Warehouse Wisdom. Weekly. 21/06/2025

Only the most relevant news for SMBs to improve logistics – picked, packed, and delivered without the bias.

Author

Will Schneider
June 20, 2025

In partnership with

Happy Friday!

This week's freight market delivered more plot twists than a warehouse safety training video. Container rates nose-dived 6.8% after weeks of pretending sky-high pricing was sustainable, while nearly 9,000 freight jobs vanished faster than free donuts in a break room. Meanwhile, delivery robots hit 95% success rates, which means they're officially more reliable than most procurement forecasts.

Between Middle Eastern shipping lanes turning into geopolitical minefields and FedEx discovering new and creative ways to charge fees, this week reminded us why backup plans need backup plans. Buckle up, we're diving into the beautiful chaos. Let’s dive in.

Global Logistics

Trade wars claim another shipping victim

Container shipping rates crashed 6.8% last week after a five-week bender, with Shanghai-US West Coast routes plummeting 26.5% as carriers discovered that astronomical pricing doesn't actually make containers magically appear. Turns out those ambitious rate hikes had all the durability of a cardboard box in a thunderstorm.

Speaking of reality checks, freight ship owners are suddenly very interested in defensive strategies as Israel-Iran tensions turn the Strait of Hormuz—which handles 20 million barrels of oil daily—into the world's most expensive game of maritime Russian roulette. Risk managers everywhere are updating their "acts of geopolitical stupidity" clauses.

Meanwhile, the EU decided to play international chess by threatening retaliation against doubled US steel tariffs, because apparently nobody learned from history that trade wars are like warehouse automation projects—they always cost more and take longer than anyone expects, with plenty of unintended consequences.

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Parcel Freight and Shipping

Port truckers experience the new normal

Nearly 9,000 freight sector jobs evaporated this month across companies from Lacroix Electronics (1,250 cuts) to Kohl's (768) to FedEx (383), proving that when trade wars heat up, it's the workers who get burned while executives debate "market conditions" from their corner offices.

Adding insult to injury, FedEx announced rate increases that would make a loan shark blush—including $660 unauthorized package fees and pickup pricing that ranges from $7.50 to $33.50 depending on how often you need their services. It's like surge pricing, but for logistics and without the convenience of an app to complain about it.

Meanwhile, at the Port of Los Angeles, truckers went from handling 4-5 containers daily to just 2-3 after April's tariff announcements, with May delivering 17 cancelled sailings and 225,000 missing containers. America's busiest port now resembles a ghost town with excellent infrastructure.

And this just in - Canada Post finally locked in a contract with its rural postmasters, after a mere 18 months of dramatics, strikes, and government shenanigans. The new deal tacks an 11% bump to wages retroactive to Jan 1, 2024 (that’s 6% in year one, then 3% and 2%).

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Logistics Vitals

Supply chain stress test results

June delivered a freight industry performance review that nobody wanted to receive. Between tariff aftershocks and seasonal demand surges, logistics managers are discovering that crisis management is apparently now a core competency rather than an emergency skill.

  • Logistics costs jumped 5.4% to $2.6 trillion as retailers like Target discover that "agile sourcing" is just fancy talk for "panic purchasing from whoever will still sell to us"

  • Harvest season meets moving season in the annual summer freight capacity cage match, with predictably expensive results

  • Aurora Innovation's 1,200+ mile autonomous trucking marathon proves robots can drive longer than most humans—which isn't saying much

  • Ocean freight costs hit the 200% year-over-year club thanks to Red Sea chaos and tariff theater, making CFOs everywhere reconsider their import strategies

  • Uber Freight's AI routing cuts empty miles by 15%, finally proving that artificial intelligence can solve problems caused by natural stupidity

  • Cavnue's smart freight corridor near Savannah shows that throwing enough sensors at a traffic problem occasionally produces actual results

Warehouse Tech

Robots graduate from warehouse academy

In super disruptive tech news for the week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a stunning memo basically said, “AI will do corporate jobs fewer people used to do”. With over 1,000 generative AI initiatives “underway,” he’s urging staff to embrace the robot overlords or be shown the door. So, if you’re working in internal ops and can’t automate yourself, maybe it’s time to polish that résumé. And by “polish,” he means, “tell Alexa to do it.”

Veho's Austin robot trial just achieved a 95% delivery success rate, proving that RIVR's wheel-legged mechanical couriers can actually follow delivery instructions better than most humans. These aren't your basic warehouse floor-cleaners—they're sophisticated package-shuffling sidekicks that work alongside human drivers without the usual robot drama of "does not compute."

On the startup front, five robotics companies are rewriting the warehouse playbook with AI-driven everything—from GreyOrange's demand forecasting wizardry to Locus Robotics' AMRs that cut downtime by 20% through predictive maintenance. It's like having a crystal ball, except it actually works and costs significantly more than $19.99.

C.H. Robinson has unleashed over 30 AI agents to tackle LTL classification, cutting the “10-minute per shipment” slog down to three seconds once the bots learn a thing or two!

Marketplaces

Social platforms discover commerce is profitable

CVS and Reddit just became unlikely business partners, while Instacart cozied up to Pinterest in deals that turn social browsing into shopping data goldmines. Because apparently scrolling through health advice and recipe boards wasn't profitable enough—now they need to know exactly what you buy afterward.

Amazon, never content with simple announcements, decided to stretch Prime Day into a four-day endurance test running July 8-11, complete with "Today's Big Deals" that refresh faster than a warehouse manager's coffee supply. Extra AI features will include “Alexa+” alerts and the shopping guide “Rufus” to help you not talk yourself into more impulse buys. But some shoppers are already snoozing on the idea, citing “deal fatigue” and confusion from overexposure. So, for all the data scientists chasing metrics, remember: more days does not equal more excitement. We’ll see…

Warehouse Quick Deliveries

Robots, oil threats, and furniture wars

❝

"If you're a trucker who was hauling four or five containers a day prior to these announcements back in April, today, you're likely hauling two or three loads"

- Gene Seroka, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director, June 16, 2025