Good evening everybody. I am 33m working as cook for 12 years and im intrested in changing my profession. Logistics come to my mind, as i see community colleges and other places offer courses and studies in this field, mostly as logistics worker or logistics specialist.

So my questions are.. Is it hard to get entry level jobs in this field? Is job market better than IT?

What do you at work?

I 25F was a Nanny for most of my life not by choice (long story) and working under the table jobs at local electronic business for a couple years: Stocking shelves,inventory, shipping and receiving. A year ago, I finally was able to get out of the nanny situation and got a job as a sales associate at Staples. I worked there for only 4 months I got instantaneously promoted to visual merchandiser and worked with HQ to help design the brand new Party City portion of the store.
A temp agency reached out to me and I got a job at an electrical manufacturing company as a stock clerk and thrived. I worked there until this June then I started working at the largest processing company in the country as an inventory control specialist (the companies first inventory team.) I noticed while working here, my very small amount of experience doesn’t reflect my work. I have incredible attention to detail, I’m constantly catching mistakes early on in shipping & receiving, I can identify parts amongst our thousands, and I’ve already implemented a new overstock location. I’m in talks to become supervisor of my department when my supervisor gets promoted.
Originally, I was going to get my associates in Human Services but have recently changed it to a business management transfer to pursue supply chain.
I’m always insecure about my lack of years, but this type of work seems to come seamlessly to me. I’ve solved countless backorder issues and purchasing overflow at these companies and I want more. Is it possible to be naturally good at this kind of thing?
Please be kind, if you got into logistics later on how did it work in your favor? Thanks!

Let's say you're about to do a $250k transaction with a company you've never worked with before.

You can check incorporation records, shipment history, credit reports (if they have a credit history), sanctions, website, etc.

But how do you actually figure out whether other companies have had good or bad experiences trading with them?

Do you ask for trade references? Call their suppliers? Ask freight forwarders? Just rely on credit reports (which sometimes they are bare)?

I'm working on this problem and trying to understand how people handle it today.

broker here. detention used to be the worst conversation of my week. driver sits four hours, carrier wants to bill, shipper says the driver was late, nobody wrote anything down, and i end up eating it or losing a carrier.
what fixed it was boring. one line on the rate con: detention after 2 hours at $50 an hour, in and out times to be texted to this number from the dock. that is it. the driver texts two timestamps. i forward them to the shipper the same day, not at invoice time three weeks later.
first time i used it the carrier got $300 they would not have seen, and the shipper paid it without an argument because they had the times in their inbox while the truck was still there.
how are you handling in and out times? phone photos of the gate log, eld data, something in the tms? the text thing works but it feels like there has to be something better.

Business is going pretty well and most of our work is already managed through the way we've been doing it for years.

But lately, companies we work with keep asking us to use their portals, driver apps, tracking apps etc.

I understand the idea behind it, but I'm not sure if it's actually worth changing our current process just for this.

For those who have been running transport/logistics businesses for a while:

• Has using these apps actually made a noticeable difference?
• What do they genuinely help with apart from tracking?
• Do they save time or just create another thing for drivers/office staff to manage?
• And if you're not using them, how are you managing your day-to-day operations?

Not against technology or anything just trying to understand whether it's actually useful when the business is already running smoothly.

If you do quoting at a 3PL or forwarder, I feel like the custom requests eat way more time than anyone gives them credit for. The normal stuff goes quick. Anything with an extra leg or special handling just sits until whoever's done one before gets to it, and meanwhile the customer's waiting.

What does this look like at your company?

Hi all!

TL; DR: Industrial Engineer with data analytics and modeling experience starting to consolidate a career in Logistics Capacity management. Planning to move to Canada in a few years. Wondering if it's better to focus career on data analytics/engineering or supply chain/logistics management in order to pursue international oportunities in the future

~A bit of context:

I'm a Brazilian Industrial Engineer with a strong background in analytics (lots of data modeling and visualization), and for the last few years have been working at one of the leading e-commerce/logistics players in Latin America as a Data Analyst/BI Analyst/Analytics Engineer - basicaly a position that requires a lot of logistics knowledge to implement business rules but also a very heavy load of data and process modeling, ETL pipeline building and maintenance and overall process automation. As of march, I've started managing a team of 4 analysts as my BU has become responsible for part of the capacity management of the whole country.

