HEADLINES IN THE SPOTLIGHT
AMAZON BEATING SUPPLY CHAIN CHAOS Amazon has been quietly chartering private cargo ships, making its own containers, and leasing planes to better control the complicated shipping journey of an online order. Now, as many retailers panic over supply chain chaos, Amazon’s costly early moves are helping it avoid the long wait times for available dock space and workers at the country’s busiest ports. By chartering private cargo vessels to carry its goods, Amazon can control where its goods go, avoiding the most congested ports. A handful of other major retail- ers like Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, Ikea and Target are also chartering their own vessels to bypass the busiest ports and get their goods unloaded sooner. According to SJ Consulting Group, Amazon has been on a spending spree to control as much of the shipping process as possible. It spent more than $61 billion on shipping in 2020, up from just under $38 billion in 2019. Now, Amazon is shipping 72% of its own packages, up from less than 47% in 2019. Another strain on the supply chain is manpower. Amazon fought this off by offering sign-on bonuses of up to $3,000 to all the 150,000 seasonal workers it’s hiring this year for unloading and loading, picking and packing at more than 250 new facilities Amazon opened in the U.S. just in 2021 showing that the company clearly identified and planned far ahead for the final bottleneck in the supply chain backlog.
TOYOTA BECOMES AMERICA’S TOP-SELLING AUTOMAKER
REACHING THE STARS Sixty years after NASA set the goal, and three years after its Parker Solar Probe launched, the spacecraft has become the first to “touch the sun.” The Parker Solar Probe has successfully flown through the sun’s corona, or upper atmosphere, to sample particles and our star’s magnetic fields. The Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018 and set out to circle closer and closer to the sun. Scientists, includ- ing the spacecraft’s namesake astrophysicist, Eugene Parker want to answer fundamental questions about the solar wind that streams out from the sun, flinging energetic particles across the solar system. Before Parker Solar Probe’s mission is done, it will have made 21 close approaches to the sun over the course of seven years. The probe will orbit within 3.9 million miles of the sun’s surface in 2024, closer to the star than Mercury -- the closest planet to the sun. Although that sounds far, researchers equate this to the probe sitting on the four-yard line of a football field and the sun being the end zone.
CDC SHORTENS WAITING PERIOD FOR PFIZER COVID BOOSTERS Those who received the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid vaccine can now get a booster shot five months after their second dose, a month sooner than the U.S. federal government’s previous guidance. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its recommended waiting period for people who completed their primary Covid-19 vaccination series with Pfizer’s shots. Those who received the Moderna vaccine must still wait at least six months after their second dose before getting a booster, while those who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine must wait at least two months after their first shot before getting a booster. The CDC also now recommends that children ages 5 to 11 who have moderate or severely compromised immune systems receive a third shot as part of their primary vaccination series 28 days after their second dose. Currently, Pfizer is the only recommended and authorized vaccine for kids in that age group. The shortened waiting period for Pfizer boosters reflects the greater urgency federal health author - ities in the U.S. have placed on getting third shots in people’s arms as the highly contagious omicron variant spreads at an unprecedented pace throughout the country.
It is official, Toyota Motor has dethroned General Motors as America’s top-selling automaker in 2021, marking the first time since 1931 that the Detroit auto - maker wasn’t the best-selling car company in the U.S. It also marks the first time a non-domestic automaker has taken the top spot in America. Toyota was able to manage supply chain issues better, allowing it to take away GM’s throne for the first time in 90 years. GM announced that it sold 2.2 million vehicles in the U.S. in 2021, down by 12.9% compared to the year earlier. Toyota, by comparison, said it sold 2.3 million vehicles in the U.S. last year, up by 10.4% compared to 2020. The difference in sales between the two automakers was 114,034 vehicles.
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JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022
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