Articles
Checking In
Sanctions, Strategy, and Middle East Logistics Advances
Not long ago, operating in the Levant felt like navigating a legal minefield wrapped in a geopolitical maze. Transshipments choked in Turkey or Lebanon, insurance premiums soared, and carriers and shippers viewed Middle Eastern ports with deep skepticism. Now, Washington is redrawing the regional logistics map in real time. By pairing sanctions relief in Syria […]
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3PL Contracts Evolve Into 4PL Solutions
Our recent survey of the third-party logistics sector found extraordinary growth in 3PL solutions, especially in companies outsourcing for the first time. Here are some examples: DHL reports that 43% of new business comes from first-time outsourcers. Similiarly, GXO, the world’s largest pure-play contract logistics provider, notes that 30%+ of its new contracts come directly […]
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After 50 Years, Iraq Is Back in the Container Shipping Business
Recent diplomatic initiatives by the Trump administration, including those led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have helped Iraq restart its maritime shipping sector. After a half-century hiatus, Iraq’s state-owned national carrier, Iraqi Maritime Line, has officially resumed scheduled container shipping operations in the Arabian Gulf. The carrier’s maiden feeder loop links Jebel Ali Port […]
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Your Best AI Solution May Be Your 3PL
We are living through an AI gold rush as a massive explosion of venture capital-backed tech startups flood the logistics space. They all promise a magic-bullet AI solution or software overlay that will instantly solve your demand-driven logistics headaches. The hard truth is that these AI pop-ups lack foundational, dirt-under-the-fingernails logistics experience. They understand algorithms, […]
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The Smart Money is Betting on Growth
Look past the daily spot rate noise and political soundbites for a second. If you want to know where the global economy is actually headed over the next decade, look at where the big maritime lenders are putting their billion-dollar balance sheets. For example Global Ship Lease (GSL) recently locked in a $1 billion, seven-year […]
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The Philippines Container Crisis — A Harbinger of Transpacific Friction
Do your Asia-Pacific supply lines touch Southeast Asia? Then dial into what’s going on at the Philippines ports of Manila, Batangas, and Subic Bay. What started as landside container imbalance and yard congestion is now a serious operational bottleneck. What’s the problem? Imports are heavily outstripping exports leaving empty cans piling up with nowhere to […]
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Demand-Driven: When Pop Outruns Infrastructure
Cool isn’t a forecast. If you want to understand the difference between a high-growth pop business built on a disciplined supply chain management system that effectively matches demand to supply, and one struggling with a tale of inventory woe, look no further than one distribution center operated by Funko. A recent lawsuit against Funko reads […]
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AI and TMS Integration
For decades, the core transportation management system (TMS) served as the reliable engine of enterprise logistics. Today, an exciting age of enhancement is upon us and just in time, too. In an era defined by volatile supply chains and unpredictable disruptions, static planning is legacy. But guess what? You need not completely replace legacy TMS […]
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Supply Chain Tech Landscape: From Resilience to Orchestration
The deep integration of artificial intelligence as a “system of action” is the most significant shift revealed in Inbound Logistics’ annual supply chain technology survey. No longer is AI a standalone feature; it has become the bedrock of enterprise execution. That shift reflects in this year’s Top 100 Logistics & Supply Chain Technology Providers. Aera […]
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Rusting Russian Rail Link
For decades, Russian rail corridors were marketed to global customers importing product from Russia as the “reliable middle ground” between slow ocean freight and expensive air cargo. However, the backbone of Russian Eurasian land-bridge logistics isn’t faring well.
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Random Stow or the Disorganized Warehouse?
Random Stow is a warehouse putaway method driven by an algorithm developed by Coupang, an ecommerce monster and formidable Amazon competitor. For the Korean market, Coupang uses this counterintuitive warehouse management method, which stores items wherever there is open shelf space, rather than grouping similar SKUs together. The warehouse might look disorganized. But it is […]
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Riding the 2026 Wave
While doom-scrolling through Facebook late one night, I saw a painting by a friend that captured something I hadn’t quite been able to put into words—so much so that I reached out and asked if we could use it for our January cover. It perfectly reflects a good way to look at the year ahead. […]
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5 Supply Chain Developments That Defined 2025
As we closed our last edition of 2025, I looked back at reader emails and conversations and saw a clear pattern: This was a year of fundamental transformation. Evolving technology, geopolitical events, and demanding customers created constant pressure on your supply chains and drove five strategic developments. 1. Tariffs redefine the cost and complexity of […]
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Somewhere Henry Ford is Smiling
Henry Ford revolutionized car manufacturing by inventing the moving assembly line. Besides saving time and money, that new process made the Model T affordable and ubiquitous. Today, thousands of vehicle plants around the world still use that method. Using Ford’s method, modern vehicle assembly lines are a moving and sequential process where a car’s frame—called […]
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Shining a Light on Dark Factories
A manufacturing revolution is underway in factories around the world. “Lights-out” manufacturing is finally being realized in a few highly automated and roboticized locations. This dramatic shift—also known as the “dark factory”—is the ultimate objective of industrial automation: a factory so automated that it requires little or no human presence. Humans need the lights, machines […]
Read MoreSelf-Healing Inventory?
Self-healing inventory is a phrase that is being used more and more these days. It’s a take-off on the concept of a self-healing supply chain, where inventory comes alive and knows where it has to be without you always lending a guiding hand.
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Trucking Needs Government Actions Now
The precipitous fall-off in trucking capacity needs to be remedied by government actions at the state, local, and national levels. Yes, I know some people say the ebb and flow of market conditions will level-set what’s needed. I disagree and here’s why. Traditional economic cycles sometimes fall off and shipment levels drop. Smart truckers prepare […]
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Pick a 3PL That Evolves
Growth in 3PL solutions is influenced by your demands. Data shared by more than 200 3PLs and thousands of their customers for this year’s 3PL Perspectives survey offers the following key takeaways that can guide demand-driven enterprises as they seek to align with new partners. 3PLs go hybrid. The percentage of pure-play asset-based 3PLs has […]
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Walmart Bets Big on Drones
Walmart is banking on drone deliveries to continue dominating both the last-mile delivery sector and the broader retail industry. This drone strategy is long-term and based on Walmart’s research showing that younger consumers (ages 18-35) are the most likely to use drone delivery services. Younger consumers, accustomed to organizing their lives around iPhones and apps, […]
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Supply Chain Pocket Change?
As a company’s supply chain network evolves over time, information needed for adaptive efficiency becomes isolated in hard-to-find data pockets. In those instances, data required to drive modern efficient operations is isolated and not instantly accessible—usually housed on old world siloed spreadsheets. Do you have supply chain data points in hidden pockets? Modernized business operations […]
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