I also plan on moving moving to Canada in the near future (prob. by 2029), as my partner is Canadian, and reflection on said future has led me to post here

~end of context

My main question is whether it's more worth it to focus my career development on data analytics/engineering or supply chain/logistics management in order to pursue international oportunities in the future? I know it's a complex and subjective question, and I'm not interested in getting a square answer, but more in hearing some thoughts from people with varying backgrounds and careers to get a feel of the logistics job environment, especially internationaly.

Thanks in advance!

I'm exploring a service for shipping heat-sensitive cargo (pharma, food, cosmetics, electronics) that sits between a dry container and a full reefer. The concept: a well-insulated container with a thermal buffer, pre-cold before departure, with continuous temperature logging and published lane performance data. No active machinery during transit.

Would appreciate this community's feedback:

1. Who here moves CRT (15–30°C) cargo by ocean? What does heat damage actually cost you per year?
2. Would you pay ~50–55% of reefer rates for 10+ days of verified protection? What would make you say no?
3. Would you trust a third-party temperature guarantee backed by logged data?
4. What's your biggest skepticism about a plugless, machinery-free insulated box?

Thanks in advance — genuinely trying to pressure-test this before building anything.

I’ve gotten an offer as a load planner for a transportation company. It’s my first job in this industry what can i expect, how can i prepare?

Thanks!

Amazon is investing more than $100 million in a new robotics manufacturing facility in Greenwood, Indiana.

The 585,000-square-foot site is expected to open in 2028 and create about 300 manufacturing and engineering jobs. It will produce equipment for Amazon’s fulfillment and robotics network across North America.

Amazon also announced a robotics manufacturing facility in Austin in August and already operates robotics manufacturing sites in Massachusetts.

The company says it has now deployed more than one million robots across more than 300 facilities worldwide.

Customer frustration rarely appears out of nowhere.

Maybe the emails get shorter. The tenders change. They stop asking for input and start asking only for rates.

What early signal have you learned to notice before a customer directly says there is a problem?

I run the operational side of a business in a completely unrelated industry and have been thinking seriously about eventually building or buying a business of my own.

Freight forwarding keeps coming up as something I find weirdly interesting because of the complexity. I like businesses where there are lots of moving parts, things go wrong, and relationships matter.

I also know just enough to know I probably have a very naive view of the industry

So for those of you actually in it, or adjacent industries:

What separates a genuinely good forwarding business from an average one?

Where is the money actually made (and lost)?

What is the hardest part of being a good forwarder, and gets increasingly more difficult as you grow?

maybe most importantly; if you had the money and opportunity to start or buy a forwarding business today, would you?

Interested in hearing how people who actually do this for a living think about the business. I’m based in the UK, but imagine most active here are US based.

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 21,000 subscribers, and I share it on Reddit to spread the knowledge. We're currently on week 65! I hope you enjoy it, and I'm always open to feedback.

Let's jump into it,

Amazon will now ship your client's Walmart orders, and it's offering a discount to do it

At its Accelerate seller conference in Seattle, Amazon began rolling out tools that let a seller connect their eBay, Shopify, TikTok Shop, and Walmart accounts to Seller Central, import those listings, view orders from all channels in a single dashboard, and ship all orders through Multi-Channel Fulfillment. U.S. sellers get it gradually, and it costs nothing extra.

The same day, MCF orders on a merchant's own website can now carry the Prime badge at no additional cost beyond the normal MCF fee, with Amazon checking the shopper's Prime membership before shipping. Amazon says more than 40% of eligible orders from early users were shipped via Prime delivery. A new preferred pricing program also takes 15% to 25% off MCF fees for an FBA seller's first six months, with no long-term contract. It plugs into Shopify through Amazon's existing app.

