200, or DC10, at that time (as I was to do more regularly) meant landing at an ungodly hour in the morning in Honolulu, recovering your luggage, waiting interminably until US Customs opened, and then confronting the said Customs officers before they had absorbed their first coffee of the morning.  After many tortuous hours, you gained the "privilege" to recheck your luggage, and depart for the next intermediate US airport, where you would often have to again immediately transfer to a beyond location on a fully US domestic flight.  Hence getting a B747-SP flight (see video in the end of this post), and being able to access a 75% agent discounted ticket from United, was a godsend!

I would go on to take several flights on the B747-SP, and even though I never got to fly to South Africa on one of the QANTAS planes of this model, I did once have an interesting flight into Sydney on Mandarin Airlines where the ex-Taiwanese air force pilot threw the shortened high performance version of the jumbo around like a sports car, as he tried to wipe off speed and extend time after having approached Sydney too quickly for air traffic control’s liking.
 
Before leaving the 200 series jumbo, I need to mention two very significant points.  The first is that the 200 became the base load carrying aircraft for most long haul international routes where its range was often appropriate to the market.  Without it my industry would not have grown the way it did, and my opportunities may well have been far more limited.  The B747-200 was better for the cargo industry than later series planes principally because the shorter flight ranges available to passengers correlated with near-maximised cargo loads in most instances.  In practice they were also to prove far less affected (in respect of cargo load-ability) than later B747 series by winds and full passenger/baggage loads on most of their scheduled sectors. 
 
The other B747-200 series aircraft that was particularly important for the Australian market (for QANTAS who operated it, and for my career) was the B747-200 Combi.  This aircraft’s main passenger deck was shortened, with the aft of the plane being occupied by freight that was loaded through a rear main-deck cargo door.  The difference between able to load cargo with heights around 1.6me under-deck in the cargo holds, with that of over 2me on a main cargo deck of a B747 was profound.
 
The particular significance of the said B747-200 Combi aircraft for my employer at the time was the enabling of the carriage by air of tall mainframe computers, which was for us and many others, a key 1980’s market.   At the time, the economics of running full freighter airliners, for those airlines operating on the Pacific runs in particular, would not have allowed them to serve the computer market as effectively as when the Combis were in service.  
 
Alas, the downfall of the 200 series Combi was to be correlated with the firewall issues that were punctuated on 28 November 1987; when a South African Airlines 747- 200 Combi was lost over the Indian Ocean.  While the Dutch and others flew some in later jumbo series, the Combi was never to be widely considered as effective in service again. 
 
It was, however, to be the last of the “classic” jumbo’s, the B747-300, that was to prove to be my favourite of the overall series.   Whether it was flying as a passenger with JAL across the Pacific, or with QANTAS on the Tokyo route, this aircraft just felt right for me on a seat-of-the-pants basis.
 
As for the B747-400, marking it as a "non-classic" of the series is appropriate as I see it.  Upon launch as a passenger plane it failed its cargo load-ability test at anywhere near range at its maximum takeoff weight.  It’s range performance simply didn’t meet Boeing’s sales pitch bought by the airlines that operated them.

When Boeing offered and delivered the extended range version of the B747-400 to QANTAS, their passenger management commercial decision was to consume the critical extra maximum take-off weight gained by immediately installing heavier on-board entertainment systems which, in turn, meant that direct flights to & from ports like Chicago and Dallas and the Australian East Coast became very marginal propositions for BOTH cargo and passengers.  And yet, still we found cargo was sometimes pushed back by the pilots for US West Coast departing flights given adverse winds and high passenger loads. 

The full cargo (or freighter version) of the B747-400 was ok, but it didn’t bring a lot extra to the table other than increased reliability & better fuel burn after they displaced the old-banger 100 and 200 series freighters that had been operating well past their used-by dates (to the point of the doors falling off!).  Over the following decade it would be proved that the B747-400F's ultimately didn't pay their way.
 
