Art of Supply

Imagine seeing one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world almost empty, before realizing that it isn't empty at all. The ships are still there, but the data has disappeared. Analysts monitoring the Strait of Hormuz have watched vessels vanish only to reappear someplace else hours later. Others appear to be sailing across inland airports or drifting through the Iranian desert.  The Automatic Id...

Cross-border payments have long been a game of advantages. Large enterprises get fast settlement, cheap foreign exchange rates, and sophisticated treasury tools, while mid-market companies are left to piece together workarounds through regional banks and costly third-party providers.  Stablecoin infrastructure is changing that equation, offering businesses of all sizes access to the same financial...

On Wednesday, June 10th, Amazon announced that they will now offer full LTL services to anyone.  Before that, LTL was available "inbound only," meaning from Amazon sellers to Amazon facilities to Amazon customers. In their press outreach, the company has touted their 80,000 trailers and 24,000 intermodal containers, as well as improved load visibility and fleet security measures. The response to t...

"Demand planning is the thing which everybody seems to focus on, because it's kind of theoretical. You come up with a forecast and it doesn't really influence anything. It's when you look at the supply side, that's when it becomes real." Most supply chains are supported by investments in demand planning tools, sales and operations planning systems, and MRPs… so why is the supply plan being 'fixed'...

Can a mega merger of peers increase competition in their market? Case in point: the proposed rail merger between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. Both are Class I railroads, among the largest by revenue in North America as defined by the Surface Transportation Board. According to a 2001 Surface Transportation Board rule, their merger must enhance competition - but that's not usually how mergers...

On Monday, June 1st, FedEx Freight CEO John Smith rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate the fact that the company is now operating (and trading) independently. This story dates back to the summer of 2024, when the idea of separating out FedEx's LTL operating unit was just a very believable rumor. Now they are the largest LTL provider in North America, and what one outle...

Endless Shrimp is BACK at Red Lobster… a headline few people in the business world would have predicted.  The promotion played an over-hyped role in the company's 2024 bankruptcy filing, mostly because it was easier to explain than a bad real estate leaseback deal led by investors at the time – the actual cause of Red Lobster's financial trouble. Their new CEO, Damola Adamolekun, is best known for...

China's new supply chain regulations may be one of the biggest global trade and sourcing stories that almost nobody is talking about. Decree 834 and 835 quietly took effect - immediately - on April 7th and 13th. If China decides to enforce them, they could fundamentally change how multinational companies approach sourcing, reshoring, compliance, and supplier diversification. In this episode of Art...

During the pandemic, some buyers and suppliers made aggressive bets about the future.  Demand was surging, capacity was constrained, and everyone worried more about shortages than oversupply. For a while, it looked like the logic was sound, but now one of those agreements has turned into a $175.5 Million jury verdict. Boston Beer Company (through its subsidiary American Craft Brewery) has been fou...

"We have seen a transformation between the public sector and the private sector in terms of their relationship. We've seen enormous change in this country." - Guy Battle, CEO of Social Value Portal The U.K. Social Value Act of 2012 requires all public sector buyers to ask suppliers how much their business will contribute to the community if they win the work up for bidding. It has not just become...

Amazon packages represent 15% of the United States Postal Service's package volume, but about 7.5% of their revenue. Amazon is USPS's biggest customer, even though Amazon passed the USPS to become the largest domestic parcel carrier in 2025. The current Amazon - USPS agreement expires on September 30, 2026, just days before the USPS may run out of the cash required to operate. Amazon has signaled...

"This was a company that was once all about volume, was all about customer service, was all about growth, was all about sales, was all about creating jobs." - Sean O'Brien, General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters In 2024, Amazon accounted for 11% of UPS's revenue but between 20% and 25% of U.S. network volume. When UPS announced that they were planning to reduce their Amazon pack...

"If you focus too much on efficiency, you might get something cheap – but it doesn't deliver what you want. If you focus too much on effectiveness, you might spend more than you need. Those two sides need to be balanced." - Andrew Quincey It is much more difficult to measure value than savings, so even the most skilled procurement professionals tend to focus on savings instead of value. If, howeve...

