I’m the shipper for an LCL shipment under FCA terms, and I understand the seller/shipper should still handle export declaration/export clearance.

The forwarder is consolidating the cargo and has issued a draft BL, but the shipper name on the BL is shown as the forwarder/consolidator instead of my company.

Is this normal for LCL because it is a Master BL, or should I be asking for a House BL showing my company as shipper? Also, how should export declaration be arranged if the BL shipper is the forwarder?

Did something go wrong here, or is this just standard LCL consolidation practice?

Alright, let me be straight with you.

I'm a freight broker. I spend my days on the phone and in front of a screen trying to match freight with the right people to move it. And right now, I've got a customer with a solid lane that needs reliable carriers — not a one-and-done, but actual consistent volume over the next few weeks.

Here's the load:

Picking up out of Bedford Park, IL 60638, delivering to Beloit, WI 53511. About 90 miles, straightforward run. The freight is palletized bundles of treated wood boards, up to 44,000 lbs. Standard dry van, nothing exotic.

The schedule looks like this, 2 loads this week, 9 loads next week, and 5 more the first week of June. That's 16 loads total. My customer needs this moved and they need it done right.

I don't have a target rate to throw at you. I'm not going to lowball you with a number and see who bites. That's not how I like to do business. So instead, I'm coming here and asking you directly — what's your best rate on this lane?

If you're a carrier running Illinois or Wisconsin and you've got the capacity, I genuinely want to hear from you. Drop your rate in the comments or shoot me a DM. Let's talk.

I spent a while going through the usual options before landing on something that actually worked and the pattern I kept running into was the same across most of them.

The problem with Alibaba isn't that the factories aren't there, it's that you can't tell which listings are real manufacturers and which are trading companies presenting themselves as one. Gold supplier status just means they paid for the tier. it tells you nothing about whether they actually make anything. so you send out RFQs, you get responses back, and you're basically doing forensic work on every single reply trying to figure out who you're actually talking to before you've even asked a real question about your product.

Most of the managed sourcing options I looked at had the same issue in a different form. go ship pro, ecomm flow, day one fulfillment, they all handle logistics well but sourcing is either secondary or the vetting depth isn't something you can actually verify. You're still trusting someone else's process without being able to see how that process works.

The two that actually felt different were kanary solutions and commercive. Kanary stood out specifically because the vetting happens before you ever see a supplier name, they're filtering out trading companies on the ground before the list gets to you, so you're not starting from the full unfiltered pool. Commercive handles discovery on your behalf too which takes the manual work off your plate, though in my experience the depth varied depending on the product category.

If you've gone through this process, what actually replaced alibaba as a starting point for you?

We are currently looking for a reliable 3PL partner for a long-term collaboration.

Our warehouse is located in Oakville, Ontario, and we ship approximately 50 pallets of machinery parts per month to various locations across Canada. Most shipments require LTL freight services.

We are looking for a logistics partner that can provide dependable service, competitive rates, and strong nationwide coverage to support our growing operation.

If your company specializes in LTL freight and 3PL solutions across Canada, feel free to reach out.

Looking for a carrier long term, pick up from port of Houston to Mexico City. Thanks!!

I previously worked in spice exports from India, and one thing I noticed was how much of the supplier discovery and verification process is still manual and trust-based.

Curious to hear from importers, sourcing teams, and logistics professionals here:

• What usually goes wrong during supplier onboarding?
• How do you verify supplier credibility?
• What causes the most delays or headaches in the process?
• Are there any tools/workflows you wish existed?

Trying to understand real-world sourcing and logistics pain points from the buyer side.

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,

The Supreme Court just ended freight brokerage's free pass

Freight brokers used to have a legal shield that made it almost impossible to sue them when a carrier they hired caused an accident. The Supreme Court just took that shield away. Unanimously.

