r/SupplyChainLogistics

I'd love to get others thoughts on the Montgomery Case ruling and what it means for out industry long term. With the preemption shield gone, insurance rates rising, will this drive smaller brokers out of the industry or just change their processes? It also has me thinking that brokers compensation models and incentive plans may have to change to include compliance rather than just being based on margin and revenue. Thoughts?

I recently created an Amazon Freight account since they opened up to non-Amazon business. Holy crap it is expensive! I'm getting quotes from CA to OH at $12,000 for an FTL from Amazon, but less than $6,000 live-truck rates. If I switch to delivering to an Amazon facility a couple miles away, it brings it down to $11,000.

Basically I'm part of an entrepreneurship program which tells u to pick a niche and then do niche immersion (which consists of reading and listening to podcasts and consuming any material u could get ur hand on) + cold calling to find a problem in this niche....I picked this niche, particularly trucking....and got to interview 13 out of 30 for trying to dig for problems and then I asked a question, and the guy (a truck fleet owner) invited me to his office.

Anyways.....he basically tells me that my approach doesn't work in this niche bcz govt regulations don't care about u, and even if u do find one problem/gap a million others arise, the volatility of this market PLUS how tied it is to a million other markets and govtal bodies makes what I'm doing a complete waste of time....BUT bcz he liked my resolve and my attitude he doesn't mind giving me an internship.

I take him up on the offer and show up and:

1. He's working on alimony papers....we live in a different country but his US ex-wife is tryna extort him out of $750k and his only office employee is sorting this out.

2. He carelessly refers me to his employee who is working on this.

3. I ask him about what we're doing and he says we're "doing accounting".

4. I'm like "okay what will we do related to work" and he basically tells me we will cold call and send emails and manage customer relations and visit factories, standard stuff.

5. I'm like "OK....is there any structure" he says "ask the big boss"

6. Big boss refers me back to employee

7. I diplomatically get out of doing his dirty work

8. Smoke....everywhere. 4 ppl smoking in an office that isn't ventilated....windows closed....just....suffocating.

So obviously I concluded that this isn't a good fit.

My questions are:

1. As the title says, what should I look for? Green/red flags?

2. Is he right about how my approach doesn't work in this niche?

3. How do you reckon one should go about finding an internship?

4. Do you reckon I'm justified in stepping back from this "opportunity"? Explain your reasoning.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk 🤪

I worked at Dollar General Distribution jn Central Florida for 9 years. Gonna be starting a new job at Ben E. Keith Distribution next week.

Their pay structure is unique in that you get paid by the case. I know Sysco is like that as well. I am a pretty hard worker. At DG, we had production and we got incentive pay on top of hourly pay, but as you would guess, it wasn’t really significant unless you were getting 120% and holding that for most of the week. Obviously, getting paid by the case is a little different but I would guess it’s not as bad as it sounds (or maybe it is) I don’t know.

Does anyone have knowledge with this? What are downsides and upsides to it? Do you know of any other companies that do this?

This is the only thing that has me a little hesitant but again, that might be because it’s new. I am currently not working so not trying to be picky. Been looking for jobs for two weeks and no luck (until now). And of course, I got offered a position to work as an Amazon driver. I really wanted to do that, but asking people I know all suggested the warehouse. I know Amazon is less pay and more b.s. (definitely more demanding mentally than physically compared to warehouse, in my opinion). Even if a job is “easier” physically, I don’t automatically gravitate towards it. I enjoy working in a warehouse setting, just didn’t like the b.s. at DG.

But yeah, what is your experience working at a warehouse that js 100% incentive based? Any thoughts? Upside? Downsides? Has anyone heard of Ben E. Keith? The shift is Monday-Thursday and every other Friday is mandatory. Leave when the work is done (but that’s how DG was but we still knew around when we were leaving.

Oh yeah, because state law in Fl requires us they pay us overtime pay, they take whatever we pick per hour and times that by how many hours. So if we average $21 an hour picking, and we work 8 hours overtime, they times 8x21.

3PL companies split structurally between those built for ecommerce (high volume of individual small orders) and those built for traditional retail distribution (fewer, larger B2B shipments). The two categories use the same "3PL" label but operate fundamentally different infrastructure, tooling, and pricing models. Worth understanding the difference for operators evaluating providers.

