Hurricanes surprise very few people. In most cases, landfall (timeframe and location) and severity are known hours – if not days – in advance, but they consistently create logistical logjams for inbound and outbound freight.
“Because freight flows in a pretty consistent and general direction, when you have these natural disasters it disrupts the freight flows that are in place. What happens is you’re going to have a lot of inbound freight to those natural disaster areas – or those FEMA embargoed areas or those FEMA hotspot areas – and those inbound materials that are going in there, they’re going to be the commodities needed to service the disaster – the water, the ice, the food, the lumber,” said Mark Derks, chief marketing officer for 3PL BlueGrace Logistics, “but what people also don’t understand is the freight that was flowing out of those areas still needs to flow out. The freight out of those natural disaster areas is also part of the demand.”