The more recent B747-8F freighter has achieved a very limited number of orders and is to be the last of the jumbo series (if you exclude the troubled US Presidential plane project). As with the B747-400F, the lesser viability of new delivered freighters in the contemporary era is down to the proliferation of belly cargo space in the fast growing wide-body passenger aircraft market.   In the latter case, if the cargo revenues derived from marketing from this passenger belly space do more than pay for the fuel, marketing/admin, and terminal costs, then they are contributing marginal returns to the overall airline operation.
 
Just as high value cargoes like mainframe computers have shrunk in physical size (and crucially in height), so too have many other tech devices. This means that demand for main deck cargo has ebbed in parallel with the new orders for the jumbo.
​
Perhaps the demise of the jumbo is fitting for the era, and perhaps too, new inspiration and concepts appropriate for a new era are overdue.

​

Upon gaining a certain number of relevant experiences in their industry sector, many aspiring young managers become better tuned to observing and listening to the personal experiences of others in their marketplace. 
 
Most old industry hands contend that such tuning is also required in respect of the higher skill of absorbing learning from the same experiences and observation.   Just to have been in a lecture, or have experienced an event, doesn’t necessarily mean that one has successfully or fulsomely absorbed the information imparted.  
 
You will hear many say, in an around about way, that gaining actual experience in the field should always come before attempting to fully absorb theoretical learning (or cut & pastes).   If you are properly educated, many contend that you should enter the workplace ready to learn – rather than consider yourself learned – and you must be ready to either re-learn, or reabsorb in a different light, what you have learned before.      
 
And speaking of “experience” here, we don’t mean that gained by doing menial process work in a militaristic or Taylorist fashion.  We mean having been included at some level in a responsibility chain, in respect of the conduct of an aligned business.  And more importantly, one usually must have personally sufficiently “bought in” to the situation (have felt they had something at stake), even if it is a collective organisational, or industry experience, that is being observed at close-hand.
 
It seems to us also, that the whole idea put forward by those that apply the prevalent American liberal management theory “that one might fail their way to the top of an industry” – has rather less to do with learning about risk, and absorbing experience – and rather more to do with creating a tidal wave of personal obligations directed solely to your superiors - and hence may be limiting in respect of your field of vision of the experience of others.
 

And so, when we gained the impression, that in seeking to build a large, broadly based, and accumulative-growth oriented merchandise transport & logistics business, that one might seek to avoid serving sectors like the soft furnishing market; or the low-value perishables sectors, among others; the same was derived rather more from peripheral experiences - where one was able to observe, and absorb - from the learning experiences of others, rather than having to fail our way through them personally.
 


So too, if one seeks to process “factoids” that might otherwise may be quickly grabbed from this blog, we would encourage our readers to look closely at any qualifying statements we make in respect of solutions we have analysed. If we were to have contended that a strategy, or concept, is usually not appropriate – we certainly do not mean that it is never appropriate.  In fact, for a logistician, often when you find such an exception - it can be gold. 

In respect of our personal learning experiences concerning risk and sustainability paradigms, an early lesson came to me while handling sandwich-styled tanning (solarium) beds sold to buyers from well-off households, and trendy tanning salons.  Another was from handling an organic cosmetic (that consisted of nothing  other than a particular type of dirt having been ground, scooped into a container, and subsequently shipped). 
 
There would have been no lesson, in the above-mentioned instances, if the air freight volumes we handled had not soared, and the proprietors had not soon after gone into liquidation.   Most noteworthy for me, in that experience, was perceiving the amplified risk in dealing with those over-leveraged into a market set to mature quickly, where moreover, the proprietors were also running a very narrow range of product lines.
 
In both cases cited above, I also quickly came to realise that the airlines involved, those whose revenues constituted the majority of the whole in the billed transportation services, had been fully compensated - and that we (their channel distribution partner) were left with the bad debts that unwound most – if not all, or more - of the profits earned over the duration of handling the business.   This was to become one of those early fundamental lessons in my career, in respect of the reality of the underlying distribution model of the forwarder-carrier industry.
 
And, while decades of experience might otherwise recommend avoiding handling the business of those reliant on receiving government subsidies and bailouts, it was another of my early observations that provided a significant lesson to me in respect of exceptions and opportunism. 
 