The case goes like this. A guy named Shawn Montgomery lost his leg when a truck hauling plastic pots veered off the road in Illinois. C.H. Robinson was the freight broker that booked the carrier. Montgomery tried to sue Robinson for hiring a dangerous carrier. C.H. Robinson's defense was essentially: federal law protects us from these kinds of lawsuits. A lower court agreed. The Supreme Court said no, actually, it doesn't.

That defense, which brokers across the industry have leaned on for years, is now gone.

So what changes? Brokers can now be sued in any state if they hired a carrier that had obvious red flags and something went wrong. The legal standard isn't that brokers have to guarantee nothing bad ever happens. It's just that they have to do their homework before booking a carrier. Check their safety record. Look them up. If a carrier had a terrible track record and you booked them anyway and someone got hurt, you're going to have a hard time explaining that to a jury.

The scary part is how much information is freely available. FMCSA's safety database is public and free. Crash rates, inspection history, out-of-service records, all of it is right there. Plaintiff attorneys have known this for years and have been building cases in anticipation of exactly this ruling. Those cases are getting filed soon.

And it's not just brokers. The court wrote about brokers because that's who the case was about, but the same logic applies to 3PLs, freight forwarders, and anyone else who selects carriers as part of their business.

What this means for you: If you broker freight or select carriers on behalf of clients, you need a documented process for vetting them. Not a mental checklist. An actual written process with records you can pull up later. If your current approach is basically "they have a valid license and a truck," that's not going to cut it anymore. Call your insurance broker, too, and ask whether your current coverage would actually respond to this kind of claim, because many policies weren't written with this exposure in mind.

UniUni is heading for a public market debut

Four weeks ago, we covered the Canadian 3PL expansion story in Edition 41: GXO opening in Mississauga, Arvato acquiring Think Logistics, IMC, and DP World planting flags north of the border. The thesis was that Canada's 3PL market, projected to nearly double to $49.7 billion by 2033, was finally ready for its moment.

This week, the biggest Canadian last-mile story yet: UniUni, the Richmond, BC-based delivery company, is reportedly planning to go public via a SPAC merger.

According to The Globe and Mail, the deal would merge UniUni with MAK Acquisition, a TSX-listed SPAC led by former Dye & Durham CEO Matthew Proud, valuing the combined entity at over $1 billion USD. UniUni is also raising $100 million in a PIPE alongside the deal. MAK confirmed it's in discussions but hasn't signed anything.

The numbers in the confidential memo obtained by The Globe and Mail are striking. Revenue grew from $113 million in 2023 to $295 million in 2024, then to $683 million in 2025. The company expects $1.1 billion this year and $1.5 billion in 2027. They lost $70 million in 2025 but expect profitability this year and $125 million in pre-tax profit in 2027.

UniUni runs a gig-powered delivery model, with 100,000 registered drivers delivering 1.2 million packages per day. Its primary customers are Shein and Temu. The company raised $85 million just two months ago from Beijing-based Rockets Capital and RBC, bringing total funding to $285 million.

There are some things worth watching carefully here. Uni's labor practices have drawn scrutiny, including multiple proposed class-action lawsuits. Media reports last year surfaced sordid conditions at a Connecticut warehouse. A company going public with that kind of background will face a different level of examination than a private operator.

But the growth trajectory is hard to argue with. And the timing, landing right as the Canada 3PL market is heating up and as Shein and Temu continue scaling North American operations, isn't an accident.

Trucks are the new ships

We've been tracking the Gulf crisis since the Strait of Hormuz closed, and one of the stories nobody expected to write is this: the global economy is partly being held together by 3,500 trucks running around the clock across the Arabian desert.

The Hormuz closure forced a rapid rerouting of trade. Shipping lanes built around a single chokepoint suddenly became unusable. What happened next was improvised on a scale that's genuinely hard to process.

Saudi Arabia's state-controlled mining company, Maaden, which exports phosphate fertilizer to global markets, had its entire supply chain misdirected. Its CEO, Bob Wilt, dispatched executives to Red Sea ports within days of the conflict starting. Two weeks later, he had rail and truck operators lined up. Six hundred trucks became 1,600, became 2,000, became 3,500. Each truck runs with two drivers to keep moving around the clock.

