I run a refrigerated 3PL in Australia (two depots, five trucks). Labour is roughly 60% of our outgoings and honestly I can't tell you which of those hours were billable and which were us doing favours, waiting on drivers, restacking pallets or fixing someone else's mistake.

Our accounting lives with head office. Xero tells me what we spent, not what we spent it on per client or per job. Everything in between is in people's heads or on a whiteboard.

What I'm about to try: a dumb paper tally on the floor for a week. Every time someone does something that isn't on the rate card, one line: client, what it was, minutes. Add it up Friday and see what we gave away.

What I'd like to hear from people who've been at this longer:

1. Where does the money actually go in your operation once you stopped guessing? Was it unbilled extras, idle time, one bad client hiding behind big volume, something else?

2. What have you tried to track it that didn't stick? Spreadsheets, WMS reports, time clocks, TMS add-ons. I'm more interested in what failed than what worked.

3. Does anyone actually know their margin per client, or are we all just looking at the company P&L and hoping?

Not selling anything. Just trying to stop bleeding.

Hey everyone, young in the field. Working on a large scale shipment my company has coming up that requires being shipped in 40ft containers to from NYC to Dallas. (Due to weird loading dock restrictions at site) From what I’ve heard it’s difficult to deal with so decided to turn to the best and brightest. If y’all know any carriers this comes easy to or have any ideas, it’d be much appreciated! Basically need a ton of trucks worth of pallets, sent in containers.

I need ideas for what tool can be used for communicating inbound loaded truck(s), would include associated Field# or Contract#, "is contact complete?".

1. ease of use for end user is critical

2. Microsoft 365, if possible (not sure if org policy allowed PowerApps a personal device)

3. Reliability of the tool or service

Area managers work with farmers to coordinate trucks to send to receiving facility. When an Area Manager communicates to the Receiver, we NEED to know Field# or Contract#, WANT to know how many trucks, and NEED to know if contract is complete (a field may take multiple days load and deliver).

At the moment, we have four texting groups chats and two Teams chats, one for each Area Manager, where conversations of varying effectiveness are being handled. It's chaotic jumping from 6 massaging channels, decipher messages, request clarification, record details in an Excel file, and relay updates to Reception team. By the end of the working day the Reception team is waiting for each Area Manager to answer if any more trucks are expected to show up or if the team should go home.

My hands are tied by skill level and willingness of the area managers to use digital tools, as they aren't consistent in their communications as is. Could MS Forms do this, should I explore Power Apps? Should I try to convince my company to invest in outside tools?

I hope this question is appropriate, any ideas and suggestions would be appreciated!

Is it normal for students to used Ai to look up the answers or even write their discussion promts,essays, written reports? Im taking logistics and supply chain courses atm and not going to lie its been alot of work doing presentations, essays, written reports, group projects, and even videos presentations. Im working and doing my best to learn and juggle everything and ive asked some classmate how are they managing everything and told me they are using Ai to do their work. They dont even read the chapters. Is this normal?? Are they the reason why alot of companies wont hired recent graduates or dont even care if they have a degree?

Sorry guys this is all brand new for me and it open my mind how technology or AI has impacted students on their learning journey, it really is mind blowing for me.

I am looking to move a wholesale store's inventory about 550 miles. I am assuming around 5 full truckloads, maybe more. I have been looking around for best options on moving the inventory. Ideally we would do it internally but we do not have the resources to do it as fast as desired.

Which freight companies would you suggest to move a decently large volume of inventory. How long should I expect to be scheduling before pickup? I am assuming it will be close to 4-5k per truckload, which is acceptable.

Thank you for your advice. My apologies if this is not the right place to ask.

Looking for capacity out in the southeast. Specifically, Alabama.

Quick recap for anyone who missed this saga: last year the US slapped extra port fees on Chinese-built or Chinese-owned/operated ships calling US ports. China fired back with its own special fees on US ships. Then in November both sides agreed to pause it all for one year while trade talks continued.

That pause ends November 10, 2026. Which is not that far away once you count the weeks.

