Burgers Are Fine. Washers Aren't.

Last Monday, Amazon announced it was opening its logistics infrastructure to any company, not just Amazon sellers. The market reacted by wiping double digits off FedEx, UPS, and GXO in a single session. My inbox filled up fast. The question everyone was asking was, in one form or another, the same thing: Can we still win new business when Amazon is sitting across the table?

Let me tell you about a deal I worked on two months ago, because I think it answers the question.

A brand came to me looking for a new 3PL. They were doing about $100 million in revenue, with Amazon as their primary sales channel. When it came to finding a new provider, one of their top criteria was simple: they needed someone who genuinely understood how to operate within the Amazon ecosystem, not just someone who claimed to.

I had a provider in my network that looked like a perfect match on paper. Multiple locations across the U.S., solid infrastructure, and an unusually deep knowledge of Amazon because they ran their own brand at a similar volume through the same channel. They weren't just a 3PL that serviced Amazon sellers. They were an Amazon seller themselves.

The brand turned them down without much deliberation. "They're in the same business as us," they told me. "We don't want our inventory, our sales data, our vendor information sitting in the hands of a competitor."

I've been thinking about that conversation a lot since Monday.

Because what that brand articulated instinctively is exactly the argument GXO CEO Patrick Kelleher made this week on his earnings call when analysts pushed him on whether Amazon's expansion was an existential threat. His answer: enterprise customers will not hand a competitor visibility into their inventory levels, their demand patterns, their sales channels, and their financials.

And to his credit, the numbers he reported weren't the numbers of a company in crisis. Q1 revenue came in at $3.3 billion, up 10.8% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA rose 23%. The sales pipeline hit a record $2.7 billion. You don't post those numbers if enterprise customers are fleeing to Amazon.

But here's the part that goes deeper than one earnings call. The reason brands are skeptical about handing over their operational data to Amazon isn't paranoia. It's pattern recognition. Amazon has a well-documented history of identifying successful third-party sellers, studying what's moving and at what velocity, and then launching competing products under Amazon Basics or its own private labels. Sellers have been knocked out of entire categories this way. People in this industry know those stories. So when Amazon comes to a brand and says, "Let us warehouse your inventory and our AI will position it perfectly," a rational segment of the market hears something else entirely.

Now, to be fair, not every brand carries that risk equally. A company selling commodity products that Amazon would never bother replicating has less to fear from data exposure than one sitting on a differentiated product in a high-margin category.

The broader point is this: roughly 70% of the global contract logistics market is still handled in-house by brands themselves. That's the real opportunity, and most of it hasn't been touched by Amazon or anyone else yet. The brands most likely to outsource for the first time are also the ones most likely to want a provider with no stake in what they're selling.

What this means for you: This is not the end that the fearmongering suggests. There will always be brands that need a provider who is categorically not their competitor and can offer a more personalized approach than a conglomerate like Amazon can. That is your lane. The question worth asking, honestly, is whether you're operating in it clearly enough for brands to recognize it when they see you.

Whirlpool dropped a word in its earnings filing this week that nobody wanted to see: "recession-level industry decline." The company blamed the Iran war directly, said consumer confidence collapsed in late February and March, slashed its full-year earnings guidance roughly in half, and suspended its dividend to focus on paying down debt. The stock fell 12% Thursday.

McDonald's, the same week, beat expectations. Revenue hit $6.52 billion. Same-store U.S. sales grew 3.9%. Net income was up. CEO Chris Kempczinski acknowledged that conditions are "not improving, and may be getting a little bit worse," and specifically called out elevated gas prices, which are hitting low-income consumers hardest. But the company is still growing.

Here is why you should read both of these together: they are not contradictory. They are the same consumer story told from two different price points and purchase frequencies.

