Warehouse Wisdom, Weekly. 11/28/2025

🚚 Happy Friday.

A 34-year-old MD-11 engine tore off during takeoff on November 4th, killing 14 people and grounding 167 freighters right as UPS and FedEx need them most. Over hundreds of thousands of tariff changes hit the books in 2025—compared to the usual 50,000—while Patrick Frith calls it "the most chaotic, turbulent time" of his nearly three-decade cross-border career. Meanwhile, USPS projects a 9.4% package revenue jump for 2026 while forecasting a 42% collapse in international mail, and retailers burn off inventory betting on anemic consumer demand that hasn't shown up. Let’s dive in on this Black Friday!

Global Logistics

Tariff chaos meets winter purge while leadership exits

The trucking industry enters its annual winter bloodletting right as tariff engineering becomes the new survival strategy. Between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day, motor carrier authorities disappear faster than new ones appear. This year's purge promises brutality with hundreds of thousands of tariff changes hitting the books in 2025, compared to the usual 50,000.

Patrick Frith calls 2025 "the most chaotic, turbulent time" of his nearly three-decade cross-border logistics career. Changes announced in March were implemented within days, sometimes hours. Companies watched tariff announcements hit 51 countries during a Rose Garden event in April. Brexit unfolded over three years. This year offered no such courtesy. The $800 duty-free threshold that enabled clearance for low-value shipments since 2016 has ended. Type 86 clearances that streamlined e-commerce are dead. Now shippers navigate Type 1 formal entries or Type 11 informal entries, both requiring significantly more information and expertise.

Rick Cotton is stepping down as executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey after eight-and-a-half years. Cotton leaves in January 2026 with no successor announced.

Small Parcel Freight

Grounded jets meet rate hikes while USPS bets on packages

UPS and FedEx are scrambling to secure freighters after an MD-11 engine tore off during takeoff on November 4th, killing 14 people and triggering an indefinite grounding of 167 aircraft. The FAA is requiring thorough inspections after finding fatigue cracks in the structure attaching the turbofan to the wing. UPS has 26 MD-11s grounded (9% of its jet fleet). FedEx lost 28, roughly 4% of its in-service aircraft. Finding replacements proves nearly impossible. Secondary market freighters are scarce, and new Boeing and Airbus models are running behind schedule. FedEx was already planning to retire all 34 MD-11s by 2032, but the jets still carried 17% of its traffic. Airlines cling to widebody jets for passengers, leaving few to convert for freight.

USPS projects a 9.4% revenue jump in package delivery for fiscal year 2026 simultaneously forecasting a 42% collapse in international mail revenue. The agency is betting on Ground Advantage and last-mile partnerships to offset a 56% drop in inbound international services after the de minimis exemption ended.

USPS is raising shipping rates starting January 18th: Priority Mail up 6.6%, Priority Mail Express up 5.1%, Ground Advantage up 7.8%. The Postal Service also projects a 1.1% drop in work hours driven by "initiatives to improve efficiency." Cutting labor, raising prices, and hoping package growth covers revenue bleeding, whether the infrastructure can handle the volume or not. And while parcels scramble for aircraft, the truckload market faces its own reckoning.

Logistics Vitals

Demand craters while capacity tightens at a crawl

Freight demand is soft by any measure. FreightWaves' Outbound Tender Volume Index shows volumes down 11% from last year, which was already weak.

• Outbound Tender Rejection Index stands at 6.79%, up from 6.5% last year at this time, showing incremental capacity tightening that most shippers haven't felt because it's happening so slowly.

• Spot rates are finally turning higher after months of stagnation, with the National Truckload Index showing upward movement despite weak demand signaling that capacity is slowly burning off.

• Operating ratios above 100 mean carriers are losing a penny for every dollar spent moving freight, with many operators "basically just losing money to stay alive" according to SONAR's Zach Strickland.

• FMCSA revoked 24 ELD providers this year, the highest number since enforcement began in 2018, cracking down on devices that let drivers manipulate Hours of Service rules and illegally add capacity to the spot market.