My employer at the time was Burlington Northern – and in the early 1980’s the CEO of the forwarding division bought into a bailout deal that saved Chrysler at the time.  It was then a big deal as viewed by our fellows in a lightly capitalised industry – but it was also a marketing hit that leveraged Chrysler CEO Lee-Iacocca’s presence.  This deal was also given extra impetus with the onset of the Reagan "can-do" signature presidency.  Every employee of my then employer (even a soul as lowly positioned as I was then) felt a part of that bailout; & I clearly recall subsequently buying & intently reading the book “Iacocca”.   
 
BN was to get their Chrysler money back at that time, and they gained a larger share of the business.  Further, many a BN introductory sales pitch started with the line “let me explain to you what sort of company we are….”   The creation of an association with a plucky well-promoted fighter, that ran a big brand company with their backs to the wall, might have been an acceptable risk – and Warren Buffet would certainly say so - if he thought government could be forced to have his back in such circumstances.
 
A simple story what?   Well, maybe a little less clearly so, if you were to pan forward to 2009:

“Iacocca losing pension, car, in Chrysler bankruptcy”

https://web.archive.org/web/20090612074530/http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090529/bs_nm/us_chrysler_iacocca

Besides the derisory view of the practice known as “channel stuffing”, there are many other commercial practices that create “lumpy” inventory challenges for logistics and transport professionals.

We already touched upon this matter of “lumpiness” in respect of gramophone records (the production run / peak demand issues).  However, we can also extract a little more from the new agricultural machinery market scenario in this respect.

It may be self-evident to many, but we were once surprised ourselves to discover just how inflexible complex equipment manufacturers in the agricultural sector professed that it was necessary to be, in respect of their directly translating their long-range forecasts into actual shipping order volumes.

Even so, for a global agricultural manufacturer, if demand was down in one market and had risen in another, we were informed that they were likely to be able to recast their order book if common equipment was being manufactured. They may even have been able to tweak orders and specifications before hard milestones / deadlines during the manufacturing process.  But the reality, as we saw it in the agricultural equipment market, was often that the long-range forecast order quantity of units usually actually shipped years later, in spite of severe market demand rise & fall in the intervening period.

A more regularly encountered instance of induced shipping order lumpiness, one  that bemuses transport people the world over, is the end-of-month, end-of-quarter, or end-of-financial year shipping push ritual.  Be it driven by an enterprise’s regular accounting / budget / earning / reporting practices, or the sales commission incentives put in behind them; or even by multinationals that play pass-the-parcel (of unsold inventory to related / inter-company parties at tax appropriate prices); the facts on the ground are that these periodic shipping pushes-and-pulls have long created extreme lumpiness in logistics and transportation channels.

How we have best responded to all these cited examples of lumpiness in the past is naturally our best leaping-off-point for the design of solutions, when similar lumpy features arise in the on-line commerce age.

And when we say that specific innovative logistical solutions should be crafted from a wide base of understanding, perhaps the Latin may help annotate the proposition:  nanos gigantum humeris insidentes (we are but dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants).




From this point onward, however, we should start talking about the shaping of logistical solutions.  The long introduction has already seen some asking us to cut-to-the-chase.  Perhaps this reflects a situation where, for many, solutions are simply things that you cut-and-paste; and in their mind that’s the smart thing to do?

One of the saviors for enterprises that have adopted cut-and-paste logistical solutions for their on-line consumer markets (in the tech sector in particular) in recent times, has been the continual shrinkage during the period of the unit sizes of the items they have been shipping.  Navigating capacity issues arising with existing transport and logistics channel capacity, even as their shipped unit volumes grew exponentially, was perhaps made a little easier.  Still, looking at the e-tailers actual bottom line results, it might hint at the depth of logistical under-performance elsewhere.

Several recent pointers, however, (like computer tablets morphing back into laptops, or smart phones growing-in-size) probably indicate that we are reaching the limits of gaining systemic logistical capacity as a result of the said unit volume shrinkage trend in the sector as-a-whole.  Moreover, bulky deliveries also appear to now be a new frontier in the B2B and home delivery markets that will make their mark, as discussed here:

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-25/why-fedex-has-a-delivery-headache-from-trampoline-you-got-online

In the transport sector, this is a turn of events (in respect of individual shipment size growth) that transgresses the haulage capacity issue.   Starting from the point of a decade or so ago, when most deliveries entailed a delivery vehicle operated by one man making a delivery to a commercial delivery dock, with available lifting equipment, and being easy offload; to the new scenario - where consumer goods deliveries often require two men, timed arrival appointments, with the need of an on-hand receiver with security access, and perhaps the need of difficult furniture removal styled set-down, and even tech-courier styled equipment assembly or installation, and removal of packaging may also be contemplated.

