Hey everyone,

If it's your first time reading one of my posts, I break down the top logistics news from the past week, so you're always up to date.

Let's jump into it,

Millions of Americans are shrinking, and it's creating a logistics headache

About 1 in 8 U.S. adults is currently on a GLP-1 drug, and by 2030, that number could hit 30 million, especially now that GLP-1s come in pill form. Adoption is about to accelerate even faster.

So why am I writing about this in a logistics newsletter? Well, all these people now need new clothes. A lot of new clothes.

80% of GLP-1 users say they'll need a new wardrobe due to weight changes. Over half have already started buying. If each user drops about three sizes and buys five to eight items per size, that translates to somewhere between 150 million and 700 million additional apparel items purchased this year alone. The upper bound? An extra $13 billion in annual U.S. apparel spending.

The inventory headache: This is where it gets interesting for warehouses and 3PLs. Retailers traditionally order on a 1-2-2-1 size curve (one small, two mediums, two larges, one XL). That's shifting to 2-2-1-1. Size curve accuracy has historically been 20-50%, and GLP-1s are making it even harder to forecast. A fashion retailer doing $1 billion in annual sales could lose $20 million in margin due to size-curve mismatches alone.

Target's extended-size offerings fell by 37% from March 2025 to March 2026. Old Navy's plus-size options dropped 12% year-over-year. The industry is adjusting in real time, and that means more returns, more markdowns, and more inventory churn flowing through fulfillment networks.

For 3PLs: If you serve apparel brands, expect shifting SKU mixes, faster inventory turns in certain size ranges, and potentially higher return volumes as people buy clothes that don't fit their rapidly changing bodies. The brands that figure out how to serve customers during a physical transformation (not just at the end of one) are going to generate a lot of fulfillment volume.

Class 8 truck orders just doubled for the second month in a row

North American Class 8 truck orders surged 126% year-over-year in March to 37,200 units. That's the second consecutive month with orders more than doubling the prior year.

The math on the first quarter is wild: annualized Q1 orders came in at over 428,000 units. That's a lot of trucks.

So what's driving it? Aging fleets, improving freight rates, tightening capacity, and a return of the driver shortage are all pushing carriers to place orders. There's also a looming cost factor: the EPA's 2027 emissions technology is coming, and fleets want to lock in builds before those price increases take effect.

There's also a FOMO problem. When order books start filling up, fleets rush to secure build slots, whether they need trucks right now or not. And if the demand turns out to be fundamentally real (not just catch-up ordering), the question becomes whether manufacturers can actually ramp production fast enough to meet it.

Bottom line: The freight market recovery is looking more durable than it did six months ago. But "recovery" and "boom" are different words, and the industry still has plenty of headwinds to navigate.

TRENDS I’M SEEING

1. The 3PL market is expanding into Canada (finally)

As someone from Canada, I know firsthand how slow the country has been to adopt the kind of e-commerce logistics infrastructure the U.S. has had for years. So seeing multiple major providers make moves north of the border in the same quarter is a pretty clear signal that Canada is finally ready for the full ecommerce experience.

GXO Logistics opened a new distribution center in Mississauga, Ontario. Arvato acquired Think Logistics, a Canadian 3PL headquartered in Mississauga. IMC Logistics announced plans to open a marine drayage operation in Toronto in Q2 2026, and DP World opened a new freight forwarding office in Montreal.

The numbers back up the momentum. Canada's 3PL market was valued at $23.1 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $49.7 billion by 2033, growing at an annual rate of 8.4%.

For anyone who's been watching the Canadian market from the sidelines, the window to establish a presence is narrowing. When GXO, Arvato, IMC, and DP World are all making moves in the same quarter, early-mover advantage is evaporating quickly.

2. Cold Storage: a tale of two markets

Two weeks ago, we covered how cold storage vacancy rates across the U.S. have spiked to levels not seen since the early 2000s. The classic construction-overhang story: pandemic-era demand drove a construction boom; those facilities are finishing now, and demand has returned to normal.

But here's the nuance: the large, established cold storage operators are absolutely killing it right now. If you're already set up for cold and frozen fulfillment with modern infrastructure and established client relationships, you're likely experiencing a backlog of prospects trying to get through your doors. The demand is real. It's the new, unproven capacity that's struggling.

