"Why does it cost me more to move my shipment from the dock to my booth and back again than it does to ship it across the country?"

You probably hear this quite often, and so do we. The following background information might help you answer that question.

Material handling is labor intensive. There's more "handling" in material handling than there is in shipping. Labor and equipment are expensive; therefore material handling is expensive too.

When an exhibit is shipped from Los Angeles to Chicago for example, the materials are picked up by a driver, but loaded by someone else. The driver hauls the materials from Los Angeles to Chicago. Upon arrival in Chicago, someone other than the driver unloads the materials. The cost for shipping includes services limited to the transport of materials from one point to another and typically requires only one person - the driver.

Material handling can require the use of many trade unions and requires:

• Labor and equipment to marshal the vehicles bringing freight to show site
• Labor and equipment to unload and deliver the materials to the booth and verify the shipment against the bill of lading
• Labor and equipment to collect empty crates and load them onto trucks for storage during the show
• Trucks and drivers to haul the empties to an off-site storage facility
• Rental of storage facility
• Trucks and drivers to return the empties to the convention center
• Labor and equipment to unload the empties and return them to the proper booths
• Labor and equipment to pickup the repacked materials, check them, and re-load them onto the trucks for outbound shipments

Frequently, material handling will take place during overtime hours after the close of a show. The return of empty containers generally takes place throughout the night after the show ends. It can take up to an hour for a forklift and crew to deliver or pick up one single crate between the area where a truck is unloaded or loaded and an exhibitor's booth space. This delay is caused by narrow aisles and congestion due to crates pushed into the aisles during short move-in and move-out schedules.

Today's shows are becoming larger and turnaround times are tighter. Convention center expansions are putting the squeeze on land previously available for marshalling yards and storage facilities, and a boom in construction limits the availability of heavy equipment in major cities.

In the past, trucks would either be staged along the convention center dock area or on an adjacent street. Now, with so many trucks and so little space adjoining convention centers due to expansion, space must be leased or purchased by the contractor. The cost of workers' compensation and liability insurance has increased dramatically in recent years, increasing material handling costs overall.

The challenge is to find enough space, labor and equipment to meet the material handling requirements of shows, while working with show managers to develop pricing plans that offer exhibitors the best value. Service contractors will continue to look for ways to improve processes and handle today's increased freight volume more efficiently.