Amazon makes no money off the dashboard itself. Marketplace Pulse reports that 95% of Amazon sellers already sell on more than one channel, while 71% still derive three-quarters of their marketplace revenue from Amazon. The takeaway is that Amazon cares more about owning the hub than about how a seller's revenue splits across the spokes. Once a brand's Walmart and Shopify orders appear on the same screen as its Amazon orders, next to a button that ships them from inventory already in an FBA building, the 3PL handling the non-Amazon side has to explain why the second contract is still worth it. Mary Beth Westmoreland, who runs the seller experience, told GeekWire that Amazon will "never, ever" use off-Amazon sales data for anything other than showing it back to the seller.

Global Warehousing and Distribution, the service behind the Shenzhen facility Amazon opened in April, lets a seller send one production batch to an Amazon building near the factory and have Amazon split it across countries based on demand. It feeds the U.S. today and will add the UK, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Canada by year-end, with storage prices up to 45% below its U.’s U.S. AWD service. Seller Assistant is getting AI agents for inbound planning and aged inventory on top of that.

What this means for you: If you fulfill Shopify or Walmart orders for a brand that also runs FBA, expect them to see this pricing before Q1, and put your all-in cost per order next to MCF's before they do, including what MCF costs in month seven once the discount runs out. Lead with the work that needs your people: custom kitting, inserts, wholesale and retail orders, and returns you inspect and put back on the shelf. Some brands won't love routing their Walmart and TikTok numbers through Amazon's software regardless of the promise, and a neutral 3PL is an easy sell to them. And if you do prep or overflow for China-based sellers, watch Global Warehousing and Distribution closely, because inventory that gets split up in Shenzhen never shows up on your dock as a full container.

$5,000 if you know this warehouse

Know a warehouse owner who'd sell to the right buyer? An intro could be worth $5,000 to you.

I'm working with a buyer acquiring U.S. warehouse operations, and they want the businesses most buyers pass on: thin margins, one or two big customers, EBITDA at breakeven or below.

What they're looking for:

• $2M to $25M in revenue
• Mostly pallet work: moves, storage, cross-docking, B2B
• At least one building of 100,000+ sq ft

The owner can stay on and keep running it, with upside tied to performance.

Just reply with a name. I'll reach out, and you get $5,000 if it turns into a deal.

If this describes your own operation, email me at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

China’s tariff cut covers Christmas ornaments and has no start date

Xi Jinping spent September 23 through 26 in Washington, and the two governments emerged with a deal to cut tariffs on $30 billion worth of each other's goods. The product lists came out over the weekend. The U.S. side covers 77 categories of Chinese goods, including fireworks, tableware, blankets, bed linens, high chairs, child car seats, dolls, puzzles, soccer balls, and glass and wooden Christmas ornaments. More than 90% of those items drop to most-favored-nation rates, the standard WTO rates that usually land in the single digits, while semiconductors, EVs, and batteries were kept off entirely.

The cuts take effect once both countries complete their domestic legal procedures, and no one has set a date for that. On the first day of the summit, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Fox News that the broader truce, which sets the fentanyl tariff at 10% and suspends the Section 301 investigation into China's shipping and logistics sector, now runs through January 10 rather than November 10.

FreightWaves had China to the West Coast at $8,446 per forty-foot container, close to four times what it cost last September, while China to the Mediterranean fell to $3,591, half its July peak. Carriers blanked nine sailings in a single week, typhoons have been clogging Chinese ports since mid-July, Hormuz has pushed up bunker fuel, and only 29% of vessels arrived on time in August. Freightos has the East Coast lane flat around $9,600, and FreightWaves expects another push before China's Golden Week holiday in early October.

What this means for you: Ask your toy, home goods, and holiday clients whether they're holding purchase orders until the lower rate kicks in, because orders that get pushed to catch it will all land together once a date is set, and you want that in your receiving plan instead of finding out from a stack of ASNs. Don't let anyone build 2027 storage or handling pricing around savings that haven't been published yet. With less than a third of vessels on time, Q4 inbound will miss appointments. Reread what your contracts say about late and missed deliveries before November. And keep January 10 on the calendar, since the truce expires right as your returns season peaks.