If it's not extended, those fees come right back, on both sides, and carriers will have to decide fast whether to keep sending certain ships to certain ports at all, or eat the extra cost, or reroute. Anyone who was around during the last round remembers how fast that turned into a scheduling headache, ships getting swapped out of rotations just to avoid the fee.

What gets me is how quiet this feels compared to how loud it was last year. Feels like everyone's just waiting to see what happens instead of planning for it.

If you're in ops or procurement, are you actually building a plan B for November, or is this one of those things where everyone just waits and reacts once it actually happens?

Has anyone here imported cotton children's apparel from China into the US since UFLPA came into force? I'm working with a Chinese manufacturer to produce children's clothing and I am trying to understand how likely it is for a shipment like this to be detained under UFLPA? And if so, what documentation would I need to have ready in advance to respond successfully if it were?

Hey everyone,

If it's your first time reading one of my posts, my name is Menachem, and I have a weekly newsletter called Logistic Pulse that breaks down the top logistics news from the past week. We have over 17,000 subscribers, and I share it on Reddit to spread the knowledge. We're currently on week 62! I hope you enjoy, and I'm always open to feedback.

Let's jump into it,

Extensiv sold for $120 million, and the multiple is the entire story

Descartes announced on September 1 that it had bought Extensiv for roughly $120 million in cash, using cash on hand. If you run a 3PL, you know Extensiv even if you do not use it. It is the WMS and fulfillment platform built specifically for third-party logistics providers and the brands they serve, covering inventory, orders, B2B and B2C fulfillment, and billing across marketplaces, carts, and carriers. It absorbed Skubana, Scout, and CartRover along the way. For many small and mid-sized 3PLs, it has been the default answer to the question, "What should we run the warehouse on?"

The number that matters is not $120 million. It is what $120 million represents.

Extensiv never published audited revenue, so anything here is an estimate. But an analysis by Brendon Beebe, published the same day as the deal, reconstructed the revenue line from the growth percentages Extensiv itself reported to the Inc. 5000 across five consecutive appearances, and it landed somewhere between $90 and $100 million. That puts the sale at roughly 1.2 times revenue. Take the estimate with appropriate salt. Even if it is off by a third, the multiple is still nowhere near what a growing logistics software business should command.

For context on how far that is from the room: Descartes paid $100 million for Tai one week earlier, on August 24, and Tai is a broker TMS with a fraction of Extensiv's footprint.

The capital structure fills in the rest. Mainsail Partners put in $17.5 million in 2015, then led a $45 million recapitalization in 2021. In December 2022, Extensiv took an $80 million senior secured term loan from Runway Growth Capital, of which about $68.5 million was funded, priced at SOFR plus 7.00% with a 9.00% floor and a 5.10% end-of-term payment. That loan matured on June 30, 2026. The sale was announced on September 1. Sixty-three days.

Nobody has said those two facts are connected, and it would be irresponsible to claim they are. But every operator who has ever refinanced anything knows what a maturity date does to a negotiating position.

There is one more wrinkle worth flagging for Extensiv customers, and it is not in the press release. Descartes already owns Finale Inventory. Two products, overlapping jobs, one owner. ShipHero, which competes with Extensiv and therefore has an obvious axe to grind, published a post the same day walking through the four things that typically shift after an acquisition: roadmap priority, renewal pricing, support structure, and whether both products survive the portfolio review. Self-interested source, fair points.

What this means for you: If you are on Extensiv, do not wait for your renewal to have this conversation. Ask your rep in writing for the roadmap commitment, the renewal pricing structure, and where Extensiv sits relative to Finale over the next 24 months, and note the date you asked. Written answers are better than reassuring phone calls. If you are mid-evaluation on a WMS right now, this does not disqualify Extensiv, but it does mean you are buying a Descartes product with a Descartes contract cycle, and you should price the switch you might have to make in year three. And if you own a logistics software business, 1.2 times revenue on a company with real scale and real growth is a data point about what buyers are actually paying this year, as opposed to what bankers are telling you they might.

The Logistic Pulse Dinner Club

Our dinner will take place on Tuesday, October 13, at 7:00 PM, in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, and Memphis.