Wilt said Maaden will have caught up on its export backlog by the end of May. The cargo is already reaching Djibouti, Thailand, and Argentina via the Red Sea port of Yanbu.

And Maaden isn't the only one. MSC and Maersk are trucking goods across the Arabian Peninsula. Etihad Rail Freight moved hundreds of Nissans by train from Fujairah to Abu Dhabi, the country's first vehicle transport by rail. The UAE's port of Khor Fakkan saw truck traffic explode from 100 a day to 7,000. Weekly container traffic at the port went from 2,000 to 50,000. The operator, Gulftainer, hired 900 people in two weeks.

A UAE supermarket chain dispatched trucks loaded with British snacks on a 16-day journey from Kent through Western Europe, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to Dubai. This is the kind of supply chain improvisation that doesn't fit in a playbook.

Trucking routes can't match the capacity of ocean shipping or compete on cost. And they don't fix the energy crunch. But they've become a meaningful shock absorber in key markets, sustaining trade flows that would otherwise have collapsed.

It's also worth reading alongside the Mexico corridor story from a few weeks ago. Whether it's Mexico's Interoceanic Corridor, the Arabian desert routes, or LNG tankers taking the long way around, the same pattern keeps showing up: when a single-point bottleneck breaks, geography and improvisation fill the gap faster than anyone predicted. The traders who are ahead of it are the ones who already had contingency options mapped.

The tariff refunds are actually showing up

Back in Edition 42, we told you the CAPE portal was going live on April 20 and that the government was sitting on up to $175 billion in tariff refunds from duties the Supreme Court struck down in February. We told you to get your clients moving.

Here's the update: the refunds are coming. Faster than expected.

Customs began accepting refund claims on April 20 and said payments would start hitting accounts around May 11. That timeline held. As of last Friday, at least one importer had money in their account. Others received approval notices indicating payments would follow within days.

CMCBrands, a St. Louis apparel company, received notice that its first claim for roughly $42,000 had been approved. Their CEO said she was shocked by how fast it happened. A small wine importer, one of the lead plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case, expects to receive $100,000 and plans to use most of it to pay off suppliers. An art supply company in Washington plans to use part of its $18,000 refund to pay down a credit line and fund new product development. A California-based flowerpot importer expecting $150,000 is planning a sourcing trip to Vietnam.

The catch: about 63% of shipments subject to the tariffs are eligible in this first phase. The rest could take until 2027 to process. And the refund process is not automatic. You have to opt in, file the right paperwork, and wait. Some importers are still running into errors on the portal.

If your clients haven't filed yet, get them moving. Make sure their customs paperwork is clean before they submit, because errors will slow everything down. And if you want an intro to someone who can file the paperwork and offer upfront cash while they wait, reply to this email.

QUICK HITS

LAST MILE ‘Amazon Now’, a 30-minute delivery service for groceries and household essentials, is now live in Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, and Seattle, with rapid expansion planned through the rest of the year. Prime members pay $3.99 per delivery. This isn't a shot at FedEx or UPS. It's Amazon planting a flag directly in Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart territory, going after the "I need it now" consumer who's been the whole bet for gig-economy delivery platforms.

M&A Fulfillment Crowd, the UK-based tech-led 3PL backed by Palatine private equity, acquired Fulfilment.nl, a Dutch e-commerce logistics specialist. Fulfilment.nl will operate independently within the group under its existing management team. The Netherlands is a critical European logistics hub, and for fulfilmentcrowd, this is a direct play at cross-border EU volume. The mid-market 3PL consolidation story isn't only happening in North America.

PARTNERSHIPS Instacart added Ace Hardware to its same-day delivery platform, with delivery in as fast as one hour from thousands of locations nationwide. We covered Instacart's acquisition of Instaleap in Edition 42, which was about accelerating international retail partnerships. This is the domestic version of the same strategy: turning Instacart from a grocery app into a local retail delivery layer. The platform now works with more than 2,200 retail banners across nearly 100,000 stores in North America. The pace of category expansion is not slowing down.