Would I still recommend entering the cold storage space? Yes. Here's why. E-commerce adoption continues to penetrate deeper into categories that require temperature control. More people are ordering frozen and fresh foods online instead of going to the store. The pharmaceutical side is booming with drugs increasingly being shipped directly to consumers. Quick commerce platforms need faster, more reliable cold chain logistics. These are structural tailwinds, not cyclical ones.

The global cold chain logistics market is projected to exceed $525 million by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate of more than 15%, the highest among all fulfillment sectors.

The caveat is timing and positioning. If you're entering now, you're walking into a market with excess capacity and landlords offering concessions. That's actually not a bad thing if you're strategic about it. Lock in favorable lease terms, invest in modern infrastructure, and build toward the demand curve.

3. The rise of the specialty 3PL

This is something I posted about on LinkedIn last year, and last week’s news confirms the trend is accelerating.

Most 3PLs market themselves as the jack-of-all-trades. They'll handle apparel, food and beverage, big and bulky, hazmat, you name it. The pitch is always "we do it all." But the market is starting to reward specialization.

ShipMonk opened a new fulfillment center in Louisville, Kentucky, that is purpose-built for apparel brands. Not a general warehouse that also handles apparel. A facility designed from the ground up around how apparel brands actually operate.

The 406,000-square-foot facility has high-density layouts optimized for deep garment inventories and footwear assortments, next-generation receiving workflows to speed up dock-to-stock time, dedicated rework stations for garment restoration, including steaming and re-tagging, on-site embroidery for premium customization, and specialized workflows for wholesale compliance and retailer prep.

This is the first ShipMonk facility designed around a single category, and that's the part worth paying attention to. They're treating it as an innovation hub where they'll develop apparel-specific solutions before scaling them across their broader network.

The logic is straightforward. Apparel fulfillment has distinct challenges that general-purpose warehouses handle poorly: massive SKU counts driven by size and style combinations, high return rates driven by fit issues, soft goods that need careful handling, and presentation standards that directly impact the customer experience. A warehouse optimized for all of those things will outperform one that tries to be good at everything.

Pay attention to this trend. The "we do everything" pitch is getting harder to sell as competitors offer category-specific expertise backed by purpose-built infrastructure. You don't have to specialize overnight, but identifying one or two categories where you can build genuine depth is going to matter more and more.

QUICK HITS

U.S. tariff revenue dropped by over $4 billion in March.
That's the fifth consecutive monthly decline, and marks a nearly 30% drop from last October when monthly tariff revenue peaked at $31.35 billion. Between the Supreme Court striking down IEEPA tariffs and importers shifting sourcing away from heavily tariffed countries, don't expect this trend to reverse anytime soon.

Tools we're watching: We're constantly looking at the best tools for 3PLs, and last week we posted about a new cash-back card tailored for 3PLs that offers up to 3% cash back on all shipping and ad spend. A few of you messaged me last week saying you use their service, and their team actually reached out to me. If you're interested in learning more, DM me.

Truckstop acquired Wize Load, a heavy haul rate intelligence provider. Heavy-haul and overdimensional freight requires permits, escorts, specialized equipment, and routing restrictions, making pricing a nightmare. Brokers currently piece together quotes from multiple sources. Truckstop is betting that consolidating that data into one platform is worth paying for.

STG acquired Carrier Logistics Inc. (CLI), the leading transportation management software provider for LTL carriers. The private equity firm plans to integrate "agentic AI" into CLI's core platform to build what they're calling an AI-native operating system for terminal-based motor carriers. If you run LTL operations on CLI software, expect changes.

Crane Worldwide Logistics expanded into Spain by acquiring Blue Cargo, a freight forwarder with air, ocean, and road capabilities plus a bonded warehouse in Madrid. The Houston-based company is building out its Southern European footprint for customs clearance and freight consolidation in Spain and Portugal.

project44 acquired LunaPath dot AI, an AI-native logistics automation company focused on orchestration and execution agents. It's project44's second AI acquisition after ClearMetal in 2021, and signals a push from supply chain visibility (watching things happen) to autonomous execution (making things happen automatically).

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