Even given the prospect of further advances with roll-up LCD panels and knock-down furniture/appliances, we see an altered & more fragmented landscape of logistical features entering into the mainstream discretionary on-line consumer market.

In some ways, however, those operators in the “Third Party Logistics” warehousing and distribution sector will be quietly pleased at this latest turn of events, as the on-line consumer marketer’s physical stock size profile is seen to grow.  This isn’t surprising, given that the most commonly heard lament in the 3PL sector in past decades concerned mid-contract physical volume shrinkage, and the consequent offloading of liabilities (like under-utilised warehouse leases and excess staff) onto 3PL contracted vendors.

The 3PL industry sector has generally performed woefully in financial terms in the same three decades that the industry itself grew remarkably.  3PLs continued to grow in spite of poor yields because large transport conglomerates kept chasing top line revenue growth opportunities arising fro their customers' outsourcing & integrated logistical-transport enterprise strategy by making acquisitions/investments despite the past financial performance of the 3PL's.  Even so, many 3PLs have folded along the way.

Another common lament heard from 3PL vendors during the period, was that customers that had shifted their focus from the delivery of physical goods to services were demanding unit pricing while increasingly under-delivering on the unit volumes promised. This trend could continue as existing tech conglomerates seek to cross over into the media sector. 

The maintenance of satisfactory KPI levels in the 3PL sector often also required out-of-scope IT infrastructure enhancements & investments.  These investments are fundamental when seeking to improve logistical solutions and adapt to new channel realities as they emerge.  Customers issuing 3PL tenders usually take no account of the need to fund such post contract initiatives & are seldom given the budget to fund cooperative projects;  and hence it is unsurprising when  3PL's are not prepared to research, fund, develop, & assume the risks of IT projects if the payback on their side is limited.    If this scenario unfolds, an enterprise has locked-in degrading levels of performance, and the identified issues might only be resolved when the next 3PL contract tender is released.     

As a result of the above, contracts often fail to deliver either the revenue or yield required to satisfy 3PL vendors’ budgetary expectations.   Fights over contract specification have been legend in the sector, and even though there is inherent risk to an enterprise of a collapsing supply chain, as a result of a failed 3PL contract; the 3PL vendor often came out the worse-for-wear.

Another thing about transportation facing trends is that one-thing-often-rolls-over-another which in turn underwrites disruptive potential.  The sources for the potential disruption, in contemporary times, as I see them are:

1. The growth of personal consumer goods deliveries to homes or CBD front-of-office by both on-line and bricks-and-mortar based retailers
   
2. An expectation that the existing lumpiness created during holiday seasons by on-line orders, & the consumer’s delivery expectations, will continue to grow
3. The need for new home delivery distribution arrangements (like pick-up centres / locked boxes located in parking lots, or nearby public transport hubs)
4. An increase in the frequency of deliveries received by on-line B2B purchasers
5. Reconfigured delivery driver or staff skills, with more part-time /  occasional / out-of-hours workers
6. Less delivery vehicle efficiency in overall logistical terms

We might also say that we foresee a kitting up at the delivery-face for a prospective increase in the number, and diversity, of delivery channel options made available by the on-line commerce sector.  Some of this will be based upon the consumer’s circumstances & demands, some of it upon the time-of-year, and more again derived of the changed physical characteristics of the goods being delivered. 

However, we are only speaking here about responding to emerging consumer & B2B demand scenarios for final delivery.  As we progress through the series, and remaining mindful of the same scenarios mentioned above, we will head further back towards source to examine solution possibilities for the outbound logistics task.

As we see it, one of the most unfortunate aspects of logistical developments in the past three decades is the virtual take-over of the large-scaled enterprise tactical planning space in logistics by those whose panorama is confined to what they believe to be the capability limits of their existing system structure & architecture.

