Register now for TranzAct’s Supply Chain Resiliency webcast at 11am on Wednesday April 22. The webcast will feature Yossi Sheffi, Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT; Rick Blasgen; and myself addressing the things companies need to be doing right now to protect their supply chains and is presented in conjunction with NITL and CSCMP.
This is not a webcast to catch later. It is one to act on now.
TranzAct does not issue Code Red warnings often. When we do, it is because freight market conditions and broader economic forces are creating real supply chain risk. And when companies wait to react, the cost is higher, the disruption is worse, and the options are fewer. That is the lesson behind TranzAct’s Code Red framework: status quo companies get exposed; forward-focused companies prepare for predictable surprises and perform better.
For anyone questioning whether Code Red is too strong, consider this:
Based on EIA data and carrier contract fuel schedules, motor carrier fuel surcharges have increased approximately 88% in just six weeks. And fuel is only part of the issue. If disruption through Bab-el-Mandeb further constrains the daily flow of roughly 7 million barrels of Saudi oil, how much higher do oil prices — and your fuel surcharges — go? If transit times stretch by 14 to 28 days, what happens to your inventory, service levels, and customer commitments? Those are not abstract questions. They are operating questions.
That is why this conversation with Yossi Sheffi matters now. As Yossi argues, the real issue is not just oil prices. It is whether your supply chain is resilient enough to absorb price shocks, supply shocks, and routing shocks without damaging margins, service, and customer relationships. Petroleum-based fuels are the lifeblood of freight, short-term spikes are disruptive, and rising fuel surcharges can add millions in unplanned freight costs.
And this is not happening in a normal market. Freight conditions are again showing Covid-era extremes, which is exactly when reactive companies get squeezed first.
TranzAct has seen this before. In past Code Red environments, reactive companies paid more and absorbed more disruption. Prepared companies performed better because they had already considered the scenarios, understood their exposure, and acted earlier. Your own Code Red materials say it plainly: status quo shippers may see freight costs rise 20% to 25%, while forward-focused companies can mitigate increases or reduce costs by 10% to 15%.
That is why resiliency matters. It is not a tactic. It is a philosophy. It means balancing cost with performance, reassessing risk continuously, and planning before disruption forces your hand.
Join us April 22 for a practical conversation about what this moment requires and what resilient companies should be doing now.
Because when TranzAct issues a rare Code Red warning, it is not to create drama.
It is to help you act while better options still exist.
Register today and invite others on your team, because the companies that will navigate disruption best will not be the ones that guessed right, but the ones that planned.