Infrastructure's Global Importance

The ability of U.S. companies to compete overseas is linked to adequate funding for transportation infrastructure in the U.S., a senior logistics executive says.

Unless the U.S. spends enough to maintain and expand its transportation infrastructure — roads, highways, rails, airports and seaports — U.S. companies will have an increasingly tough time managing international supply chains, said Jim Butts, senior vice president at C.H. Robinson Worldwide.

Poor infrastructure leads to higher transportation costs, and that impedes shippers ability to move through domestic and international channels.

“Shippers want to be able to reduce costs,” Butts said in an interview at a recent conference on infrastructure’s impact on global competitiveness for U.S. business. “It’s not just a fact of the current economic conditions, it’s a concern they have about being globally competitive.”

Butts was one of dozens of industry executives at the Washington conference, hosted by the Department of Commerce and Department of Transportation. The May 11 conference kicked off discussion in Washington about highway and infrastructure funding and the upcoming surface transportation spending bill.

The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., expects to introduce a bill next month that may include as much as $450 billion in transportation spending.

Butt’s brought a logistics industry perspective to the gathering. His company, C.H. Robinson Worldwide, is one of the largest third-party logistics companies in North America, working with 32,000 shippers and 50,000 carriers.

He hailed other speakers calls to bring a more “holistic” multimodal approach to bear on transportation issues and on funding as well. “We’re going to have to be very innovative and creative,” he said.

We need to find a way to develop a framework that is more strategic … involving multiple modes, the voices of shippers and carriers, involving rails and airlines, all of which have an impact on the availability of capacity.”

“The general economic slowdown is making people look at things differently,” he said. “You’ve got a call for action, almost a mandate, to try new things. It is a unique opportunity.

“It’s a great time to start addressing some of these issues as an industry. After all, we’re all in this together.”