What’s One Costly Assumption in Logistics or Supply Chain Management?
Treating turnover as a normal expense. Losing skilled people disrupts workflows, slows productivity, and increases recruiting and training costs. A better approach is investing in retention as an operational strategy—strong leadership, clear career paths, and engagement systems. Keeping great talent is far cheaper and helps protect service levels, culture, and supply chain stability.
–Rebecca Wilson
Senior Vice President, Human Resources
Kenco
Your 3PL software has robust cybersecurity. The cost of assuming this can be immeasurable. A provider’s cyber incident can erase visibility of goods and routing, lead to stock spoiling, and trigger disruption that ripples across the business—often without insurance. The answer is preparation, not panic: Build and own a mindset of cyber resilience across your operation.
–Kelly Malynn
Senior Risk Manager
Beazley
Chasing AI for its own sake. Apply artificial intelligence with purpose. The industry is shifting from technology-first thinking to problem-first strategies, finally recognizing most AI initiatives fail because teams chase tools before defining outcomes.
–Beth Hendriks
Chief Technology Officer
Infios
A one-size-fits-all approach for Jones Act markets. Shippers who treat them like the mainland often end up with inventory imbalances and service shortfalls. Market-specific strategies built around longer lead times, limited sailing frequency, and agility are a more effective approach.
–Daniel Datz
VP Sales
Odyssey Logistics
Underappreciating the value of regulatory compliance, considering its lower share of wallet in the overall scheme of things. Penalties and regulatory holds can have a disproportionately large impact, resulting in loss of business and/or margins.
–Siddharth Priyesh
VP and Head of Americas, EMEA & South Asia
CrimsonLogic
Optimizing processes for cost optimizes the whole network. In reality, decisions that look good in procurement can increase logistics costs or hurt service downstream. End‑to‑end orchestration connects the buy, move, and deliver processes using shared data so decisions are made based on total network impact.
–Valerie Blatt
Chief Revenue Officer, Supply Chain Management
SAP
Believing the sales pitch. Sometimes it is misinformation, sometimes it is something else, but if we believe the sales pitch, we risk overlooking the value of proven performance by a trusted partner.
–Danny Schnautz
President
Clark Freight Lines
Look Beyond Past Data
Assuming past data predicts future demand is a costly mistake. Fixed planning cycles leave supply chains vulnerable to disruption. Instead, become a decision-centric enterprise that uses AI to continuously process live signals and better align planning and execution.
–Allan Dow
EVP/General Manager Supply Chain
Aptean
Volatile markets make static forecasts unreliable and limit responsiveness to spikes or disruptions. A better approach is adaptive planning using real-time sensing, dynamic modeling, flexible capacity, and multi‑sourcing so supply chains can pivot as conditions shift.
–Will Heywood
Chief Customer Officer
DHL Supply Chain
Utilization equals efficiency. Pushing for maximum truck usage can lead to longer dwell times, reduced flexibility, and increased missed appointments. Instead, build some intentional slack by leaving buffer capacity in trucks, docks, and labor to absorb variability. Accept partial loads when it improves velocity and segment freight by prioritizing high-value or time-sensitive shipments.
–Aaron Freedman
Chief Strategy Officer
ACI Transport
Freight fraud risk ends at carrier approval. With cargo theft up 60% in 2025, that’s no longer true. A better approach is layered protection—combining pre-tender screening with real-time, in-transit visibility to detect suspicious behavior and prevent loss before it happens.
–Andrew Wimer
VP Strategic Operations
Descartes
Adding labor, space, or equipment will fix performance gaps. It won’t. Most operations aren’t resource-constrained—they’re decision-constrained. Orchestrate what you already have. When you align labor, inventory, and equipment in real time, you unlock capacity that was there all along.
–Keith Moore
CEO
AutoScheduler.AI
More tech automatically means more efficiency. In reality, adding tools without fixing processes and data discipline often increases complexity and cost. A better approach is to simplify first: Clarify decision ownership, clean the data, and align systems, then automate what truly creates measurable value.
–George Maksimenko
CEO
Adexin
Becoming consumed by mitigation efforts and sourcing adjustments to minimize impact to profit margins. As tariff volatility reshapes supply chains, it is equally, if not more, important to maintain a macro view of risk to monitor potential supply disruptions.
–David Weeks
Supply Chain Industry Practice Lead
Moody’s
An organization’s logistics costs are simply based on transportation expenses. With the increases our industry is seeing with fraud and theft, it is critical that organizations think of ways to eliminate the chances of these events from both a claims and brand expense standpoint.
