Supply Chain Intelligence Brief

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TRUCKING

Inland ‘25: Low demand putting pricing pressure on US LTL carriers

Journal of Commerce William B. Cassidy October 1, 2025 $Subscription Based

The famed discipline that has driven US less-than-truckload (LTL) pricing higher over the past decade appears to be holding. But some cracks in that pricing wall have been sighted and may be growing as low freight demand puts pressure on carrier profit margins.

Why America’s Trade Partners Oppose Trump’s Truck Tariffs

Transport Topics Noël Fletcher October 1, 2025

No details about the tariffs — which would also pertain to truck parts and components — have been released. In addition to Commerce, agencies that would play a role in implementation include U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. International Trade Administration.

Dry van report: Trucking ton-mile index sees modest growth despite industry challenges

DAT Freight & Analytics Dean Croke September 30, 2025

Load-to-Truck Ratio

Last week, dry van load posts rose by 4% to over one million, marking a 25% increase from last year. This surge, combined with a 12% decrease in national equipment posts, led to a slight tightening of capacity. Consequently, the dry van load-to-truck ratio settled at 6.69.

Trucking conferences to attend in 2026

Trucking Dive David Taube October 1, 2025

To help you prepare for the 2026 conference season, we’ve put together a list of the top trucking shows in the U.S. below along with a quick summary of each. We also reached out to organizers for some information. Some conference details were left as TBD until they are officially announced.

SHIPPERS / 3PLs

Manufacturing sees contraction for seventh consecutive month, reports ISM

Logistics Management Jeff Berman October 1, 2025

Business continues to be severely depressed,” said a Transportation Equipment panelist. “Profits are down and extreme taxes (tariffs) are being shouldered by all companies in our space. We have increased price pressures both to our inputs and customer outputs as companies are starting to pass on tariffs via surcharges, raising prices up to 20 percent.

Link: Institute For Supply Management  Manufacturing PMI® Report

‘Not a good sign.’ Weak demand continues amid tariff uncertainty: PMI

Manufacturing Dive Sara Samora October 1, 2025

The customer inventory index slightly fell to 43.7%, down 0.9 percentage points, indicating a faster rate of contraction. “That is the area that we feel encouraged by,” Spence said on the call. “The lower it goes, the more probable it is that our customers are going to order.”

Related: The Wall Street Journal U.S. Factory Activity Contracts at Slower Pace

INDUSTRY

Inland ’25: Drayage capacity could tighten quickly under tougher regulations

Journal of Commerce William B. Cassidy October 1, 2025 $Subscription Based

The US drayage market is weak amid plenty of capacity available to start the fourth quarter, but that could change quickly if demand rises or a regulatory crackdown limits capacity, attendees at the Journal of Commerce’s 2025 Inland Distribution Conference heard.

”If we lose 25% of the (drayage) drivers in California, you’ll have a real problem real fast,” Brian Kempisty, founder of Port X Logistics, warned during the conference in Chicago Tuesday.

Asia-West Coast container rates plummet; demand seen waning through year-end

Freight Waves Stuart Chirls October 1, 2025

Container rates on the eastbound trans-Pacific continued their plunge as ocean lines increase blank sailings amid weak demand that’s expected to persist through the end of this year.

Link: Drewry World Container Index

Alvys Raises $40 Million to Expand AI Freight Software

Transport Topics October 1, 2025

Alvys said it will use the funds to broaden functionality for large carriers, including API integrations, analytics and compliance tools. For midmarket fleets moving toward enterprise scale, the focus will be on faster onboarding and automation.

Prologis and U.S. Interior Secretary map future of supply chains and AI, with energy serving as a key driver

Logistics Management Jeff Berman October 1, 2025

In a wide-ranging discussion, Hamid Moghadam, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of San Francisco-based real estate investment trust Prologis, and United States Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum addressed took a forward-looking approach to key supply chain drivers and ways in which they are impacting supply chains, with an emphasis on energy reliability and Artificial Intelligence (AI), at Prologis’s annual Groundbreakers event, which was held yesterday in Los Angeles.

Link: Prologis Press Release Prologis CEO, Secretary Burgum Headline Forum Focusing on Energy Reliability, AI and the Future of Global Supply Chains

TECHNOLOGY

The agentic organization: Contours of the next paradigm for the AI era

McKinsey & Company September 2025

AI is bringing the largest organizational paradigm shift since the industrial and digital revolutions. This new paradigm unites humans and AI agents—both virtual and physical—to work side by side at scale at near-zero marginal cost. We call it the agentic organization.

In a Sea of Tech Talent, Companies Can’t Find the Workers They Want

The Wall Street Journal Callum Borchers October 1, 2025 $Subscription Based

The argument is companies should accept that relatively few people have AI-specific experience because the technology is so new. They ought to focus on identifying candidates with transferable skills and let those people learn on the job.

Salesforce bets on enterprise vibe coding

CIO Dive Lindsey Wilkinson October 1, 2025

Vibe Codey is an autonomous AI agent that collaborates with users like a second programmer, understanding project context and executing on behalf of the end-user to accelerate development, according to the company. Salesforce said the tool is particularly useful for rapid prototyping, greenfield projects and conversational refactoring.

SUSTAINABILITY / SAFETY / SECURITY

1-on-1 with ASCM’s Abe Eshkenazi: Balancing tech, talent, and sustainability

Supply Chain Management Review Brian Straight October 1, 2025

Sustainability still remains on the agenda of many companies, if not publicly, at least from an organizational standpoint. However, Eshkenazi argued that progress is being hampered by a lack of standards, allowing individual companies and countries to set their own bars of success.

EV tax credits are dead in the US. Now what?

MIT Technology Review Casey Crownhart October 2, 2025 $Subscription Based

To anticipate what’s next for the US EV market, we can look to countries like Germany, which have ended similar subsidy programs. (Spoiler alert: It’s probably going to be a rough end to the year.)

BUSINESS AND THE ECONOMY

Private payrolls declined in September by 32,000 in key ADP report coming amid shutdown data blackout

CNBC Jeff Cox October 1, 2025

Companies shed a seasonally adjusted 32,000 jobs during the month, the biggest slide since March 2023, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for an increase of 45,000.

Link: ADP® National Employment Report

New Research on How the Best Managers Shape Employees’ Careers

HBR Virginia Minni October 1, 2025 $Subscription Based

New research reveals that a manager’s true value—for both individuals and their firms—lies not in being a great motivator or monitor, but in their ability to strategically place talent. Analyzing 20 years of data from 200,000 employees and 30,000 managers across 100 countries, the study finds that high-performing managers—those promoted early—boost their employees’ productivity and wages by matching workers to roles where they thrive.

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