One thing that didn’t change amidst all the turmoil in 2020: Truck drivers stayed in high demand. The industry has been talking about a shortage of drivers for years, and that situation is still in evidence. While many industries were devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, our supply chains remained robust and reliable. In fact,…
Hazmat Quizmaster: An unforgettable year in Dangerous Goods
STAY SAFE, STAY SANE AND STAY COMPLIANT! Labelmaster has the resources you need to keep your operation efficient and compliant. Questions? Get the answers you need from the Labelmaster Regulatory Hotline. Make sure your shipments are safe and in complete compliance with a full line of solutions from Labelmaster—a full-service provider of goods and services…
South American hazmat rules are newly harmonized. Are you trained up?
Those of us in the North American Dangerous Goods supply chain may complain about the complexity of hazmat regulations, but lots of us don’t know how good we have it. After all, we only have to worry about one set of UN Model Regulations. Sure, there may be slight, unharmonized differences between Europe and North…
If the year 2020 were Dangerous Goods, how would we classify it?
ICAO defines Dangerous Goods as “articles or substances which are capable of posing a risk to health, safety, property or the environment.” By that definition, this year certainly qualifies. If you could somehow ship the year 2020 in a box, you’d have to slap a hazmat label on it. But which label? In which hazard…
Dangerous Goods in 2020: Remarkable responses to an unprecedented year
January may seem like seven years ago, but 2020 actually began like any other year in the Dangerous Goods galaxy. We all know what’s happened since then. The COVID-19 pandemic has, of course, impacted every sector of the global economy. From a hazmat transport perspective, three major trends emerged: Regulatory bodies overseeing Dangerous Goods transport…
Why smaller lithium battery marks are actually big news.
In the Dangerous Goods galaxy, regulators often say they work to find the ideal balance between supply chain safety and the needs of industry. Finding that balance is an ongoing process. Regulations aren’t carved in stone—they’re updated continually. Every year, regulatory bodies such as the United Nations Sub-Committee on the Transport of Dangerous Goods and…
The quick e-commerce guide to compliant Dangerous Goods returns
There has never been a bigger holiday season for e-commerce. And that means this will also be the biggest holiday season ever for e-commerce returns. Here are the startling stats: In Q3 2020, consumers spent nearly $200 billion online with U.S. retailers, up 37.1% from the same quarter in 2019. 1 in 4 e-commerce purchases…
For Thanksgiving 2020: a toast to our safe and essential supply chains
This week, a lot of Americans will sit down to much smaller Thanksgiving dinners than usual. It’s been a challenging year on so many levels. Nevertheless, they will raise their glasses and say a toast to the things they’re grateful for. If Labelmaster were hosting Thanksgiving, here’s how our toast might go: Here’s to the…
How cold, for how long? The role of temperature in hazmat shipping.
The prospect of COVID-19 vaccines being approved in the near future has a lot of people suddenly thinking about cold chain shipping. But keeping vaccine doses extremely cold is only the, er, tip of the iceberg when it comes to temperature-controlled shipping. This time of year, with another brutal northern winter on its way, shippers…
Hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses. What do DG shippers need to know?
Sometime in the next few weeks or months, a COVID-19 vaccine will likely be approved by the FDA (and similar bodies in other nations). That will be very, very good news. The bad news is that those vaccines won’t just magically appear at your nearest pharmacy. In fact, safely transporting hundreds of millions of vaccine…