Ship Happens. We talk about it.
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The Need for RTO is a Management Problem, Not a Productivity One
Let's talk about return-to-office, because the headlines have been hard to miss and the takes have been…something.
By Q2 2025, JLL reported 54% of Fortune 100 employees were under five-day office mandates, up from 11% the year before. Heading into 2026, Instagram pulled US staff back to the office five days a week, Microsoft tightened to three days, and NBCUniversal moved to four (with a voluntary severance package for anyone who didn't like it). And those are just the names you've heard of. Some of the largest freight brokerages in North America are doing the same thing, quietly or otherwise.
I've run a brokerage remotely since 2016 and I've been a full-time digital nomad since 2022. I've worked from twelve countries in the last few years and the freight has continued to move, the customers have continued to get serviced, and the carriers have continued to get paid. So forgive me if I'm not buying the productivity argument.
What Is the Jones Act Even Protecting Anymore?
Last week, the US Administration extended the Jones Act waiver another 90 days. And it barely seems to have registered. And even in logistics, the industry that should care most, the reaction was kind of just a collective shrug.
Which is strange, because this is one of the messiest, most-nuanced shipping stories of the year, and the reason it's messy has almost nothing to do with the waiver itself. It has to do with about a hundred years of decision-making that got us here.
Ghost Ships, Real Consequences
There's a whole shadow world operating underneath legitimate global shipping, and it's bigger than most people realize.
The dark fleet (also called the shadow fleet) is a loose network of oil tankers that move sanctioned crude around the world, specifically designed to get around Western trade restrictions. It's not a coordinated cartel with a headquarters somewhere. It's more like a swarm, hundreds of vessels operating under a shared logic: move oil that isn't supposed to move, and don't get caught. Or the IMO definition is vessels engaging in illegal operations to circumvent sanctions, evade safety/environmental regulations, or bypass insurance costs, typically using deceptive tactics
Procedure Exhaustion Is Real (And It's Probably Your Fault)
There's a scene in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where our heroes land on a planet run by the Vogons, a species so obsessed with bureaucracy that nothing gets done without the right form, stamped in triplicate, submitted to the right department, possibly recited as poetry. It's supposed to be a joke, but every time I rewatch it, I think this is just a Tuesday working in supply chain.
We've all worked with a company like this. Maybe you're working at one right now. Maybe, and I say this with kindness, you're running one.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most bloated workflows weren't designed. They were accumulated. No one is sitting down and building a 14-step purchase order approval process on purpose. Out of control SOPs (Standard Operating Procedure) grow one CYA (cover your ass) step at a time. Someone got burned on a shipment in 2018, so we added a checkbox. Someone else got yelled at by a customer in 2021, so we added an approval. A rogue invoice slipped through in 2023, so now finance signs off too. Five years later, booking a shipment takes longer than driving the truck to the delivery.
This is procedure exhaustion, and it's quietly killing your team's ability to actually do their jobs.
Constant Tech Upgrades Aren't Free…Even When They Are
You spent weeks learning a new TMS. Watched the tutorials, fumbled through the onboarding, bothered your rep twice, and then finally, you figured it out. You actually got it. You built the workflow, you knew where everything lived, and for about four months you feel like you have your operations in order and working how you want it.
Then an update comes along with a new interface. Now, half your shortcuts are gone. There's a "smart" feature that replaced the one you actually understood, and apparently there's a whole new AI layer you're supposed to be using now.
Welcome to tech churn. Population: everyone, but nobody's talking about it.
Panic-Ordering Is Not a Supply Chain Strategy
Most SMBs don't have a demand planning problem. They have a "winging it" problem dressed up as one. You already know your patterns; busy seasons, slow months, which supplier always runs late. You just haven't written any of it down, and that gap is costing you more than you think.
Here's the thing nobody tells SMBs: demand planning isn't a corporate concept that requires a six-figure software subscription and a dedicated analyst. It's just predicting what you'll need before you need it, and building a simple system so that you stop getting caught off guard.
You're already doing it. You're just doing it without a process, and that gap is likely costing you money and time.
Perception Doesn't Wait for the Truth to Catch Up
There's a genuine crisis on North American highways that most people outside of trucking don't think about: drivers can't find safe, legal places to park.
With roughly 3.5 million commercial trucks on the road and fewer than 700,000 official parking spaces, drivers are routinely resting on highway shoulders, exit ramps, and questionable lots just to get their federally mandated break. It's a safety issue, a driver wellbeing issue, and a systemic failure nobody's meaningfully fixed in decades.