Nobody postpones a $5 meal when money gets tight. People actually trade down to it. McDonald's benefits from exactly the kind of macro pressure that is killing Whirlpool. A washing machine is a $1,200 decision you can defer for another year. A burger is a Tuesday. When consumers feel squeezed, the big-ticket, deferrable stuff gets pushed. The small, affordable, frequent stuff often holds or grows.

What this means for you: The question to ask about every client you serve right now is simple. Is their product a washing machine or a burger? If you fulfill orders for home appliances, furniture, big-box discretionary goods, or anything people buy once and defer when nervous, volume pressure is coming, and Whirlpool just told you how fast it can arrive. If you fulfill for affordable consumer goods, food-adjacent products, or anything that benefits from trade-down behavior, your clients may actually see a lift in volume. Knowing which bucket your book falls into is the difference between overstaffing into a soft quarter and being ready for one that surprises you to the upside.

2026 is proving to be a very tough year for 3PLs across the U.S., with many owners reporting that their sales pipelines have completely dried up.

Many blame it on the fact that the competition pool here in the U.S. seems to never stop growing, and although that is true, I’m also finding that many 3PLs are just doing a better job than ever, thanks to a maturing market, and that’s causing fewer brands to shop around once they’ve partnered with a solid 3PL.

The slow growth has prompted a wave of 3PLs seeking to acquire other 3PLs, as growth through acquisition has consistently proven effective. And those 3PL buyers are reaching out to me, and I want to connect them with you.

If you’re considering selling your 3PL, we are in what they call “a seller's market,” which means faster acquisitions and better offers. And I want to bring those offers to you.

If you’re thinking of selling your 3PL, I’d love to work with you.

Fill out this form, or email me at [email protected]

China was America's largest trading partner until recently. It is now fourth. The U.S. imported $60.87 billion worth of goods from China in the first quarter of 2026, down from $102.66 billion over the same period last year. A 40.7% drop in twelve months. The U.S. now buys more than double the goods from Mexico than it does from China.

The tariffs created the shift. But they didn't create what they were supposed to.

The manufacturing renaissance hasn't shown up. U.S. manufacturers shed 2,000 jobs in April alone and have cut 66,000 positions over the past year. The factories that were supposed to replace Chinese production are either not yet built, still coming online, or companies are rerouting through Mexico, Vietnam, and Taiwan instead of reshoring. The trade deficit barely moved, dropping from $66 billion in March 2024 to $60 billion in March 2026. And core goods prices, which fell every year before the pandemic, are now up 1.2% year-over-year. Consumers absorbed the cost of a trade war that hasn't yet produced the industrial base it was sold on.

The legal picture adds one more layer of chaos. Reading tariff news is like watching a tennis match. A ruling here, an appeal there, a new legal mechanism, another court challenge. The score as of this week: the Trump administration is 0-for-2. The Court of International Trade ruled that the 10% across-the-board tariff imposed earlier this year was illegal. After the Supreme Court struck down the original framework in February, the administration pivoted to Section 122, a 1974 trade law that allows tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days in response to "large and serious" balance-of-payments deficits. The court found that the threshold wasn't met.

Trump's response: "We get one ruling, and we do it a different way." Two new Section 301 investigations are already underway, with new tariff announcements potentially landing in July. For importers filing refund claims through the CAPE portal, this round's refund process could stretch into 2027.

But here's the thing. The court rulings don't change the ground truth. The trade map has already moved, and Mexico is now building the infrastructure to make that shift permanent.

Mexico's Interoceanic Corridor, known as the CIIT, is a rail and land bridge cutting across the narrowest point of southern Mexico, connecting the Pacific port of Salina Cruz to the Gulf port of Coatzacoalcos. For years, it was an ambitious project with an uncertain future. As of this week, it is seeing its first real surge in commercial volume. A recent Hyundai pilot demonstrated that cargo moving from Asia to the U.S. East Coast could be offloaded at Salina Cruz, railed across the 300-kilometer corridor, and re-shipped from Coatzacoalcos faster than waiting for Panama Canal slots. President Sheinbaum confirmed this week that the full corridor is targeted for completion in June 2026, with 316,000 metric tons already moved on operational sections. The connecting line to the Guatemalan border is 87% complete.