The problems associated with the rise of logistical process gatekeepers within enterprises, especially those that are system cadres, or devotees, are often compounded by these same people's lack of experience in the wider logistical world.  Many in the logistics space now appear to have evolved their way to the top of logistics organisations, on the back of credentials which are underwritten by various accreditations & certifications.  There is often a rightful emphasis placed upon the merits of a given adaptable philosophy in respect of logistics & enterprise planning, but in translation the output has often become process dogma.  This would be an unhealthy state of affairs for any enterprise over time, and it is especially so today as we confront new market realities. 

When logistics professionals become captivated by the merits & soundness of their existing process it is sure to inhibit their employer's enterprise when it is required to respond to emerging events that require a significant structural shift.  This scenario becomes especially burdensome for enterprises when their imperative requires more adaptable logistical architecture, that which might respond faster to the more cantankerous consumer demand scenario we see unfolding today.  Doing as well as the guy down the road, or any other user of their enterprise software provider, may not cut it at the enterprise viability level when large swathes of the consumer merchant-supply chain business model is threatened by disruption (or failed efforts at achieving disruption). 

To illustrate our message, and talking about one of those cantankerous cases that we have observed elsewhere, we will initially cite here the example provided by the US’s Afghanistan War “bump-out” logistics planning team's last-minute recruiting efforts.  This team were seeking supplementary human resources, and their executive appeared to be looking beyond a process-cadre style of human asset.  And our point is that their HR sourcing team had very good reason to be looking beyond those captivated by existing logistical planning architecture.  It is this style of circumstantially driven, & enterprise-specific, case that we wish to start exploring today. 

In the cited case, the US military at that time had very likely already done the sums, based upon all the existing logistical processes they had available to them in seeking to complete their Afghanistan “bump out”.  Perhaps they didn’t like what they were seeing?  There had been a gradual build-up of assets in Afghanistan over many years, the inbound logistics costs had already been enormous (plainly ridiculous in commercial equivalent terms) & the fast exit was mandated.  The "bump-out" would be a very different & far more challenging beast.

www.economist.com/news/asia/21576720-logisticians-face-practical-and-geopolitical-mess-relish-big-retrograde 

The soundest logistical advice the military hierarchy would have received from any free thinker would likely have entailed the planning team manager making a request for their political masters’ to seek to improve their working relationships sufficiently (within the near-term time constraint mandated by the force withdrawal) with those nearby states that would have afforded the logistics team access to the optimal logistical corridors & transit opportunities.   However, the eventual outcomes reflected a scenario where the politicians were only able to respond within time at the margins (over-flights etc). 

These Afghanistan “bump out” logisticians were always facing an uphill task, one where options narrowed as the political opportunists started making their next plays - before extracting themselves from their ill-fated last one.  That had immediate consequences at significant logistical pressure points & imposed new constraints.   The US military did, however, apparently source a few more capable logistical minds; and they then set about reducing the task by wrecking, & dumping, & redirecting assets.

The result was that the US military generally muddled their way out - while testing the Russian’s patience to the limit; and apparently taking it past the said patience limits of their central Asian “partners”.

But we pause here, and reset, because we were supposed to be talking about something derived of my experience. Having been part of the team handling the Sydney Olympics’ official broadcaster NBC’s "bump-out" air charters & shipping, did however, see us appreciating the Afghanistan "bump out" effort as it unfolded.  Although this latter task was far smaller, here too there had been a long build up of inbound infrastructure (1 year in this case), and all but the inessential needed almost immediate repatriation (to cover the next big world media event/s in Europe & the Americas).  And it wasn't down to fortune that we did far better than muddle our way through, we executed using a bespoke process.

We could also have chosen to further illustrate our case by going down the oil & energy services route here, to draw upon specific tactical logistics experience, and that enterprise has certain synergies with military logistics.  Instead, I have chosen today to talk about 1980’s and 90's vinyl gramophone record imports.

https://vanessaberryworld.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/sydney-record-stores-of-the-past/ 

Why should a case based upon a gramophone record market resonate better than that of oil & energy services, given the latter's just-in-time movement to far flung drilling sites of down-hole nukes & mud?