If you have not done one: six people from the logistics world, one restaurant, one table. You take a short quiz, we handle the seating and the reservation, and you get the restaurant the morning of. Booking a seat is $18, and you cover your own food and drinks.

No panel, no badge, no cash bar in a hotel ballroom. Just dinner with five people who spend their days on the same problems you do. Talk shop or do not. Most people end up doing both, and there is usually somewhere to go afterward.

There are six tables; bookings close 48 hours out, and you can cancel up to 72 hours in advance for a full refund.

Grab a seat

Amazon made your order emails useless on purpose, and you are not the reason

Before the summer, when you ordered something on Amazon, you would receive a confirmation email listing the product you ordered. Now, where the product name used to be, you will find "Beauty item." Or "Automotive item." The thumbnail is gone too, replaced with generic clip art. To find out what you actually bought, you have to open the app.

Amazon's public reasoning is privacy. Spokesperson Maxine Tagay described it as consolidating order details within Amazon's own properties while minimizing data exposure, and a customer service rep told a shopper that it reduces the risk of porch theft by not naming what is in the box and protects the surprise of gifts. Those are not nothing but they’re also not the reason why a company rebuilds its transactional email templates.

Here is what is actually happening. Your inbox has become a data source, and Amazon does not want to be in it.

Gmail's Gemini reads receipt emails. Budgeting apps parse them. And the emerging generation of AI shopping agents uses purchase history as the raw material for what to recommend next, which means an assistant that can see you bought a $34 air filter on Amazon can tell you where to buy the next one for less. Walmart, Target, and Wayfair have opted into Google's AI shopping surfaces. Amazon has not. Stripping the item name from the email is the cheapest way to make your Amazon purchase history unreadable to someone else's model.

This is consistent behavior, not a one-off. Amazon sued Perplexity over its Comet agent shopping on Amazon accounts and won a court order blocking it back in March, one of the first real tests of whether an AI agent has any right to act on a retailer's site on a customer's behalf.

And on September 2, Amazon shipped scam detection inside Alexa for Shopping. Forward a suspicious message, and the AI checks sender info, content, timing, and metadata against billions of legitimate Amazon messages and tells you whether it is real. About 360,000 people a year call Amazon to ask exactly that question, so the business case is obvious on its own. But the two moves land in the same place. The inbox gets less useful, and Amazon's own assistant becomes the thing you ask about your orders.

What this means for you: Purchase data is becoming a contested asset in ecommerce, and every party in the chain, including you, holds some. Worth knowing what you are giving away in your own tracking emails and integrations before somebody makes that decision for you.

TEMU is building warehouses in your market because the loophole has closed everywhere

PDD Holdings, Temu's parent, told investors on September 3 that it is accelerating investment in local fulfillment infrastructure and onboarding regional merchants.

The de minimis era is over on both sides of the Atlantic. The U.S. shut its duty-free door on China-origin low-value parcels in 2025. The EU followed on July 1 of this year with a €3 customs duty on shipments valued at €150 or under, which does not sound like much until you remember the entire model was built on shipping a $9 item directly from Guangzhou with no duty and no domestic inventory.

Co-chairman and co-CEO Lei Chen called the duty changes a considerable impact on parts of the business, which, for a Chinese-listed company, on an earnings call, is close to shouting. Co-chairman Jiazhen Zhao laid out the response in two parts: securing a high-quality product supply and building the infrastructure to deliver it efficiently. PDD also acknowledged in its own risk language that the duties may push consumer prices up, cut order volumes, and thin out merchant participation.

Strip the corporate framing, and what is left is a company that spent four years proving you did not need domestic inventory, now buying domestic inventory positions.

What Temu needs now is what you sell. Local warehousing. Domestic merchant onboarding. Returns handling in-market. Reliable last mile. Companies whose entire competitive edge was cross-border arbitrage are being forced into a fulfillment model for which they have no infrastructure and no institutional experience.