–Jay Gustafson
EVP Brokerage
Echo Global Logistics
All freight is good freight. The “accept everything” mindset erodes margin and strains the network. A better approach is disciplined selectivity, using optimization to evaluate network fit, true cost, and downstream impact. Profitability comes from smarter decisions, not more volume.
–Erica Frank
SVP Marketing
Optimal Dynamics
Lowest Price Equals Lowest Cost, Not!
Many leaders still push for rate cuts in every RFQ. That’s outdated. Focusing solely on price ignores bigger cost drivers, such as reliability and visibility. One last-minute airfreight move triggered by a low-cost, unreliable carrier can erase those savings. A better approach is optimizing total cost through stronger partners, better data, and consistent execution.
–Sean Yanok
VP Regional Development
Gebrüder Weiss
A costly assumption is the lowest‑price provider delivers the lowest total cost. Focusing on price alone can create service issues and raise total landed costs. A better approach is evaluating price with reliability, claims, visibility, and performance to strengthen overall results.
–Mike Kukiela
SVP Supply Chain and Distribution Management
Schneider
Cheap rates often bring hidden costs like delays, poor communication, and service failures that disrupt operations. A better approach is focusing on total cost and reliability, choosing partners who consistently deliver and reduce disruptions across the supply chain.
–Tyler Matthews
VP
North American Distribution Logistics dba NAD Logistics
Price only matters if performance holds. Service failures, delays, accessorials, and recovery costs often erase savings on paper. A cheap move that disrupts inventory or misses a customer commitment is rarely cheap in total cost. Evaluate decisions on reliability, variability, and business impact—not just price.
–Matt Huckeba
Chief Strategy Officer
Evans Transportation
Global networks and trade lanes are stable. Events like the pandemic, Ever Given, trade wars, and physical wars teach us that when it comes to logistics and supply chain, nothing is written. Decades-old practices can be rendered obsolete overnight. Winning requires quick, confident decisions that consider the big picture, not just today’s pinch point.
–John Lash
Group VP Product Strategy
e2open, a WiseTech Global Group company
Assuming your only reliable over-the-road options are truckload or LTL. Sometimes those are the best options depending on your shipping needs, but when you pay to ship air in a truckload, incur oversize fees or have to remanufacture damaged goods from an LTL haul, it costs you. It’s worth exploring the middle options in your mix like multi-stop truckload, pool distribution, or Shared Truckload.
–Kevin McMaster
SVP, Customer Success & Operations
Flock Freight
“We’ll just build (or bolt on) what our TMS can’t, or wait for the roadmap.” Reality: that burns years, budget, and patience. Better approach: buy a platform that covers the full load lifecycle, adapts pricing to market fast, and cuts vendors so you scale without exhausting your team (or budget).
–Carly Gunby
VP of Revenue
Transfix
Only Amazon or Walmart-scale companies can benefit from warehouse automation. That locks everyone else into manual operations, with labor costs, accuracy gaps, and service variability that follow. The better approach: stop confusing the scale needed to build automation with the scale required to benefit from it. Mid-market players can also see those operational gains.
–Ashfaque Chowdhury
CEO
Exol
Expecting truckload prices to follow a predictable forecast. A better approach is to plan around multiple scenarios—tight, balanced, and loose markets—so budgets and capacity strategies stay resilient no matter which pricing environment emerges.
–Spencer Hennigar
Director of Business Development
Scotlynn
Incremental fixes to legacy systems are enough. Fragmented tools and siloed data slow decisions and create inefficiencies. A better approach is modernizing warehouse management with end-to-end capabilities that unify data, processes, and partners by giving operations the visibility and coordination needed to adapt quickly.
–Tatiana Muñoz
Director of Business Development, US
Hardis Supply Chain
The costliest assumption is equating “lowest price” with “lowest cost” in a supply chain network design context. A model that appears 2% cheaper on a spreadsheet but carries a 50% higher probability of failure during a global crisis is, in reality, the more expensive architecture. A better approach optimizes for risk-adjusted resilience rather than just static margins.
–Brad Barry
Director and Partner, Supply Chain Services
St. Onge Company
An automation system must be capable of solving all the problems in a warehouse. Often, the best cost savings decision you can make is not what to include in automation, but what to exclude. The cost difference between automating 85% or 100% of your product can be significant. Retaining manual operation for products that are not a fit for automation can rescue an ROI.
–Dan Cahalan
Sales Director, Integrated Solutions
Swisslog Americas
Not using retailers’ sales data to improve forecasting, risking stockouts and deadstock because the right products aren’t on the right shelves at the right time. The more data streams, the more accurate the forecast.
–Mark Landgren
SVP
Fintech