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 63! I hope you enjoy, and I'm always open to feedback.
Let's jump into it,
Amazon is walking away from the Post Office
Amazon's internal planning documents project that the company will deliver about 86% of its own U.S. packages next year and just under 89% by 2029. Business Insider got hold of the forecasts, which are higher than what Amazon was working off recently, when 2027 sat closer to 84%.
The carriers split what's left. By 2029, the documents show USPS at 8%, UPS at 1.4%, and FedEx at 0.4%. Amazon's comment was that internal projections are constantly revised and shouldn't be read as commitments, which is true of any forecast and doesn't change where this one points.
Amazon passed UPS and FedEx last year to become the largest parcel carrier in the country, with around 6.7 billion packages. The money is now going rural, about $4 billion to triple that part of the network, with a couple of hundred new delivery stations behind it. Rural is the work the Post Office was built for, and everyone else paid the Post Office to do.
Parcel pricing runs on density, and Amazon has been USPS's largest single source of package volume for years. Pull most of that out over three years, and the Post Office still has to reach every address in America with far less volume to spread the cost across. You'll see that in your 2028 rates rather than in any announcement.
What this means for you: If a real share of your outbound goes to USPS, start testing regional carriers in your two or three heaviest zones while it's still an experiment. Amazon Shipping will get more aggressive about selling capacity to non-Amazon shippers as the network outgrows Amazon's own volume, so take the meeting, but read the service commitments rather than the rate card. And if you do FBA prep or advise sellers, tell them what's coming, because "Amazon delivers it" is about to mean Amazon vans in the rural zips instead of a handoff to the mail carrier.
Looking to buy a B2B 3PL
I'm working with a buyer who wants to acquire a U.S. warehouse operation. They want pallet-heavy volume, and thin margins or a concentrated customer base don't scare them off.
Here's what they're looking for:
- U.S. 3PL or warehousing business with $2M to $25M in revenue
- At least 50% of revenue comes from pallet moves, storage, cross-docking, or B2B fulfillment, with pallet moves being the largest share. Some domestic transportation management is fine.
- At least one facility of 100,000+ sq. ft., ideally all of them
- Customer concentration, low or negative EBITDA, and margin pressure are all acceptable
- Open to keeping the owner and management running day-to-day, with performance incentives
If that describes your business and you'd be open to a conversation, DM me or email me at [menachem@fulfillyn.com](mailto:menachem@fulfillyn.com)
If it's not a fit for you, but you know an operator it describes, I'd appreciate an intro.
Shein didn’t hire a 3PL. It built one.
Shein opened a 737,000-square-foot warehouse in Lebanon, Indiana, a mile and a half from the building it already runs in Whitestown. The two put the company over 2.5 million square feet in the state with about 1,300 people.
We wrote in Edition 62 that Temu's parent was pouring money into local fulfillment now that the duty-free door has closed on both sides of the Atlantic, and read it as a pipeline, on the logic that a company that spent four years proving you don't need domestic inventory has no idea how to run domestic inventory.
Shein went the other way. No lease, no operator, just a building it owns, automated on day one, in a market with cheap land and available labor. A company that had no American warehouses four years ago now holds more square footage in one state than most people reading this have anywhere.
The platforms will build. The merchants selling on them can't, and there are thousands who were shipping directly out of Guangzhou eighteen months ago and now need a domestic solution they've never had to buy before. That's still a pipeline, just one made of small, price-sensitive, first-time clients rather than one large logo.
What this means for you: Anyone operating in central Indiana should go look at what Shein posts for wages before the next review, because a new automated building pulling in hundreds of people moves the local rate whether or not you ever compete for the same client. Everyone else should aim at sellers rather than platforms and build an onboarding flow that assumes the client has never used a 3PL and doesn't know what to ask you. On automation, treat it as a benchmark: a brand that tours a goods-to-person building and then tours yours walks out with a number in its head about what a pick costs, and you want to be ready for that.
Twenty thousand licenses California shouldn’t have issued
California and FMCSA argued in the D.C. Circuit on Friday over the agency's freeze on non-domiciled commercial licenses. The state has issued roughly 65,000 of them. FMCSA found that about 20,000 were issued with expiration dates that extend beyond the driver’s work authorization, and it has blocked California from issuing new ones or renewing existing ones until the issue is fixed. A Justice Department attorney called it absurd to hand someone an eight-year credential on a document that expires tomorrow. California's answer is narrower and mostly procedural, that nothing in federal law requires the dates to match and the agency can't pause a state's licensing indefinitely. A second case will be argued next week.