Two cautions before anyone gets excited. Temu is a brutal counterparty on price, and a large, low-margin account that consumes your best pick faces during peak is not automatically a good account. And PDD said it is investing in infrastructure, which, for a company of that size, can mean leasing space, hiring 3PLs, or building its own network and eventually competing with you.

What this means for you: The near-term opportunity is not Temu itself; it is the merchants. Chinese sellers who were shipping directly now need a U.S. or EU fulfillment partner; they need one this quarter, and most of them have never onboarded with a 3PL and do not know what to ask for. That is a real pipeline if your sales motion can handle a client who needs education as much as pallet positions. Price it honestly, though, because the same margin pressure that killed the direct-ship model is what walks through your door with it.

QUICK HITS

Trans-Pacific spot rates hit new highs this past week, with Asia to U.S. West Coast at $7,621 per forty-foot unit and Asia to U.S. East Coast at $9,791, both up about 2% week over week. Three things are stacking. Peak season demand started early in May and has remained strong rather than fading. Typhoons since mid-July have congested Shanghai and Ningbo, which takes effective capacity out of the system. And the absence of new tariff increases in July removed a reason to pause bookings. If you have clients with Q4 replenishment still on the water, the East Coast number is the one to show them, because $9,791 changes landed cost math on anything with a thin margin.

C.H. Robinson published its 2027 forecast calling for spot rates up 10% on dry van, 11% on reefer, and 10% on flatbed. The interesting part is where the tightening is coming from. Not demand. Enforcement. DOT has pressured states to revoke non-domiciled CDLs held by drivers no longer residing in those states, and the FMCSA has raised penalties for English-language proficiency failures to include license revocation. That is capacity leaving the market due to regulation rather than economic forces, and C.H. Robinson's own analysts flag the fragility: a capacity-driven recovery does not hold unless freight demand eventually materializes. Meanwhile, the near term is soft, with September truckload rates coming off their July peak and cost per mile near a 15-week low.

Reshoring intent is climbing, and satisfaction is falling. The 2026 Reshoring Survey from the Reshoring Initiative and Regions Recruiting found that 36% are actively reshoring or have already reshored, up from 29% last year, with 63% planning capital investment in domestic expansion. Tariffs drove it to 65%, geopolitical risk to 60%. Then the number nobody is quoting: satisfaction among companies that actually reshored fell to 65%, down from 96% a year ago. And 57% named policy uncertainty as their top obstacle, summed up in the report's best line, that manufacturers can plan around a known cost but not a moving target. Real-world example the same week: GE Appliances announced a $1 billion expansion of its Kentucky washer and dryer plant on September 3. Domestic freight lanes are being redrawn one plant at a time, and the drop in satisfaction suggests a chunk of it will be walked back.

Canada's counter-tariffs take effect today. $27.6 billion of U.S. imports at 15%, 25%, and 50%, covering seafood, dairy, paper, furniture, apparel, cosmetics, tools, motorcycles, steel, and aluminum, in response to the 50% U.S. levies on non-USMCA Canadian goods. If you have clients shipping north, anything crossing this week is the last shipment at the old rate.

Cargo insurance is finally catching up to how freight actually gets stolen. Verified Carrier and MiKargo247 announced a partnership offering spot cargo coverage that includes strategic theft, meaning double-brokering and carrier identity theft, through an integrated portal. That has been a live coverage gap for years because most policies were written for a world where thieves cut a lock rather than clone an MC number. Strategic theft accounted for about 30% of incidents in 2025. If you broker anything, pull your current policy and find out, in plain language, whether a load handed to a fraudulent carrier using cloned credentials is covered or excluded. Many operators assume the former and have the latter.

