E-commerce giant Amazon handled the warehousing, packing and shipping of 1 billion items last year for merchants that are part of its fulfillment program.
A lean operation with a brilliant idea - caffeinated club soda - wants to crack the L.A. market during the spring. Sounds like a slam dunk, but they don't want to commit to a long warehouse lease while they're still getting a foothold. Meanwhile, a Christmas-decoration warehouse sits largely empty. It's a classic missed connection - and it’s common.
How can a $1.3tr industry, getting bigger every year, be hidden in plain sight? Easy. The vast U.S. logistics business, which delivers 48 million tons of freight (worth about $48bn) daily and already employs roughly 6 million people, operates mostly behind the scenes.
Boeing and its investors likely couldn't be happier with the first quarter 2014 earnings report: revenue rose 8 percent over the year-ago quarter, operating margins widened, and 2014 guidance got boost. The U.S. aerospace company ramped up deliveries for its 787 and 737 models to keep pace with demand, which in turn increased cash flow beyond analyst expectations. And a $374bn backlog of more than 5,100 aircraft guarantees that even if Boeing stopped booking new orders today it would take nearly a decade to deliver all the planes on order. But things don't appear quite so rosy in Boeing's Defense, Space & Security division.
The most recent earnings for Dollar General and Dollar Tree were healthier than rival Family Dollar's, but each one missed Wall Street's estimates as the economy has begun to improve.
Add Spartanburg, S.C., to the list of manufacturing hotspots. That's where BMW AG last week announced it will invest $1bn to build the equivalent of a new factory to its already formidable U.S. production site. Following the expansion, BMW's U.S. complex will become the automaker's biggest, larger than any it operates in Germany, its home.
Conventional wisdom suggests that the latest attempt to revive Volvo as an automotive brand faces very long odds. Under the umbrella of its corporate parent Geely, the Chinese automaker, Volvo's 450,000 annual sales aren't self-sustaining.
Huawei, the Chinese telecom equipment maker that has been blocked from the U.S. market because of concerns about its alleged ties to China's government, is now pushing for global cybersecurity standards.
In the developed world, electricity is cheap and as available as the nearest outlet. But in off-the-grid Africa, energy poverty is endemic. With national grid expansion lagging well behind growth in demand, increasingly Africans are looking not to centralized, fossil fuel-based solutions, but to the sun.