Truck Parking Club saw this issue and decided to tackle it. So they built an app, the Airbnb of truck parking, connecting private landowners who had unused space with drivers who desperately needed it. Add supply to a supply-starved market. It's a genuinely smart idea, and it truly worked. They added over 1,700 new spots in 2024 alone that didn't previously exist in any form.
But then things got complicated.
Zone Skipping Isn't Just for Enterprise
If you've ever shipped a package across the country and quietly winced at the cost, zone skipping might be the strategy you didn't know you were missing. And no, you don't need to be an enterprise shipper to use it.
Most parcel carriers price shipments based on two things: density and distance. That distance is typically measured in zones, a numbering system that reflects how far a package travels from its origin point. The further it goes, the higher the zone number, and the more expensive the shipment. Basically, Zone 2 is practically your neighbour. Zone 8 is across the continent. Every zone in between has your shipping bill increasing.
3PL, 4PL, Fulfilment Partner, Freight Broker — What's the Difference and Which One Do You Actually Need?
A supply chain professional or sales person throws one of these terms at you and you nod along like you know exactly what they mean. Then you go home and google it and you’re still unsure. No judgement, half the industry uses them interchangeably and they're definitely not the same thing.
If you're an SMB shipper trying to figure out how to grow without your logistics completely unravelling, this is the breakdown you need. Let's go through each model, what it actually does, where it overlaps with the others, and, most importantly, which one fits where you are right now and how to know to switch to another.
Consultant or Clarity? What Your Supply Chain Really Needs
Not every supply chain issue requires a logistics consultant. But not every problem can be solved by Googling “why are my freight costs so high?” at 11:47 p.m on a Sunday night.
For small and mid-sized businesses, knowing the difference can save serious money. I’ve seen companies spend tens of thousands on consulting when what they really needed was education and resources. I’ve also seen companies try to “figure it out internally” while quietly bleeding cash for years.
The question isn’t whether consultants are good or bad. The question is: what kind of problem are you actually dealing with?
The Boring Fixes That Actually Reduce E-Commerce Returns
E-commerce returns are unavoidable. Regardless of if you sell on Amazon, Shopify, marketplaces, or your own website, some percentage of orders will come back. Online shopping has removed the ability for customers to touch, test, or try-on products before buying, and nothing can completely fix that.
What can be fixed is how often customers feel disappointed once their order arrives. Most e-commerce returns don’t happen because customers are malicious or trying to game the system. Most of the time, returns happen because the product that arrived didn’t match what the customer expected, simple as that. That gap between expectation and reality is why most returns happen.
Reducing e-commerce returns doesn’t need to involve fighting customers or tightening return policies. It’s about managing expectations before checkout. Below are eight simple, but boring ways to reduce return rates by closing that gap.
Les Soldes Explained: France’s Regulated Retail Sales
I’ve been quietly gatekeeping this, but if you’re in France in January or July, it’s impossible to miss. Every shop window, from luxury boutiques to high-street chains, is plastered with the same word in bold letters: SOLDES.
To anyone visiting from outside France, it looks like a normal sale season. It’s not.
Les Soldes are a legally regulated national retail event, with fixed dates and strict rules. This is not just a marketing moment. It’s a very specific system.
So… what is Les Soldes?
In France, retailers are only allowed to run official Soldes twice a year:
Winter Soldes (January–February)
Summer Soldes (June–July)
These dates are set nationally. Retailers do not choose them, extend them, or move them around. When the window opens, it opens for everyone. When it closes, it closes for everyone.
Shopping With Intention: Second-Hand Retail and the Circular Economy
As a digital nomad, I’m also very aware of what I buy. I don’t have closets or storage space spread across multiple rooms. Everything I buy has to earn its place. That usually means I’m drawn to pieces that are well-made, versatile, and a little bit interesting, things that let me keep a personal style without defaulting to the same black jeans and plain t-shirts everywhere I go.
So on a rainy afternoon in London, the last time I visited, I walked into a charity shop and found a well-fitted tweed blazer. It fit properly, felt high quality, and worked with the rest of my very limited wardrobe. The find itself was luck, but the conditions that make moments like that possible are very predictable in a retail culture where second-hand shopping is normalized and accessible.
