Transportation.

• Position: Industry Outlook

PERHAPS NO INDUSTRY is as greatly influenced by global economic and political conditions as the transportation industry. Local executives gathered in the boardroom of the Salt Lake Chamber to discuss various issues affecting their businesses, including safety, fuel, technology and consolidation.

Participants included Tim Campbell, Salt Lake City Department of Airports; Stephen Goodrich, United Parcel Service; Bryce Hull, DHL Express; Jim Hunsaker, DHL Express; John Lund, Unishippers; Mike Matich, USE Reddaway; Bill Quigley, BAX Global; and Larry Stewart, Cargo Link.

Special thanks to Brent Fowler, president of Air & Sea International Freightlink, for moderating this month's Utah Business executive roundtable.

How is war in Iraq affecting our business?

LUND: Our business is so spread out that I don't believe we've seen the impact yet. In a few months we will. Until we started the bombing, we were shipping into Doha and Duvai with great regularity. Since then, we've had problems, but I don't see that it's really made an effect on our business, because we have alternatives to that part of the world.

HUNSAKER: It's been a tremendous boost to our business going into the Middle East, servicing Kuwait. The Afghanistan conflict prior to the Iraq conflict, a lot of military items were going there, a lot of spare parts.

STEWART: There [have] been a lot of flight cancellations, but that's not just the war. There s SARS and other things like that, so we're seeing some tight space conditions on airlines tight now, and that's causing rates to go up.

QUIGLEY: We depend on the commercial airlines to Puerto Rico and other areas; there were some light line services that were pulled.

HUNSAKER: We have contracts with the Government that [have been] in place for many years, so they're used to using DHL service whether it's to the Middle East or to Asia or other parts of the world. Wherever there's a military base, there's a potential that shipments could go there via DHL.

The shipper's rule: That's something that we all are faced with. Has that helped or hindered as far your business goes?

QUIGLEY: It hurt when you were trying to get a new business, because of some of the-rules they had, but once we were able to make them a known shipper, we found that the customers were staying with us because they didn't want to go through the hassle to go to somebody else.

HUNSAKER: If they're not a known shipper, then they have to go through this registration process, and in the beginning, it was a hassle, but once people understood the reasons behind it, and everyone understands that 9/11 changed the world, people were willing to prepare the documentation.

LUND: The service providers that we utilize, especially guys who own locally, have been very prompt in getting us up and running again after 9/11, with not only our unknown shippers, but with our known shippers who didn't have a large credit history with us.

CAMPBELL: The increase in security was added to the "hassle factor" for passenger travel. As far as the unknown shipper, those don't really affect us on the passenger side. We are now required to do screening, and the security that takes place at the checkpoint itself now clearly increased as a result of 9/11; however, TSA (Transportation Security Administration) has been in place a little over a year, and they are responsible for screening at the checkpoint and also to check bags in. At least here in Salt Lake, they seem to be doing a good job. They're well staffed, and from a hassle point of view, it's actually been reduced quite a bit and we're seeing people, particularly business travelers, showing up closer to flight time than they once were. It's getting better for the passengers and business travelers to get through the airport in a fairly timely fashion.

Overall security for the rest of us, how has that affected your situation as far as rumors about the tariff situation and the trucking companies and the LTL carriers?

MATICH: Our company was put on alert and were involved in several of the meetings with drivers, instructing them on how to handle situations if they're accosted by somebody who wants to do a hijacking of a truck or whatever. As far as pickup and delivery of those high-dollar-value products, food products going to grocery warehouses, security is real tight on those where we had to have inspections done on the product before we deliver, which in turn caused us some grief in regards to timeliness getting in and out of the warehouse in terms of delivery. It was costly.

GOODRICH: Any time any of us are involved in that kind of thing, or if we are a little lax, there can be significant damage to reputations, harm to employees, so we've worked hard to make sure that we don't let any of those bad things happen. We've been able to pretty well keep moving as scheduled.

STEWART: We've...