Ecommerce-first 3PL companies like shipbob, shipmonk, portless, ecomflow, and nextsmartship are built around individual order pick pack ship workflows. Order profiles are 1 to 5 SKUs per order, average package weight under 3 lbs, integrations with shopify woocommerce and bigcommerce, and pricing models structured around per order pick fees plus storage tiers.

Traditional retail 3PLs are built around B2B distribution to retail chains. Order profiles are pallet quantities or full truckloads, EDI integrations with retail buyers (walmart, target, costco), pricing structured around per-pallet handling and trailer drops, and almost no individual order picking workflow at scale. Companies like dhl supply chain, geodis, and ryder play in this category.

The mistake operators make is choosing a traditional retail 3PL because the brand name is recognizable, then discovering their pick-pack-ship workflow for individual ecommerce orders is bolted on rather than core. Conversely, ecommerce-first 3PLs don't typically handle pallet-level B2B distribution well if you have a wholesale channel.

For ecommerce operators specifically, the relevant 3PL companies fall into geographic sub categories. Domestic US: shipbob, shipmonk. China based: portless, ecomflow, nextsmartship. Portless ships individual ecommerce orders out of shenzhen, plugs into shopify and woocommerce, and is firmly in the DTC 3PL category rather than B2B distribution. Each provider in the ecommerce first category has tradeoffs around contract terms, integration depth, and product weight fit.

For brands running both DTC and wholesale channels, the workable answer is usually a split: ecommerce first 3PL handles the DTC volume, traditional retail 3PL handles the wholesale lane. Trying to consolidate into one provider almost always sacrifices performance on one side.

Working through Bain's new report "The Rise of Autonomous, Intelligent Procurement" and a few stats stuck out:

- 60%+ procurement productivity gain where AI is effectively deployed

- 3–7% incremental savings on spend

- $180M projected from a single scaled agentic deployment

- ROI up to 5x

The part I keep circling back to: only ~5% of procurement orgs have AI fully deployed. ~60% are in planning or pilot.

Default read I'm seeing on LinkedIn this week is basically "pick the right agentic source-to-pay vendor and capture the upside." I don't think that's what the report actually says.

A sourcing tool waits for a buyer to specify the category, suppliers, criteria, timing. A sourcing agent monitors the category continuously, decides when an event is warranted, prepares the tender, qualifies suppliers, and surfaces a buyer only when a strategic trade-off needs human judgment.

That's not a software upgrade. That's a change in who initiates action — and most enterprise S2P stacks weren't built to host autonomous agents alongside human buyers in the same category.

McKinsey's recent work points the same way — they cite a chemicals company piloting autonomous sourcing in consumables that lifted staff efficiency 20–30% and pushed value capture up 1–3% on the spend in scope. The wins all come from workflow redesign, not vendor swap.

Curious what people on the inside are actually seeing:

- For those piloting AI agents in procurement — what's the actual blocker? Data? Governance? Change management? Vendor immaturity?

- Has anyone seen a deployment where the workflow was redesigned first vs. agents bolted onto existing source-to-pay?

- Are your suppliers deploying agents on their side yet? (My read is the buyer-with-tools / supplier-with-agents asymmetry is going to bite first.)

I’m in my last semester of BBA in Logistics & Supply Chain Management and I genuinely don’t know if this career is for me. I need advice from people who are actually working in this industry or who have gone through something similar.

My father is in the warehouse construction business, so he suggested I choose Logistics & Supply Chain Management for my degree. At that time, I didn’t really have much career knowledge, so I just went with it.

During my 3rd semester, I told my father that I wanted to do an internship because I wanted real exposure and clarity about my future. He took me to a warehouse. There, the warehouse manager rotated me through different departments to give me “ground knowledge.”

For the first 5 days, I stayed with the inventory team. Their job was mainly managing stock and loading products into racks.

Then for another 5 days, I worked with the unloading team — checking incoming products and marking entries on handheld devices/software.

After that, I spent around 7 days with the people creating TOs (Transfer Orders) and handling internal movement processes.

