For us at Handico Trucking 2022 was a busy year with a lot of changes. Like every company in the container sector it was a very busy year in terms of volume and increasing prices. Within the company we took many steps towards digitalising our services. In this blog we will look back at last year, and forward to see what to expect this year.
2022, a busy year
The year started in covid lockdown, which was eased quite sudden in the early spring. There were also continued disruptions of vessel schedules. When the Ever Given got stuck at the Suez canal, the problem became worse. Disruptions meant cargo-openings kept being pushed back to later dates. As a result containers could not be dropped and storage depots were also always full. Unfortunately this meant drivers were late the next day as they could not pick-up their next containers.
Throughout the year we were faced with increasing prices. Since late 2021 energy prices had already been going up. When the war in Ukraine started prices of course shot up again. Throughout 2022 the fuel price remained high, but also prices for truck parts and tyres increased. As Belgium has automatic inflation compensation in wages, 2022's inflation will also be part of our costs in 2023.
We also moved to a paperless office supported by our increased digitilized services. All drivers are now equiped with our driver app via which they can directly put all info into our systems. In our offices we switched from working on servers to working in the cloud.
We are also fully ready to start using e-CMRs. However, Belgium has not fully implemented EU regulations regarding these, we cannot use them for every transport yet. Should you be interested in using them, please contact us directly.
How will 2023 look?
For this year the economic outlook is a little more negative. High inflation rates have made the entire market act more careful. Energy prices have come down slightly. However, as long as the war in Ukraine continues, there will be uncertainty in the market towards supply chains and consequently energy prices.
Vessel schedules have become more in sync with their original plans and consequently congestion in the ports has eased a little. One problem that still persists in the ports is the booking of slots. Ever more terminals and depots force truckers to reserve a timeslot. This means our drivers sometimes wait for hours in the port before they can enter. We try to solve this by booking our slots as early as possible.
For this year we are looking to set up an AI bot to help us with order intake into our system. We hope this will take away workload from our planning team. This way they can focus more on optimisation of the actual planning and also informing customers faster about delays or other problems.
Always ready to help
In 2023 we will of course continue to serviceyou in the same manner you are used to. We look forward to continued cooperation. Should you have any additional request you can always contact us via sales@handico-trucking.com.