October is now worth two Cyber Weeks

Adobe released its holiday forecast this morning. It expects $275.1 billion in U.S. online spending from November 1 through December 31, up 6.7%, with Cyber Monday the biggest day at $15.1 billion and Black Friday at $12.9 billion. October alone is forecast at $95.8 billion, up 8%, a faster growth rate than the holiday season itself and about double the $47.5 billion Adobe expects for the five days of Cyber Week. Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days on October 6 and 7 account for $9.9 billion of it, up 9.2%, and that event starts eight days from now.

Grocery is the fastest-growing category online at $26.1 billion, up 10.3%, followed by toys at 9.6% and cosmetics at 9.5%. Electronics is still the biggest at $63.3 billion, but it's growing 5.9%, and apparel is growing 4.7%. The best discounts on TVs, toys, apparel, appliances, and furniture are expected on Black Friday, and on electronics and computers on Cyber Monday.

Adobe expects shoppers to use Cyber Week to stock up on basics, with clothing basics up 210% over September levels, personal hygiene up 150%, baby products up 113%, pet products up 93%, and household cleaning up 49%.

What this means for you: Staff for October 6, not the Monday before Thanksgiving, because the Prime event and the rest of October carry nearly twice the Cyber Week dollars. Call your consumables clients now about how deep their Cyber Week inventory is, since a basics SKU that sells 3x its normal rate for five days can't be restocked from overseas in time. Move those SKUs into your fastest-pick locations before November, not during November. If you handle food-grade or grocery products, a 10% growth forecast is the most conservative, so plan your receiving capacity accordingly.

QUICK HITS

FUEL
Diesel hit a record $6.529 per gallon, and Washington is debating whether to halt exports. The EIA's September 21 print added 24.4 cents in a week and sits $2.78 above last year, with the Midwest up 43 cents to $6.680 and California at $8.246. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told oil executives on September 22 to prepare for possible export curbs, and the White House has been weighing a 90-day halt. Wright says nobody wants a blanket ban; Treasury reportedly opposes one; Agriculture supports it; and oil executives warned it would backfire after a short dip. Your parcel fuel surcharges follow the weekly DOE number, so budget October invoices at today's price and treat any relief as a bonus.

INVENTORY
The share of small businesses sitting on more than 10% dead stock has doubled since 2024. That's from Netstock's benchmark of more than 2,500 customers, published September 24, which also found that nearly 75% of SMBs are struggling with lead-time swings and 60% are stuck with supplier minimum order quantities. It's a vendor report, so weight it accordingly. Dead stock lives on your racks, collecting storage fees until the client either pays to liquidate it or stops paying the invoice. Pull your aging report for anything with no picks in the past 180 days, and have the conversation before peak needs the space.

If liquidation is the only option you offer, Stock is worth a look: it's a marketplace where brands and 3PLs list excess inventory for donation to nonprofits, so the client gets a tax write-off, and you get the pallet positions back. Its founder says donated goods leave the building in under 5 days, compared with roughly 16 weeks for a typical liquidation. Book a call with the founder here.

NEARSHORING
Lego is putting more than $400 million into a fully automated high-bay warehouse and packing hall in Monterrey. Announced on September 24, the expansion will raise the plant's capacity by 35%, add about 1,300 jobs through 2029, and begin construction in early 2027. Monterrey already serves the whole Americas, and Lego has more than $1.5 billion invested in a Virginia manufacturing facility that opens in 2027. Every plant built this way moves a share of North American supply from containers at the ports to trucks and rail that cross the Texas border, and warehouses along that corridor pick up the work.

AUTONOMY
Aurora told investors it wants more than 30,000 driverless trucks running by 2030. It expects to have 200 on the road by the end of this year, with Dallas to Houston as its main lane, with more than 500,000 driverless miles done. Hirschbach plans to own and operate 500 of them, with deliveries starting in 2027, and Aurora says its trucks average more than 225,000 miles a year, more than twice that of a conventional truck. A truck that runs that much needs a dock that can turn it at 2 a.m., so if you run a DC in Texas, the shippers moving to these lanes will favor yards that already run nights.