That was basically my exposure to the industry.

The problem is… I didn’t enjoy the environment at all. I felt disconnected from the work. I couldn’t imagine myself doing this every day for the rest of my life.

I told my father honestly that I don’t think this field matches my personality. I said I wanted exposure in business development or sales because I’m more interested in:

* dealing with clients,

* learning communication,

* closing deals,

* negotiation,

* understanding business growth,

* and working in a more dynamic office environment.

But my father strongly believes that without ground-level knowledge, I’ll never become successful in business or management. According to him, understanding operations from the bottom is extremely important before moving into higher-level roles.

Maybe he’s right, but at the same time, I feel frustrated and confused because I still don’t know whether logistics and supply chain is actually a good long-term career for someone like me.

So I want honest advice from people here:

* Is Logistics & Supply Chain Management actually a good career in the long run?

* Can someone make really good money in this field?

* Are there career paths in logistics that are more business-oriented instead of warehouse operations?

* Is sales/business development in logistics a better option for someone who enjoys communication and client interaction?

* Should I continue in this field or explore something completely different before it’s too late?

* Did anyone else feel disconnected from warehouse operations initially but later found a role they actually enjoyed?

I genuinely feel lost right now and would really appreciate practical advice instead of motivational lines.

MCF most FBA sellers use when they start a DTC channel. You're paying MCF rates which are higher than standard FBA, the packaging is amazon-branded unless you pay extra, and amazon keeps all the customer data. I ran it for months before modeling out what it was costing me.

Going to a domestic 3PL gives you more brand control, you own the customer relationship, you control the packaging, the Shopify integration is straightforward but getting inventory there from China is the problem. Ocean freight, customs, receiving at the warehouse, and suddenly you're carrying 90 days of capital before the first DTC order ships. The 3PL rate is fine, everything upstream of it is more complicated.

For origin fulfillment as the third option Portless warehouses inventory in Shenzhen and ships individual orders direct to customers. UK buyer sees Royal Mail tracking, US buyer sees USPS, nothing reads as shipped from China. Inventory live within 48 hours of production finishing. Per order freight runs higher than domestic ground so it works better on lighter products with decent margins, but the capital math changes when you're not floating 90 days of inventory in transit.

For anyone trying to build a real DTC operation and not just cross-fulfill from Amazon, the outsourced fulfillment question is as much about your cash position as your shipping cost.

With diesel prices hitting $5.64/gal this week—up 60% year-over-year—the "pennies are profit" mantra has never been more real.

In the current US logistics landscape, I’m curious to hear from my network: How are you maintaining margins right now

I just got an interview at the Aerospace Corporation for their subcontracts buyer position. I’m just looking around to see if anyone who has experience within the industry has advice on how to prepare!

For context I am close to being done with my MSc in international business and have prior internship experience working with suppliers/vendors in another industry + working with professors and ambassadors on policy briefs.

Always had aspirations in working within aerospace so I see this as a fantastic opportunity to get my foot through the door!

(Not an interview request)

For the last 18 months, "sustainable AI" has shown up in nearly every supply chain pitch deck circulating in the enterprise market. The argument is clean: AI ingests supplier data, models emissions, surfaces hot spots, automates decarbonization. The chart goes up and to the right. The CSO sleeps better. Procurement gets a dashboard.

The argument is also quietly falling apart in operations. Worth being honest about it before the next budget cycle.

A few numbers that don't reconcile:

• Scope 3 emissions account for ~80% of the typical company's footprint. Only ~10% of companies measure them with audit-grade accuracy (MIT Sloan; EcoVadis 2026).
• AI-focused operations are projected to draw close to 90 TWh of electricity in 2026 — nearly a 10x jump from 2022 (WEF, Feb 2026).
• A February 2026 industry review found 74% of AI-climate benefit claims could not be substantiated.

Supply chain leaders are sitting between two trends that don't reconcile. The board wants AI-led decarbonization. The data infrastructure underneath isn't built to support the claims being made on top of it.

