This Mega Snowstorm Will Be a Test for the US Supply Chain

Here it is. Nearly two-thirds of the United States faces the threat of heavy snow, cold and icy weather this weekend, with the potential to hamper roads (and the businesses that rely on them) from Texas to New York. By now, grocery stores, logistics experts, warehouse operators, and trucking companies have been preparing for days. Yet the effects on the supply chain – and on the retail shelves that depend on it – remain to be seen.

On the one hand, it’s winter as usual. Snowstorms happen every year, and the freight industry has a strategy playbook.

“If you’re a retailer, this happens all the time,” says Chris Caplice, chief scientist at transportation management company DAT Freight & Analytics. “For those in the supply chain, it’s just another Tuesday.”

On the other hand, the locations where this storm occurs and its magnitude pose an additional challenge.

“This one is a little tough, because there aren’t a lot of snowstorms that hit the states that this one hits,” says Chris Long, executive vice president of operations at Capstone Logistics, a third-party logistics company. Affected southern states, including Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, are often equipped to deal with hurricanes, with networks of distribution centers set up to distribute what is often needed after this type of storm: generators, water, plywood. But if roads in those states, less equipped for cold weather, freeze for several days — “the worst-case scenario,” Long says — shoppers could see shortages of some perishables, including food and pharmaceuticals.

To avoid this, retailers have spent the past few days positioning specific inventory that they know customers will want (e.g., snow shovels, bottled water, canned goods, de-icing products) in local distribution warehouses, where they can quickly hit store shelves. Large trucking companies have placed their vehicles and personnel where they are likely to be needed; independent truckers have probably left the road.

Next week, as everyone shakes off what the storm wrought, freight prices will likely rise, Caplice says, as freight companies try to restart the supply chain. But this type of shock is likely factored into retailers’ operations (it’s winter, after all) and won’t affect the prices customers see at checkout. This year, there is much more uncertainty in the freight sector regarding tariffs and immigration, he says. “It will be a failure.”

Whatever the coming days bring, businesses are likely better equipped to respond than they were before the pandemic, when lockdowns threw global supply chains into turmoil. “When I first got into the industry, it was all about ‘just in time,’” says Long, who worked for years in the grocery industry. The pandemic has caused retailers and the freight companies that support them to focus more on sourcing and surviving the unexpected. “We’re in a much better place,” he says.