Well oil & energy services companies are able to selectively plan their inventory's levels & geo-locations.  They have established lead times for all their customers & geographies.  In my experience, these enterprises planned & carried inventory at certain locations that provided a patterned contracted level of response & support to their customers.  Under this operating basis, the oil & energy services providers then looked to engage the best available transport professionals to meet or improve on delivery outcomes; or more usually to save them in the case that supply shortages or breakages meant drawing on inventory from further away than anticipated.

There wasn’t, however, much of a chance of another oil or energy services competitor turning up in the meantime at their customer's drilling site & making a sale with a similar piece of inventory, one that could substitute, given the nature of the turnkey-styled contracts prevalent in that industry.

The import gramophone record market, however, was essentially - in its time - more dynamic from the logistical point of view. This stemmed from the dynamism of the import vinyl record pop music market.  The on-line B2B and retail world of today has certain synergies with that vinyl record market in respect of the international sourcing model, and it is this facet that we wish to explore.

The music market of the cited days was a discretionary consumer purchase based one.  In such a case, where non-availability or non-delivery was encountered, a buyer was likely to source elsewhere, or buy something else entirely.  An import record shop’s loss of a customer at that time can therefore be an exemplar of an on-line buying platform’s discretionary purchase & repeat business loss today. 

If you take today's on-line consumer scenario in the approach to the Xmas peak, the consumer is likely, despite loyalty programmes etc, to buy from one of a diverse array of platforms - or a bricks and mortar competitor - based upon the expectation of a delivery being fulfilled, irrespective of allegiances.  Similarly, the B2B platform buyer, one who has an array of on-line vendor choices, will more often buy-to-stock dynamically, with a weather eye on opportunistic pricing and being more immediate in their reaction to the latest stock-turn rates, than was possible previously.   

Back-in-the day, however, an import record shop's game plan was more specifically adapted to its limited market.  The owners would be trying to beat the local labels to the street with trending music, or supplying a niche market that local vinyl record production-run economics could not support.  Like the mainstream market, however, popular demand for a given recently-released record usually waned quickly.  Stock that could not be moved brought the undoing of many of these import record merchandisers.  The wider industry environment at that time was also full of traps.  It was replete with boondoggle mandates, but this is another story, and it is better left unexplored here.

Given the recent resurrection of vinyl record sales internationally, it is interesting to note that some of the old production run & distribution issues have resurfaced in the mainstream media:

www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/business/media/a-vinyl-lp-frenzy-brings-record-pressing-machines-back-to-life.html

The matter of interest for us here, however, is that the single most important concern for the import record shop proprietor back-in-the-day was the necessity of not being beaten for stock arrival by their competitor.

In the said times, it was a non on-line environment where orders were taken at origin in New York and London by phone or telex on a Thursday; product was shipped on a Friday, yet it was expected to be on shelf by the following Wednesday.  The Australian import customs clearance process was also at that time uneven, & it took 48 hours or more (juxtaposed with today where most commercial import shipments are cleared within minutes).

An interesting side-factor was the back-chat channel between the various import record shops (bred of the incestuous nature of the general industry-wide environment) about what they had ordered, what had shipped, who got theirs, and when. 

This chat-loop fed back to the suppliers at source who were often pressured to act “fairly”, and to the transport carriers whose performance was judged on the basis that a pass was on-time, a service irregularity was when you delivered late – but you had also delivered their competitor’s products late, and a fail was when their product was not delivered on-time - but their competitors had been.

Another continuously evident aspect of this trade was that there was always an individual gramophone record of which the import record shops did not have anywhere near enough stock-in-hand on any given day.  This red-hot stock-keeping unit (SKU) issue, where product runs - rather than walks - out the door during demand spikes, and where supply chain options & corridor widths are assumed to be limited, is one we will return to.

To close today's case however, in the import record market we have described, the transport provider choice made by the owners of most of these record shops was to select only one or the other international freight forwarding company, from a field of hundreds.  Many also employed the same import customs broker.  Those select transport services vendors were said to be those that understood their business. 

Funny that.