ENFORCEMENT A California aluminum company, Perfectus Aluminum Inc., agreed to pay $549.5 million to resolve allegations it evaded antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese aluminum extrusions. The company imported millions of aluminum extrusions, spot-welded them into "pallets" to misrepresent them as finished merchandise not subject to duties, then imported over 2.2 million of them between 2011 and 2014. A jury convicted the company in 2021. The settlement resolves the civil case. $549.5 million is not a slap on the wrist. With the Trade Fraud Task Force operating at full speed, duty evasion is a much riskier calculation than it was five years ago.

INFRASTRUCTURE CH Robinson's Robinson Fresh division opened a 142,600 square-foot facility in Pharr, Texas, just miles from the US-Mexico border near the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge. The facility has 69 dock doors, multiple temperature zones, and is designed specifically for fresh produce cross-border supply chains. 55% of all fresh produce imported from Mexico enters through Texas. As we've covered, Mexico's role in US supply chains is only getting more entrenched, not less, regardless of what happens in the courts on tariffs. Fresh produce was always going to need infrastructure that matches the volume.

INFRASTRUCTURE Dollar Tree opened a 1 million-square-foot distribution center in Litchfield Park, Arizona, which will serve about 700 stores across the West and Southwest starting next month. A second DC in Marietta, Oklahoma, is scheduled to open in 2027, replacing the facility destroyed by a tornado in 2024. The Arizona opening is part of a deliberate push to reduce transit miles and get product closer to stores. When a retailer whose entire brand promise is price talks about investing in speed, it's usually because transportation costs are eating into margins.

That's all for this week. If you found this useful, consider subscribing.
(Your data will not be shared. Subscribers' data is strictly for sending out the weekly newsletter.)

Been looking at joining one of the bigger forwarder networks but not sure which actually delivers ROI. Fees aren't cheap (a few k USD/year for most of them) so wondering what the experience has been. Which one to choose?

For those of you who've been members of any of these for 2+ years:

• Did you actually get usable agent business out of it, or mostly just contacts?
• Which one has the strongest EU↔Asia coverage in your experience?
• Any networks you joined and then dropped?

Thanks!

Hello everyone,

i've done some material/procurement planning in an 8 months long internship last year but now im unemployed and i was wondering if theres something i can do to increase my chances of getting an interview. although i know the chances are small.

I live in morocco and i think people don't give quiet people many chances although ive done my best to change and i think i improved but still have a long way to go.

Thank u guys for any suggestion

Tried using multiple sources and still unable to be the first choice of a forwarder to become the partner agent.
What else can I do?

Anyone used Hormuz Jeff for Middle East shipments?

Hey guys, does anyone have recent feedback about what it’s like to work as a Product Owner at this company?

I’ve found a mix of good and bad reviews online, but most of them are pretty outdated. Curious to hear from people with more recent experience — work culture, management, growth opportunities, workload, work-life balance, etc.

No one desires the storage cabinet talk. It is not glamorous, it is not featured in quarterly reports and it is the type of procurement decision that is simply handed over to the person who is least likely to attract opposition in the room and therein lies the trouble. Lack of proper storage facilities in warehouses is silently draining productivity, posing safety risks, and costing companies money they can no longer accurately trace due to the inefficiency being so ingrained in the day to day running of the business that no one questions it anymore.

Unorganized warehouses are not only an aesthetic issue. It is time issue. Each minute a worker is searching a tool, part, or document is a minute wasted. Take that times a complete team over a complete year and the figures become uncomfortable within no time. Correct storage bins the appropriate size, at the appropriate places, with a sensible system of classification lowers the time of finding something and reduces the number of mistakes made when workers reach in and collect the wrong item or when visibility is low.