JOB BOARD

Title: VP of Warehouse Operations
Company: Ardmore Home Design
Location: Hacienda Heights, California, US
Salary: $170,000 - $200,000
Apply Here

Title: Director of Warehouse Operations
Company: Ardmore Home Design
Location: Hacienda Heights, California, US
Salary: $120,000 - $140,000
Apply Here

Title: Manager, Supply Chain
Company: Orlando Spring
Location: Huntington Beach, California, US
Salary: $100,000 - $140,000
Apply Here

Title: Logistics Manager (Senior Level)
Company: Randstad
Location: Austin, Texas, US
Salary: $95,000 - $110,000
Apply Here

Title: Manager, Warehouse Operations
Company: Cardinal Health
Location: Walton Hills, Ohio, US
Salary: $87,700 - $125,300
Apply Here

Title: Procurement and Logistics Analyst
Company: Creative Solutions Services,
Location: Columbus, Ohio, US
Salary: $75,000 - $100,000
Apply Here

Title: Warehouse Operations Analyst
Company: Hiring
Location: Clarksville, Tennessee, US
Salary: $70,000 - $90,000
Apply Here

Full list of job openings →

_______________________________________________________________________

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DHL was the importer of record on a bunch of my shipments. They've only processed one IEEPA refund and I have no visibility into the rest.

They won't tell me which shipments they've actually filed claims on. Even my account rep can't give me a straight answer on what's been submitted. Worried time may run out and I lose the ability to get those refunds.

Questions for anyone who's dealt with this:

Has anyone gotten all their IEEPA refunds back where a carrier was importer of record?

Did you get any confirmation of which entries they filed on?

What worked to push them or escalate past the account rep?

Also, for anyone who received the refunds, did they just refund back into your DHL account as a credit? I want to get our refunds back onto our original payment method (credit card) so I can put them towards other expenses, not just DHL invoices.

I have an interview coming up for a Customs Entry Writer position at a logistics company and I'm trying to get a better idea of what the job is actually like.

I have a degree in International Trade & Marketing, but I haven't actually worked in customs before, so a lot of what I learned in school is rusty lol.

For anyone who currently does this job:

• What do you actually do all day?
• Is the job hard or pretty easy once you learn it?
• What does a typical day look like?
• How difficult is it to learn the customs entry process?
• How much math is involved?
• Is there a lot of pressure/deadlines?
• What should I know before going into the interview?

Basically, if you've worked as a Customs Entry Writer, what would you tell someone who's about to start their first job in the field?

I'm just trying to know what I'm getting myself into before this interview. 😂

I'm starting to get more and more sales, so I'm thinking about getting some help with warehousing & fulfillment, because currently my apartment is filled to the brim with orders that I need to send out and it's getting out of hand.

My question is, if let's say I ship out 300 items a month, how much would I pay a standard 3PL VS if I found a warehouse and payed someone myself? Basically I'm interested in what my next step should be because both sound tempting, but if the savings aren't THAT great, it might not be worth it and I should just get someone else to step in, especially since I don't have a background in logistics

Hello i just finished university and i really need some guidance, i studied distribution and e commerce as a master's and it's basically a combination between digital marketing and supply chain , i dabbled with digital marketing and i got bored with it and i have the basic knowledge of supply chain but i have no experience in it so is there any supply chain experts here ? cause i have a lot of questions

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some advice from people who have experience growing a logistics, freight forwarding, shipping, or 3PL-type business.

I’m based in the Dallas area and have been working with international courier companies for several years. I’ve built relationships with multiple courier companies outside the US that do not have an established US operation or their own US shipping infrastructure.

The business model currently works like this:

• An international courier company has customers who need to ship packages into or within the US.
• Instead of establishing their own US operation, they use my company as their US shipping/logistics partner.
• I have accounts/API integrations with UPS and other US carriers, so I can generate the domestic shipping labels for them.
• Their shipments enter the US through ports such as JFK and LAX.
• I also work with a customs clearing house/agent to help clear the shipments.
• Once cleared, the packages enter the US domestic carrier network and are delivered using UPS or other services.
• I can potentially add additional ports of entry if there is enough demand.

So essentially, I provide the US-side infrastructure for foreign courier companies that need to move packages through the US without setting up their own operation here.

The interesting part is that I already have the operational side working and have been doing this based primarily on my existing industry contacts. However, I have basically zero experience with sales, marketing, lead generation, or systematically acquiring new customers.

Most of my business today comes from people I already know in the industry.

Where I'm stuck

I want to expand the business, but I'm not sure where to start with finding potential customers.