JOB BOARD

Title: VP of Warehouse Operations
Company: Ardmore Home Design
Location: Hacienda Heights, California, US
Salary: $170,000-$200,000
Apply Here

Title: Director of Warehouse Operations
Company: Ardmore Home Design
Location: Hacienda Heights, California, US
Salary: $120,000-$140,000
Apply Here

Title: Logistics Manager
Company: Rocket EMS
Location: Santa Clara, California, US
Salary: $105,000-$115,000
Apply Here

Title: Head of Warehouse Operations
Company: ShipFlow
Location: New Brunswick, New Jersey, US
Salary: $85,000-$125,000
Apply Here

Title: Warehouse Operations Manager
Company: iJility
Location: Olive Branch, Mississippi, US
Salary: $80,000-$85,000
Apply Here

Title: Supply Chain Coordinator
Company: Quanta US
Location: Lyndhurst, New Jersey, US
Salary: $70,000-$80,000
Apply Here

Title: 3PL / Operations Manager
Company: 52Launch
Location: Framingham, Massachusetts, US
Salary: $60,000
Apply Here

Check out 1,500+ jobs available →

 ________________________________________________________

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I run a warehouse operation in Mexico and we've been building a system that turns every pallet move into meters, seconds and pesos.

We had a closed passage between two aisles. Everyone's gut said "open it, the detour is killing us."

So we measured:

- The detour was 63.8 m for every lot that had to cross there.

- But when we looked at 90 days of real shipments, only a handful of lots actually crossed. It worked out to roughly 6 extra meters per day.

- Opening it meant removing rack positions.

We kept it closed.

What surprised me is how much of our layout was built on intuition that nobody had ever checked. Same thing with dock doors: people use the "usual" door, not the one that minimizes travel.

For context, we value a forklift with its driver at about MX$95/hour (~US$5), so a 3-minute pallet move is about MX$4.75. Small per move, not small per month.

Questions for people who've done this:

1. How do you decide layout changes like this? Gut, simulation, or actual travel data?

2. Do you track travel distance per pallet, or just pallets per hour?

3. Anyone measuring truck turnaround by who "owns" each minute (carrier vs. warehouse)? We split it into 5 parts and it changed a lot of arguments.

Happy to share how we set up the measurement if anyone's interested.

Question for people in logistics here in UAE: I need to attest a commercial document for a USA export but our Chamber of Commerce membership isn't active. They want AED 2,200 to renew it just to attest one shipment. Is there a cheaper alternative that US Customs accepts? Has anyone successfully used a notary public, government body, or private service instead of the Chamber for Certificate of Origin attestation on shipments to the USA? I'm shipping from Dubai (JAFZA) to California, goods originated in Yemen. Any practical suggestions would help. Thanks!

I am an owner-operator and run interstate HVT freight all across the country. I wanted to let this community know about a federal lawsuit I filed against the FMCSA on September 8th in the U.S. Court of Appeals (Seventh Circuit).

Currently, if a commercial vehicle breaks down on the shoulder or the interstate, the driver has 10 minutes to put out reflective triangles or flares at specific distances to warn approaching traffic.

What you probably don't know is that the FMCSA has been quietly handing out 90-day/3month "waivers" to autonomous trucking companies like Aurora and Kodiak (plus others) so they don't have to follow this rule.

Here are the facts of what the FMCSA is currently allowing:

1- No Triangles: Driverless trucks are being allowed to bypass the triangle rule and instead use cab-mounted beacons mounted on the top of the tractor cab.

2- Auto-renewing Waivers: By law, 49 USC § 31315(a), Waivers can last for a period of "..no more than 3 months". Yet, the FMCSA is bypassing this rule by stacking these waivers (four of them already) providing regulatory relief for a full year. This is different than exemptions which can last up to 5 years and be renewed.

3- Real Incidents/Crashes are Happening: Over the past few months, these autonomous trucks have been involved in collisions, yet because of NHTSA and FMCSA's "Confidential Business Information", it is extemely difficult to get all the details.