Warehouse Tech

Robots work nights while AI answers phones

Brightpick's Autopicker robots now enable "lights-out" overnight fulfillment, picking and buffering orders without human intervention through the graveyard shift. Orders picked autonomously overnight sit buffered inside the system, ready for immediate packing when day shift arrives. Multiple customers including The Feed already operate fully automated overnight operations. The robots handle 70 to 80 picks per hour (matching human productivity), available through a Robots-as-a-Service model starting under $2,000 per month. Night shifts are the toughest to staff and most expensive to run, making robots that work in the dark suddenly economically viable rather than technologically impressive.

DHL Supply Chain is deploying HappyRobot's AI agents across global operations to automate routine communication: appointment scheduling, driver follow-up calls, and high-priority warehouse coordination. The AI agents autonomously handle phone and email interactions, targeting hundreds of thousands of emails and millions of voice minutes annually. DHL's CIO Sally Miller framed it as making "operational roles more engaging and rewarding for employees by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks." Qualified talent becomes scarce, and AI agents handling routine tasks become the retention strategy nobody admits they need.

Geekplus launched its Robot Arm Picking Station claiming "the industry's first end-to-end unmanned picking solution." The system supposedly recognizes and grasps tens of thousands of SKUs, including irregular and soft-packaged goods, without retraining. Modular design supports 48-hour deployment with 24/7 operation. The company says full-process unmanned warehouses will "soon become a reality" with robotic packing technologies under active development. Every automation vendor promises revolutionary breakthroughs are imminent. The ones actually running 24/7 operations without press releases are the ones worth watching.

Marketplace

Robotics reality check meets platform control grabs

Kroger is shuttering three robotic fulfillment centers built with U.K. automation company Ocado, less than a year after planning to expand its high-tech warehouse fleet. The grocer is taking a $2.6 billion charge to reverse course claiming a $400 million profitability boost from the pivot. Ten-figure writedowns rarely signal strategic brilliance. Locating automated centers outside cities in areas without enough ordering density to justify the technology investment created the core failure. "You didn't have enough people ordering, and you had a fair amount of distance to drive to get the orders to them," former Kroger executive Ken Fenyo explained. Turns out U.S. consumers value delivery speed over sensible prices, a reality that worked for Ocado in the U.K. but failed spectacularly stateside. Ocado's share price has cratered back to its level 15 years ago when the company went public.

TikTok Shop is tightening control over shipping by requiring all USPS labels to be purchased through TikTok Shipping starting January, rejecting labels from external sources like Shopify, ShipStation, and direct Postal Service accounts. The platform offered no explanation for the change but gave sellers until December 31st to comply or face fulfillment disruptions. For sellers shipping small, light products where USPS is the only affordable option, the mandate either adds complexity and cuts margins or forces a switch to more expensive carriers. TikTok Shop is consolidating shipping data and control as sellers absorb higher costs or navigate new workflows. When platforms decide to own the entire fulfillment stack, "seamless integration" translates to "use our system or find another marketplace."

Alibaba reported 5% revenue growth in its fiscal Q2, reaching 247.8 billion Chinese yuan ($34.8 billion) behind aggressive AI and cloud infrastructure investment. The company has poured 120 billion yuan into AI over the past four quarters, driving triple-digit year-over-year growth in AI-related product revenue for nine consecutive quarters. Invest heavily in AI tools that make ecommerce operations more efficient, then watch consumers order more frequently when delivery speed improves. The world's largest online marketplaces double down on AI infrastructure.

Warehouse Quick Deliveries

Bankruptcies pile up, inventory shrinks down

• P. Judge & Sons filed for bankruptcy protection after 101 years in business, joining multiple other logistics companies filing Chapter 11 in November alone.

• Lowe's cut 15% of its SKUs by year-end while leveraging AI inventory solutions, driving a 50-basis-point increase in Q3 gross margin and reducing inventory by $400 million year-over-year.

• World Economic Forum and Accenture published research exploring how traceability innovations can scale informal waste management systems that currently recover 88 million tonnes of recyclables annually.