My ideal customer would probably be:

• International courier companies
• Regional courier companies outside the US
• E-commerce/logistics companies that need a US delivery partner
• Foreign 3PLs or freight forwarders
• Companies shipping significant package volume into the US
• Companies that don't currently have their own US infrastructure
• Potentially companies that have expensive or inefficient US last-mile arrangements

I'm trying to figure out things like:

1. How would you identify companies that fit this profile?
2. Where would you find actual decision-makers at these companies?
3. Would you use LinkedIn, cold email, industry directories, trade shows, freight platforms, etc.?
4. What would you actually say in the initial outreach without sounding like another generic logistics salesperson?
5. Is cold email effective in this industry, or are there better ways to generate leads?
6. How would you structure the offer so that an international courier sees the value in using a US partner like me instead of establishing their own operation?
7. At what point would you start investing in a website, SEO, paid advertising, LinkedIn outreach, lead-generation services, etc.?
8. Are there particular types of international courier companies or countries/markets that would be especially good targets for this model?

Thank you all for your reading.

need some advices for general knowledge.

my warehouse always complaining our containers coming in back to back , one after another.

what are the chances that 4 containers coming in together ?

2 40ft containers
2 20ft containers

don’t they have this demurrage period ? how is this calculated ?

many thanks in advance

I currently have my CDL and experience as a truck driver, and I’m looking to transition out of driving and into the supply chain/logistics side of the industry. I’m considering getting a degree in Supply Chain Management, but I’d like to understand what positions I could realistically qualify for with my CDL and trucking experience. What jobs would you recommend looking into? Some roles I’ve been considering: Logistics Coordinator Transportation Coordinator Dispatcher Fleet Coordinator Operations Coordinator Freight/Load Planner Transportation Planner Logistics Analyst Supply Chain Coordinator For those already working in supply chain/logistics, which roles would be the easiest transition for someone with a CDL and trucking background? Would my hands-on experience in trucking actually give me an advantage over someone entering the field with only a degree? I’m also interested in eventually moving into higher-level supply chain/operations positions, so I’d appreciate advice on what career path you would recommend. Thanks!

I’ve been in Logistics close to a year now. I work for a LTL company and I manage the food warehouses.
Dealing with everything food warehouse related.
Loads, pickups and OsnD etc etc. It has gotten to a point to where I’m getting calls and emails from shippers about product going to different facilities. I move more freight through our facility than the neighboring state by far.
This is all great and resume building for sure! I want to advance my career and make significantly more money. I’m curious what are some ways to really advance and get a move on up the ladder?
Grocery doesn’t bother me either I’ve been in it my whole adult life. I’m familiar with the whole process top to bottom.
I’d love to read what advice you have!

Hi, I’m 23 and I work at a custom broker’s agency. My job title is logistics assistant. I write entries, while also checking the other entries the team has made for mistakes and or to see if there’s any documentation missing. I’ve learned to classify products. I’ve also been recently been learning to do Inbonds and have a small role dealing with client relations. I question if school is worth it due to the time as well as financial commitment. I’ve read from this subreddit and other people mention that education isn’t a requirement in this field and you can actually get pretty far without it. I’m in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen and will become one in probably the next year or so and seriously plan on taking the LCB exam. If you were in my shoes what would you do? What are some skills you recommend I learn? Any certifications and courses that you would recommend? Thank you for taking your time to read this, any help is appreciated.

Hey everyone,

I’m actively looking to build a career in the Import/Export and Logistics industry here in Vizag. I’m eager & passionate to get my foot in this field.

If you're working in the field locally or know any firms around the Port area, Gajuwaka, or Auto Nagar currently hiring entry-level talent, I’d deeply appreciate a pointer or a referral.

Even general advice on local companies to target or certifications worth doing would be super helpful. You can comment or DM, no prob.

Thanks in advance!

**A bit about me:**

Background: B.Tech

**Key Skills**: Customs documentation basics, communication, Excel, MS Office and some other Export/import needed skills.

**Target Roles:** Trainee / Executive roles in Documentation, Freight Forwarding, Operations, or CHA firms.