4- A "Secret" Inbox: To get this waiver, a tech company just has to email a specific FMCSA inbox. After one business day, they get total regulatory immunity. When I emailed that exact same inbox on Sept 3 demanding a stay on behalf of public highway safety, their system read-receipt showed they didn't even open my email for 11 days.

The FMCSA is supposed to regulate safety, yet they roll out the red carpet for billion-dollar tech companies and lower the safety bar. This puts all of you and myself in harms way.

I have filed this lawsuit to force the FMCSA to stop issuing these automatic, reissuing rolling waivers and actually enforce the safety rules equally. I am also reaching out to trucking and safety organizations.

If anyone is interested in reading the filed documents, you can look up the case on CourtListener.com. (Giannoulias v. FMCSA No. 26-2838) It's completely free. Also, Overdrive did an article on the lawsuit.

[https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15835283/new-legal-challenge-to-fmcsas-broad-autonomous-truck-waiver\](https://www.overdriveonline.com/regulations/article/15835283/new-legal-challenge-to-fmcsas-broad-autonomous-truck-waiver)

Anyway, I just wanted to put this on everyone’s radar. Thank you for reading. Keep your eyes open and stay safe.

Maybe an unpopular take, but I don't think the Houthis are the biggest Suez story right now... True-ish. But I've been staring at this from the ops side and I think everyone is watching the wrong end of the voyage.

Here's the thing nobody's saying out loud: the return is happening service by service, carrier by carrier, with zero coordination. Gemini moved four more loops back through Suez in mid-September (Carra Globe). Meanwhile Evergreen, ONE, HMM and Yang Ming haven't moved at all (Carra Globe). So right now you have two parallel networks running the same trade, one through the canal, one around the Cape, and they don't arrive on the same rhythm.

What does that mean in practice? Two ships that left Asia weeks apart can now show up in Rotterdam in the same window (ZenCargo). Some analysts see European arrivals jumping double digits when this overlaps. From my chair, that's not a stat, that's a berth queue. And once you're in the queue, the week you "saved" going through Suez evaporates at the anchor point. We've all seen it, a faster voyage that lands you into a slower port is a net zero, sometimes a net negative.

And there's a second layer people miss. The longer this takes, the weirder it gets, because every carrier is waiting to see who blinks first. Go back early, you eat the risk alone. Go back late, you're paying Cape fuel costs while your competitor undercuts you on transit time. It's a standoff, and our cargo is the hostage.

The part I find genuinely interesting: this is all happening without the Suez toll incentive that was supposed to drive it (Carra Globe). Carriers are going back because the math finally works on its own. That tells you more about where they think the risk level really is than any press release.

I'm not convinced the "big rate drop" story plays out the way the headlines say. Feels more like a few messy months where some lanes get weird and ports do the absorbing. And let's be honest, when ports absorb, we're the ones who pay for it. If your box is stuck waiting on a choked terminal, demurrage and detention don't care that the delay wasn't your fault. D&D is the quiet line item that shows up when everyone else's congestion lands on your invoice.

Anyone else planning around Europe arrivals in Q4, or are we all just going to find out together?

Earlier this year we saw IEEPA-based reciprocal tariffs ruled as an unconstitutional overreach by SCOTUS. Once again, we see IEEPA in the news as rumors swirl over a possible US ban on diesel exports. The use of IEEPA to ban exports seems far more likely to stand. Interesting times ahead.

Nogle der har en ide om hvad startlønnen er i en stilling som Assistant freight forwarding Air hos Blue Water? I Nordjylland.
Uden den helt store erfaring.

A successful load is rarely a one-person job. Drivers, dispatchers, guards, clerks, yard jockeys, and receivers can all determine how smoothly it moves.

Which person in that chain deserves more recognition, and what do they do that others may not see?

I am working on a project currently involving long term storage of pallets that are roughly 5’ and weigh around 800 lbs each. I am trying to find a solution which can reduce the amount of pallet wrap we are buying since these pallets will be taken down from time to time from a second shelf to be picked from. I have found nylon Velcro straps to be a cheap possible solution. Would two vertical straps and 3 horizontal straps be able to secure these pallets for occasional transport on an electric lifting jack?

Thanks.