How to break through the logistics dilemma under the epidemic situation?

The prosperity index of China's logistics industry in March 2022 released by China Federation of logistics and procurement was 48.7%, down 2.5 percentage points from the previous month. Sub indexes also fell. The change in the trend of the index shows that in March, affected by the national multi-point epidemic and the differences in regional prevention and control policies, the growth rate of logistics supply and demand slowed down, the difficulty of cross regional circulation increased, the ability of logistics to promote and maintain smooth flow decreased, and the recovery of upstream and downstream of the supply chain was blocked.

Impact of the epidemic on the freight industry

According to the data, the supplier delivery time index in March was 46.5%, 1.7 percentage points lower than that of the previous month, the lowest since March 2020.

Recently, affected by the epidemic prevention and control, many places across the country have increased the scale on the basis of normalized epidemic prevention and control, extended the time of nucleic acid detection, loading and unloading and health monitoring, reduced the convenience of truck traffic and the willingness of road transport drivers to take up their posts, which has hindered the cross provincial and cross regional activities of logistics to a certain extent. It has had a great impact on the manufacturing and logistics industries.

According to the survey of relevant enterprises, enterprises reflecting high logistics costs accounted for 43%, an increase of 7.5 percentage points over the previous month, the highest level in recent 10 years. Manufacturing enterprises are faced with the problems of difficult delivery, slow arrival, high logistics cost and the following high-risk negative effects: cash flow impact, reduction of orders, increase of logistics expenses, loss of overstock of goods over the season, interruption of supply of raw materials, shutdown of enterprises, etc. Some industrial enterprises reported that production activities continued, but the purchase and sales circulation was greatly affected by the epidemic, and the expectation tended to be cautious.

In terms of logistics enterprises, the hidden costs of the epidemic are transferred to logistics enterprises, coupled with factors such as difficult employment and rising oil prices during the epidemic, which are under great pressure. Relevant surveys show that the labor cost increased by more than 10% in the first two months of this year; In terms of fuel cost (as of early April), the retail price of gasoline and diesel per ton increased by nearly 2000 yuan over the beginning of the year, up 24.4% and 26.9% respectively; The employment index was lower than 50% for seven consecutive months and only 48.5% in March. The gap between supply and demand of employees increased.

How should network freight break through under the epidemic

Recently, relevant policies and measures for smooth logistics and stable industrial chain supply chain have been issued one after another, opening up a "green channel" for transportation logistics enterprises and freight drivers to open up financial blockages for the logistics industry. However, in addition to policy support, we should also focus on improving the operation efficiency of logistics transportation.

In view of the current pain points and difficulties in the logistics industry, Liao Jiasheng, deputy secretary of the Party committee and general manager of China Logistics Group, put forward suggestions to ensure logistics transportation from three dimensions:

Short term focus on ensuring market players and improving operation efficiency;

Improve the emergency logistics management system in the medium term;

We will actively promote the construction of major logistics infrastructure for a long time.

Improving operation efficiency is the key to solve the current logistics dilemma. Digitalization can effectively improve operation efficiency while reducing operating costs. Network freight has unique advantages in this aspect: through the digital collaborative platform, it realizes the intensive utilization of logistics resources, the online optimization and regulation of the whole logistics process, the whole process visualization of the logistics process, and the collaborative management of all links of logistics. Under different epidemic prevention and control modes across regions, cumbersome prevention and control measures shall be implemented through online means as far as possible, so as to greatly improve the efficiency of passage and prevention and control; Platform based intelligent dispatching can make full use of valuable transport capacity resources; Visual monitoring, timely exception handling, reduce losses and improve logistics efficiency.