What's actually happening on the ground

The pattern is consistent across enterprise CPG and industrial operators:

1. A sustainability mandate lands from the board, often well ahead of CSRD or CBAM deadlines.
2. Teams build a Scope 3 baseline from supplier surveys, industry-average emission factors, and a thin layer of actually-measured data. Confidence intervals are quietly enormous.
3. An AI platform — sometimes a startup, sometimes a Tier 1 module — gets layered on top to "improve data quality."

A year in, three things are usually true:

• Supplier survey response rates plateau well below 50%, so the model is still feeding on industry averages dressed up as primary data.
• The AI's measurable value concentrates in two narrow places — route optimization and energy anomaly detection at owned facilities. These were already the easiest emissions to attack.
• The harder questions — raw material substitution, supplier mix shifts, packaging redesign — are still being decided by humans in a meeting room. The AI doesn't help much because the data underneath isn't trustworthy enough.

The regulatory clock has shifted underneath all of this. CBAM left its transitional phase on January 1, 2026 — importers of covered goods now pay for actual certificates. CSRD is live for first-wave companies. Gartner expects 70% of technology sourcing leaders to carry sustainability-aligned performance objectives by 2026. The pressure has moved from the CSO down to procurement and operations, just as the data infrastructure is being asked to do real work for the first time.

Why this is structural, not incidental

This is a sequencing problem, not an execution problem.

Most enterprise supply chains weren't built to emit auditable carbon data. They were built to emit auditable cost and service data. ERP fields, master data hierarchies, supplier onboarding flows — all exist to answer "what did we pay, when did we receive it, did we hit the SLA." Carbon is a derivative metric, calculated downstream by a different team, using different system extracts, against emission factors maintained in a fourth place. Errors compound at every join.

AI is good at modeling on top of a clean substrate. It is bad at fixing the substrate. When the input is a supplier-reported figure that mixes plant-level allocations across three product families, the most sophisticated model produces a confident-looking number that does not survive an audit.

There's a second-order issue almost nobody is pricing in. The compute behind enterprise sustainability AI is non-trivial, and the embodied emissions of the model — training, hosting, inference — sit inside Scope 3 of the vendor, which becomes Scope 3 of the customer. Recent Nature Sustainability work on net-zero pathways for AI servers makes this concrete: data center electricity, water for cooling, hardware refresh cycles all show up in someone's value chain. The accounting standards aren't yet harmonized, so it just disappears for now. That won't last.

What the industry isn't saying out loud

Two things.

First, the most credible AI-driven sustainability work in supply chains today is narrow on purpose. The teams producing real, defensible reductions have stopped trying to model an entire enterprise's Scope 3 footprint with one tool. They pick one or two emissions categories — typically inbound freight or specific raw material flows — instrument those properly, and let AI do the optimization work only where the data is trustworthy. The grand "end-to-end emissions intelligence" pitches haven't held up under audit. The narrow ones have.

Second, the industry is not yet pricing the carbon cost of the AI itself into the cost-benefit case. Vendors quote avoided emissions; almost none quote the embodied emissions of the platform delivering them. As CBAM widens its product scope and CSRD audit pressure increases, "what is the net carbon position of running this AI?" will start showing up in procurement reviews. Most current vendor disclosures are not ready for that question.

Where this leaves operators

The interesting work in 2026 isn't picking an AI-driven sustainability platform. It's deciding which two or three emissions decisions in a given supply chain are worth instrumenting properly first, what data infrastructure those decisions actually require, and where AI genuinely improves the decision over a human with a well-built dashboard.

The mandate shifted. The substrate didn't. Whichever supply chains close that gap first will hold a meaningful advantage when the next regulatory wave lands.

Genuinely curious what people here are seeing:

• For anyone running a Scope 3 program — what's your supplier survey response rate honestly looking like, and how are you handling the gap?
• For anyone who's deployed an AI sustainability platform — has it produced an emissions reduction that survived audit, or is it still mostly dashboards?
• For procurement folks — are sustainability KPIs actually showing up in your performance objectives yet, or is that still a 2027 problem?
• And the uncomfortable one: is anyone tracking the embodied emissions of their AI stack as part of their Scope 3, or is that just being ignored until regulators force it?

Not selling anything. Just trying to compare notes because the marketing on this category is making it harder, not easier, to figure out what's real.