This is no longer a workaround. It is a permanent rerouting of freight flows that will reshape port activity, rail capacity, and warehousing demand across southern Mexico and Central America for years to come. And it explains why logistics providers are planting flags in Mexico right now rather than waiting to see how the trade policy dust settles. The new Puebla office of MODE Global, which went live in April and is already serving a major automotive customer, is one example. Maersk's capital investment in Mexican port infrastructure is another. They are not betting on a policy outcome. They are betting on geography.

What this means for you: The legal chaos doesn't mean tariffs are going away. It means the specific mechanism keeps getting invalidated while the administration finds another one. What it definitely doesn't mean is that China comes back as the dominant import corridor anytime soon. Inbound freight from China is structurally lower than it was, and the infrastructure being built in Mexico right now is designed to keep it that way. Mexico lost its dominance after Section 321 got thrown out, but this might be the comeback Mexico desperately needed.

Maersk lost $192 million on ocean freight last quarter despite a 9.3% increase in volume. Overcapacity is keeping rates in a race to the bottom, and the only reason the company is profitable at all is its logistics and warehouse divisions. This is not a Maersk problem. It is an industry problem. Any carrier that only owns the vessel, not the terminal or the warehouse, is in a structurally dangerous spot right now, and the Q1 numbers are starting to prove it. (Read More)

Diesel hit $5.62 a gallon this week. That is cents away from the all-time 2022 record, and the pain hasn't fully arrived yet. Energy analysts are flagging a 4-to-8-week lag between diesel price spikes and their appearance in consumer prices, because fuel costs work through the producer economy before landing on the shelf. In plain terms: the inflation your clients are feeling today from the Hormuz closure is not the inflation that's coming. (Read More)

Amazon is planting a $17 billion flag in France. The company announced plans to invest more than $17 billion in France between 2026 and 2028, its largest-ever commitment to the country. Four new distribution centers will open, creating more than 7,000 permanent jobs. The first three open this year, with a fourth following in late 2027. Amazon says it has been France's leading net direct job creator since 2010. The European infrastructure buildout is not slowing down. (Read More)

Blackstone is buying Greece's leading e-commerce marketplace. The firm agreed to acquire a majority stake in Skroutz, which connects roughly 9,000 merchants and 12 million products to around 2.5 million active users, in a deal valued at approximately $747 million, including debt. Skroutz has its own logistics and fulfillment infrastructure alongside a retail media unit and a fintech arm. Blackstone's thesis: e-commerce penetration in Greece and Southeast Europe is meaningfully lower than in Western Europe, and that gap is the opportunity. (Read More)

Walmart had a week of cart drama. The company told store pickers to load a maximum of six fulfillment bins per cart, down from eight, and to push when visibility is clear and pull when it isn't. This reversed a days-old pull-only policy that workers said kept bumping into their heels. The real context: Walmart's e-commerce business posted 27% sales growth last quarter, its eighth consecutive quarter above 20%, and individual stores handle several hundred online orders daily. Cutting bins per cart by 25% almost certainly lowers pick run efficiency. The company is also rolling out digital shelf labels with LED indicators to speed up picking. Both changes aim to solve the same problem: in-store fulfillment at e-commerce scale is genuinely hard to do safely and quickly. (Read More)

The right 3PL partner changes everything. Faster shipping, lower costs, fewer headaches, and the operational breathing room to actually focus on growing your brand. The wrong one costs you customers and the margin you can’t get back.

FulfillYN helps brands find the right one the first time. We match you with vetted providers from a network of 360+ warehouses worldwide, guide you through the evaluation process, and stay involved until the partnership is locked in and working. No wasted calls, no guesswork.

Find your 3PL match at FulfillYN.com