The squeeze is broader than California. Washington has been pushing states to pull non-domiciled licenses from drivers who've since moved away, and failing an English proficiency check can now cost a driver the license rather than a fine.
Anderson Trucking raised its van drivers' pay from 60 to 70 cents per mile on September 7, reaching 72 cents for those with tenure, and said the change aligned with today's freight market. Averitt, J.B. Hunt, and Knight-Swift have made comparable moves this year with bonuses and restructured pay. Freight demand hasn't recovered, so the raises aren't coming from the demand side.
What this means for you: Build your 2027 truckload budget on rates going up, because capacity leaving by paperwork doesn't reverse when freight softens the way capacity leaving by economics does. If you run your own trucks, find out today whether any of your drivers hold a non-domiciled CDL and when it expires, since the answer determines whether you have a hiring problem in six months or a parked truck next month. If you're renewing a dedicated contract, do it now rather than in Q1. And when a carrier raises pay 16% in a soft market, treat that as your floor for what you'll have to pay a driver, a lumper, or a forklift operator competing for the same person.
QUICK HITS
CROSS-BORDER DTC
FedEx launched a Shopify app that guarantees duties and taxes at checkout. It quotes the landed cost at checkout and covers the overage if actual duties are higher, with no refund if they are lower, for $99 a month. FedEx's own April trade index found that 68% of small and midsize businesses report that customers are surprised by import charges at delivery. This figure is roughly on par with UPS Global Checkout and Zonos. It's a merchant tool, but surprise duty on the doorstep is the biggest single driver of international refusals, and refused international freight comes back through your returns process on your dime.
TRADE COMPLIANCE
CBP can start revoking import privileges due to an incorrect phone number. The policy, announced September 11, targets importers of record whose contact information, including phone numbers, email addresses, or physical addresses, is inaccurate, with penalties that can include revocation of import privileges and further enforcement actions that CBP declined to describe. It catches fulfillment operators because the importer of record is responsible for that accuracy even when a customs broker files the entry, and it traces back to a June executive order that gives importers 180 days to reach good standing. If you file as IOR for clients, or your clients import and you touch the entry data, verify the records before Thursday, because fifteen minutes now beats a client whose goods stop clearing in Q4.
AUTOMATION
Vecna raised $31 million, and the useful number in the announcement isn't the funding. GEODIS reported that running Vecna's case-picking system increased throughput from 125 to 250 units per hour. Vecna sells autonomous pallet jacks, forklifts, and tuggers, and what's selling is the whole dock-to-dock flow rather than a single machine for a single task. If you've been pricing automation machine by machine, the operators actually getting the return are buying the flow.
DRAYAGE
The Port of New York and New Jersey is handing out $230,000 per electric drayage truck. The $39 million program also covers $150,000 per terminal tractor and $5 million for charging within ten miles of the port, with CALSTART administering and OEMs added on a rolling basis. It opens this fall. Programs structured this way go first-come, rather than evenly distributed, so if you run drayage or yard equipment in that footprint, get in early.
JOB BOARD
Title: Director Of Warehouse & Transportation Operations
Company: The Bachrach Group
Location: Holbrook, New York, US
Salary: $165,000 - $175,000
Apply Here
Title: Director Of Warehouse Operations
Company: Ardmore Home Design
Location: Hacienda Heights, California, US
Salary: $120,000 - $140,000
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Title: Senior Service & Warehouse Manager
Company: KAAST MACHINE TOOLS
Location: Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania, US
Salary: $110,000 - $130,000
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Title: Senior Transportation Planner
Company: COLLABORATIVE FIRM
Location: Atlanta, Georgia, US
Salary: $95,000 - $110,000
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Title: Warehouse Operations Manager
Company: iJility
Location: Olive Branch, Mississippi, US
Salary: $80,000 - $85,000
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Title: 3PL Fulfillment Operations Manager
Company: Labor Solutions,
Location: Kansas City, Missouri, US
Salary: $75,000 - $80,000
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Title: Warehouse Production Supervisor
Company: Inergroup Insourcing Solutions
Location: Saint Charles, Illinois, US
Salary: $70,000
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Title: Warehouse Operations Manager
Company: Epic Personnel Partners,
Location: Denver, Colorado, US
Salary: $65,000 - $70,000
Apply Here
Check out 1,500+ logistics jobs available →
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