A safety argument is underplayed in a criminal manner as well. Poorly preserved equipment, chemicals, and heavy materials are a real threat. The reasons why regulatory bodies in most countries have explicit guidelines on what should be used in storage of goods is not in vain, and companies that consider the guidelines as guidelines are just one inspection away to a rather costly lesson. The presence of heavy-duty steel cabinets with good locking mechanisms and shelving rated in pounds is uniquely due to the fact that someone, somewhere, had been taught that lesson.

The barrier of costs is not valid either. Store cabinets of industrial level warehouse storage cabinets are commonly sold at low prices on such platforms as Alibaba, DHgate as well as Amazon Business, where manufacturers provide the possibility to order the cabinets in different configurations to fit various loads and space limitations. The true expense is what you pay not to do something.

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 🤪

Background: I run a diesel emissions service company in Atlanta. We work with commercial fleets throughout the Southeast. I've been watching this case and I think there's an angle relevant to logistics and supply chain that isn't getting coverage.

Monday's Supreme Court decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport eliminated the federal preemption defense freight brokers have used for years to avoid liability in carrier accident cases. 9-0. Every justice agreed.

The immediate story is about crash liability. But the ruling has a structural implication that matters for shippers and 3PLs specifically.

The liability chain doesn't stop at the broker. Legal observers are already noting that if brokers can be held liable for negligent carrier selection, the next argument is that shippers who hired those brokers may face the same scrutiny. The broker you use to insulate yourself from carrier liability is now less insulated than they were 72 hours ago. And when their protection runs out, plaintiff attorneys look upstream.

The secondary angle — the one I came to this from — is emissions. A significant portion of the commercial carrier pool is operating illegally deleted equipment. These carriers run lower costs because they've eliminated real regulatory expenses. Brokers selecting on price may be systematically routing freight to the lowest-cost pool, which in some markets skews toward noncompliant operators.

The Court's ruling says nothing about emissions. It also says nothing that excludes emissions from the principle it established. That open space is where future legal arguments get built.

For logistics professionals whose job includes carrier selection or broker management, I wrote a detailed breakdown of the ruling, the liability chain, and what it may mean going forward: https://dpfguys.com/supreme-court-montgomery-v-caribe-transport/

Not legal advice. Just an industry operator who thinks this deserves more attention than it's getting in supply chain circles.

Posting this every week for anyone who wants a quick read before Monday. All data verified with sources.

OIL / FUEL
• WTI closed Friday at $106/bbl — +11% for the week. Hormuz still fully closed.
• Diesel national avg: $5.639/gal (EIA wk May 12). Monday’s EIA release will show the surge from WTI +11%. Lock in FSC rates today.
• California: $7.36/gal. Gulf Coast cheapest at $5.18/gal.

SPOT RATES (DAT wk May 11, latest available)
• Dry Van: $2.37/mi (+1¢ WoW)
• Reefer: $2.73/mi (+1¢ WoW)
• Flatbed: $3.06/mi (+3¢ WoW) — 18th consecutive week up
• Total broker-posted: $3.39/mi (+39% YoY, ATH)

WEATHER — active right now
• Iowa: Severe Thunderstorm Watch active, 39 counties. Baseball hail, 60mph winds, I-35 directly hit. Add 3-6h ETA buffer.
• Monday: Next round of severe storms Iowa/Central Plains (strong cold front + lee cyclone KS)
• East Coast: Early season heatwave Mon-Fri → reefer demand spike incoming
• CO/WY Rockies: Late season snow possible next week

REEFER — book now
Availability is LOW. CVSA just ended (trucks returning) but Iowa storms + East heatwave = no relief. Tightest reefer window of the year.

BORDER
Post-CVSA normalizing. 30-60min residual buffer still advised at major crossings. CBP live: bwt.cbp.gov

RAIL (AAR wk May 9)
513,755 carloads & intermodal units, +3.7% YoY. Grain +16.7%, Chemicals +6%, Intermodal +4%.

If this is useful I’ll keep posting weekly. We track all this daily.
Sources: EIA, DAT via FleetOwner/Overdrive, NWS SPC, AAR via FreightWaves, CBP.