Charity shops and second-hand retail stores aren’t just a trend or a sustainability talking point. They represent a functioning circular supply chain operating at scale, in plain sight.
11 Simple Supply Chain Problems Costing You Money (That Have Nothing to Do With Rates)
When companies talk about “cutting logistics costs,” the conversation almost always goes straight to rates. But for most businesses, the real money leaks are not from rates, they’re buried in timing, processes, and people's decisions that quietly add cost every single day.
Here are 11 fixable problems that cost you money long before a carrier ever sends an invoice.
Santa Runs the Best Supply Chain in the World - Be More Like Santa
Every December, most companies are deep in the trenches of peak season: scrambling through backorders, juggling last-minute changes, and praying their carriers don’t call in with weather delays. But somehow, one operation manages to deliver on time, with perfect accuracy, at a global scale. Every year.
Santa’s.
It might be whimsical, but if you strip away the magic and look at the structure, Santa runs the most efficient seasonal operation on the planet, and his planning principles are worth paying attention to.
Automation vs AI: How Logistics Keeps Mixing Them Up (and Why It Matters)
This entire blog started because of my inbox. Specifically: PR emails.
If you work in or around logistics media, you know exactly the ones I mean. The subject line “AI Powered”. The whole email is full of AI this and AI that. And yet somehow, after reading the email three or four times, I still can’t tell what the product actually does.
Is it AI?
Is it automation?
Is it a well-organized workflow with a buzzword glued on top?
Because honestly, how can every new tech and platform be AI?
The more pitches I saw, the more obvious the real issue became: as an industry, we’ve blurred the line between what’s simply a fast, reliable automated process and what is actually intelligent technology capable of learning, adapting, or predicting. And that distinction matters, not just for accuracy, but for budgets, expectations, and whether a team ends up with the right tool for the right job. So let’s talk about it properly, without the jargon-y nonsense.
The Trap of Being the ‘I’ll Handle It Myself’ Person
There’s a specific kind of person who ends up in logistics: the “don’t worry, I’ll handle it” type.
Every industry has them, but logistics seems to attract them in bulk. Maybe it’s the constant problem-solving, maybe it’s the adrenaline of fixing things minutes before they break, or maybe it’s just the culture we all grew up in, where being busy meant you were important. And it shows, logistics workers actually rank #1 for burnout risk of any industry, with 20% over-utilized, 15% at risk, and the longest average workday at 9 hours and 10 minutes.
But somewhere along the way, “handling it” quietly turns into “carrying the entire company on your back.” And most people don’t realize the cost of that until they’re already paying it.
The funny thing is, doing everything yourself feels efficient. It feels responsible. It feels faster at the moment — just answer the email, just update the file, just follow up on the truck, just redo the spreadsheet because the formatting is a disaster and you’re the only one who knows how it should look.
But the truth is this: every time you jump in to do it yourself, you reinforce a system where you are the system. And that’s where the real trouble starts.
Judgment Isn’t a Safety Strategy: How Bias Is Blinding Trucking to Its Real Problems
Every time a new story breaks about trucking fraud, unsafe carriers, or tragic accidents, the same narrative rolls out:
“It’s the foreign carriers.”
“It’s the non-domiciled drivers.”
“It’s these fly-by-night operations ruining the industry.”
It’s predictable, emotional, and completely unhelpful.
Because here’s the truth: the biggest threat to North American trucking isn’t who is behind the wheel. It’s how the system allows people to slip through cracks that we all know are there.
When we keep blaming people instead of processes, we’re not solving problems, we’re fuelling hate and perpetuating the root issues.
5 Food Myths That Actually Affect the Supply Chain
Everyone’s got opinions about food; local is better, fresh is best, labels tell the truth.
But most of what we believe about how food gets to us isn’t actually true.
And these myths don’t just affect what we buy, they shape how the entire supply chain operates, from how products are labeled to how much food gets wasted before it ever reaches a plate.
Here are five food myths that have real consequences for the people moving your groceries from farm to fork.
How Le Creuset Has Turned Overstock Into Obsession
If you’ve opened TikTok lately, you’ve probably seen it, the Le Creuset Mystery Box unboxings. People are filming themselves tearing into sealed boxes of colourful cookware like it’s Christmas morning. Screams, squeals, gasps over the colour they wanted or a pot they had been eyeing and somewhere, a logistics manager is quietly smiling.
Because this isn’t just a marketing stunt, it’s a supply-chain strategy wrapped in enamel and hype.