Crowley Sees $2.3 Billion Military Contract as Test of Logistics Capabilities

More than a year after winning a contract to handle freight shipments for the U.S. Transportation Command, Crowley Logistics has executed the first cargo affect under a $ 2.3 billion multiyear Defense Freight Transportation Services contract. The lode, which was transported by hand truck from the U.S. Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania on Feb. 12, represents a bold motion by Jacksonville, Fla.-based Crowley Maritime Corp. to expand beyond its roots as an ocean transport firm and establish itself as a major inland transportation system services provider.

Weist “ Crowley is looked at as a maritime servicing supplier, ” said Bob Weist, frailty president of transportation for North America. “ But we have a large logistics wing. We thought this was actually a good suit because the services required — less-than-truckload, truckload and air-ship — we provide that to commercial customers every day. ” The biennial DFTS compress — which is followed by five option years — gives Crowley control condition over cargo moving by truck to and from 41 military depots in the continental United States, plus Alaska and Canada. It ’ sulfur besides a “ different ” type of contract, Weist said. rather of receiving a deputation on each dispatch, Crowley is paid based on a fix price agreement covering all lanes of traffic for each contract year. The arrangement protects the Department of Defense against monetary value increases and gives Crowley an incentive to keep costs down. “ We will be looking for improvements, ” said Shiju Zacharia, Crowley ’ s senior film director of transportation and the official creditworthy for executing the DFTS contract. “ We will do that by instituting best practices and using more efficient modes and methods, such as converting publicize shipments to establish or creating multi-stop truckload routes and taking advantage of optimization engineering. ” Zacharia Weist said the company has about 400 carriers presently contracted to haul freight under the DFTS shrink and is actively soliciting capacity from small and veteran-owned truck companies.

Crowley was awarded the contract in November 2016, but implementation was held up by protests from the previous compress provider, XPO Logistics Government Services, which argued that Crowley lacked the experience to handle such a big contract. XPO inherited the business as contribution of its 2015 learning of Con-way Inc. The original contract, known as the Defense Transportation Coordination Initiative, was awarded to Con-way subsidiary company Menlo Worldwide in 2007 and was ascribable to end in April 2015, but was extended after Genco Infrastructure Solutions by chance withdrew its winning bid. Genco is now contribution of FedEx Corp. Although XPO ’ s challenge was initially uphold by the Government Accountability Office, a court rule in June 2017 cleared the way for U.S. Transcom to award the clientele to Crowley. Crowley is a 126-year-old company that chiefly provides ocean ship, vessel design and marine salvage, along with liquefy lifelike gas transportation system and fuel sales. The ship’s company is privately owned and does not break out tax income for any of its business units. Logistics services are thought to represent less than 10 % of the company ’ s $ 2 billion in annual gross, based on estimates from logistics research firm Armstrong & Associates Inc. Crowley officials say they are enthusiastic about the DFTS compress and are up to the job ahead. “ This initial DFTS motion is a climax of years of careful and strategic cooking combined with a lot of diligent knead on the separate of our logistics team and technology partner, 3Gtms, ” Chairman and CEO Tom Crowley said. “ We are pleased to get afoot. ” Crowley Logistics Crowley is partnering with Tranztec Solutions Inc. to provide lode tender, dispatch track, arrival and passing comment and proof of pitch capture services for carriers, and unified carrier and customer-facing management portals to aid in decision-making, transportation execution and follow-up report. It is using Amazon Web Services to handle data repositing needs.

To handle the newfangled contract, a Crowley spokesman said the company added 70 jobs to its corporate headquarters in Jacksonville. “ We have put together a team of experts, including retire military, fare and engineering leaders, ” Weist said. In addition to Zacharia, the party recently promoted Kara Bryant to conductor of intermodal services and Greg Durr to conductor of department of transportation to bolster its logistics capabilities .