2017 PARCEL FORUM WRAP UP By Amanda Armendariz
A huge congratulations to our Game Changer of the Year award winners, Gap Inc.! It was an honor to have Kevin Releford, Senior Director of Logistics at Gap, at our conference to accept the award, especially after we had visited their campus the day before and saw first-hand how they were optimizing their logistics processes. Look for a full profile on this company and their success in the January/February issue of PARCEL!
Game Changer Award winner Kevin Releford (right) poses with Joel Dunkel, President, EventEvolution Management.
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he 2017 PARCEL Forum in Nashville, Tennessee, was indeed “music to shippers’ ears,” as our theme suggests. The education, networking, and professional growth that occurred over these three days was gratifying to see. Logistics professionals from all different sectors converged upon the Gaylord Opryland to discuss the pressing problems they were facing in their respective operations, whether it was how to more successfully negotiate carrier contracts or understand how packaging optimization can affect multi-
ple levels of their supply chains. One of the most common discussions overheard as I wandered the exhibit hall floors and the hallways of the conference area was the recent announcement of the FedEx 2018 general rate increase (GRI), which was released to the public late in the evening of the first day. By the time most people were up Tuesday morning, PARCEL had released a breaking news alert to our readers, and the potential impacts of these rate increases were being discussed for the rest of the day. (I often felt as if I was experiencing déjà vu, as this same scenario happened
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last year!) Many speculated UPS was going to follow suit, although of course UPS’s GRI was not released until much after the Forum. Still, it was interesting to hear the conjectures about what the UPS GRI would look like and how closely it would mirror FedEx’s. Now, many of our attendees are transportation professionals, so it’s no surprise that the GRI, carrier contracts, and the like were pervasive topics of discussion. However, I would be remiss if I gave the impression that those were the only types of discussions happening at the Forum. I was privileged to sit in