"What happens clear across the world has a very, very big impact, potentially, to U.S. cargo. We've had to take a wider lens look at all of the risks." - FMC Chairman Laura DiBella The Federal Maritime Commission is an independent, bipartisan agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for overseeing the international ocean transportation system as it relates to U.S. cargo. The FMC's jurisdi...

"If you don't figure out a way to treat your carriers ethically and help them make money, you're not going to have them." - Michael Riccio, former TIA Chairman and founder of More Than Miles Consulting In this episode, Kelly Barner is joined by two leaders from the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA): Michael Riccio, former TIA Chairman and founder of More Than Miles Consulting, and Da...

"With tariffs in the news again and the trade policy environment shifting, folks are back to wanting to relearn about the [foreign-trade zone] program."  Foreign-trade zones (FTZs) allow companies to bring goods into secure U.S. locations without immediately entering U.S. commerce for customs purposes. They allow businesses to defer duties, taxes, and fees until goods officially enter the market,...

Coffee is one of those products people think of as routine, almost automatic. It is part of the morning, part of the commute, part of the office, part of the café economy. So when something changes in the coffee supply chain, people feel it. In late 2025, coffee prices started rising thanks to a combination of forces: weather shocks in major producing countries, tariff policy changes that altered...

The ports of Balboa and Cristóbal bookend the Panama canal. They don't control the canal, and they have been privately operated by CK Hutchison's Panama Ports Company for decades.  Those old contracts are now in the middle of a legal fight, a sovereignty debate, and a live test of how far national power competitions can reach into commercial infrastructure. Panama's Supreme Court recently ruled th...

At its peak, iRobot generated nearly $1.6 Billion in annual revenue, and by 2022 Amazon believed the company was worth $1.7 Billion. By just a few years later, the company that pioneered consumer robotics would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company that ultimately took ownership of iRobot wasn't Amazon or another Silicon Valley tech firm or even a U.S. competitor. It was the company's own ov...

"There are a lot of different ways to hold all of the conspirators who are involved in the effort to intentionally smuggle counterfeit goods into the U.S. and into U.S. systems accountable."  Most modern supply chains are complex, sprawling beasts. Their global scale is highly strategic, but it also creates opportunities for criminal organizations to threaten companies, the Federal government, war...

How could a company worth about $3 Million wipe out more than $17 Billion in transportation market value in a single day? On February 12th, a press release from Algorhythm Holdings, a company that started its life as a karaoke machine manufacturer, announced that its AI-enabled freight platform SemiCab could reduce empty truck miles by more than 70 percent. By midday, major logistics firms were do...

"Shipping in 2026 is going to get darker." - Michelle Wiese Bockmann, Senior Maritime Intelligence Analyst, Windward  Right now, somewhere between 900 and 2,000 aging oil tankers are operating in the shadows. They are carrying sanctioned crude from Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. This so-called "shadow fleet" often sails under false flags, spoofs its locations, turns off monitoring systems, transfers...

"Capacity reduction is clearly under way. Regulatory enforcement of qualifications and safety standards was arguably the most welcome development in 2025 for our industry." - Adam Miller, CEO of Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings The trucking industry has been flooded with headlines about enforcement: English language proficiency checks, non-domiciled CDL restrictions, immigration raids, and cou...

Imagine a single railroad company that could move freight seamlessly from the ports of Los Angeles to the ports of New York without handoffs, interchange delays, or needing to switch carriers mid-journey. That's the promise behind the proposed merger between the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern railroads. If the deal is approved, it will create the first single-line transcontinental railroad in...

In late 2023, one of the world's most critical maritime chokepoints effectively broke. After Hamas' October 7th attack on Israel, Houthi militants began targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Initially, their target was Israel-linked vessels, then they increasingly started targeting anything that passed through. What followed was a near-collapse of confidence in the Suez Canal, a route that...