THE DAILY

Friday, April 10, 2026

The five minutes that make you the most informed person in freight today

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The Daily

Project44 moves past visibility with fleet of AI agents for freight execution

Project44 just declared the visibility era over. At its Decision44 customer event on April 9, CEO Jett McCandless unveiled a suite of purpose-built AI agents designed to collapse the three-step sequence of truth, decision and action into a single motion — and handed execution authority to machines while keeping humans in the governance loop.

The company spent a decade and $1.5 billion in R&D building what McCandless called the connective tissue global supply chains lacked. The result: a logistics data graph processing more than 1 billion customer-created events per day and 4 petabytes of data monthly. The problem was what came next. Signal-to-action ratio: 2%. Visibility gave the industry a clear view of its problems, but solving them fast enough remained out of reach.

The numbers from Decision44 are specific enough to benchmark against. The Freight Procurement Agent — available now — has delivered 4.1% freight cost mitigation, a 75% reduction in sourcing cycle time, and a 70% reduction in manual coordination by replacing periodic bid cycles with continuous AI-powered sourcing and simultaneous carrier negotiations. Cargo security agents detect GPS spoofing patterns and door-open events, cutting intervention times from 40 minutes to 12 minutes. Those results land as project44’s own data shows cargo theft up 60% year-over-year. Most of the remaining agents — Stockout Risk Monitoring, Last Mile Disruption response, Dynamic Slot Booking — go live between June and July.

Kristen Kravitz, Group Vice President of Supply Chain at Abercrombie & Fitch, said the technology bottleneck is gone: "It’s often now the process and people." Her company treats trendy seasonal apparel as perishable inventory, rebuilt its supply chain team around digital-first workflows, and shifted from mode-focused operations to origin-and-destination decisioning. "We’re in the never-normal supply chain now," she said. The agents can move at the speed of thought. Whether the organizations deploying them can keep pace is the open question McCandless himself acknowledged.

Project44 is also entering the TMS market. Director of product Ilias Pagonis argues that traditional platforms were designed for stable carrier relationships and predictable annual procurement — conditions that no longer exist, with many systems unchanged for 20 years. The Intelligent TMS is AI-native, modular and covers procurement through freight audit. Pagonis put the credibility gap plainly: 96% of transportation leaders call continued AI investment a top priority, yet only 13% of logistics professionals report measurable value today. "Vanity AI projects won’t deliver value nor survive the next budget cycle," he said.

So What? The Freight Procurement Agent’s 4.1% cost mitigation and 75% shorter sourcing cycle are the numbers to benchmark your own procurement operation against. Shippers and 3PLs waiting for AI to prove itself in freight execution now have a proof point from a platform processing a billion events a day. The June-July agent launch window is the real test, because if project44 can keep releasing new workflows, the manual exception handling that still consumes operations teams has a measurable alternative.

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Top Stories

USPS files for 4.8% price hike, suspends pension contributions as financial crisis deepens

The U.S. Postal Service filed Thursday with the Postal Regulatory Commission for a 4.8% across-the-board price increase effective July 12, raising the First-Class Forever stamp from 78 cents to 82 cents. Simultaneously, USPS announced it would suspend employer contributions to the Federal Employees Retirement System to preserve liquidity, the same move it made in 2011 during its last major cash crunch. The agency posted a $9.5 billion net loss in FY2025. At a congressional hearing last month, Postmaster General David Steiner warned the Postal Service could run out of cash within a year absent legislative action. A separate 8% parcel surcharge covering fuel costs was already approved by regulators last week.

So What? July 12 is the hard date for shippers routing volume through USPS. The combined effect of the 4.8% base increase and the existing 8% fuel surcharge changes the last-mile cost calculus materially. Any budget model built on current USPS rates needs revision before that date, not after the invoices arrive.

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Mexico trucker strike ends after police confrontations, core demands unresolved

Mexico’s National Association of Transporters (ANTAC) suspended highway blockades Wednesday after two days, citing safety concerns following reported police confrontations, including arrests and alleged use of force, in Tlaxcala, Veracruz and Chihuahua. The blockades had disrupted key freight corridors connecting Mexico City, the Bajío industrial region and northern border crossings. The underlying grievances that launched the strike, including cargo theft, extortion and highway insecurity, remain unchanged. ANTAC estimates 30-40 cargo thefts occur daily nationwide, with roughly 80% involving violence including kidnappings and killings of drivers. The organization said additional actions could follow if conditions on Mexico’s highways do not improve.

So What? The blockades are cleared, but the conditions that caused them haven’t changed. Shippers moving freight through Mexico’s central and Bajío corridors should maintain elevated monitoring on carrier safety protocols. ANTAC reserved the right to resume, so another disruption is a question of timing, not probability.

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Fuel costs, not demand, are driving ocean and air freight rate increases into Q2

Both ocean and air freight are entering Q2 with rates rising despite soft demand, according to Flexport’s April 9 market update. Jet fuel prices are up 78% year-over-year as of the Middle East crisis, and carriers are passing those costs directly to shippers through emergency bunker surcharges and aggressive fuel surcharges. Global widebody air cargo capacity is down 11% versus pre-Lunar New Year levels, with multiple Middle East airspace closures forcing longer routing that further reduces payload capacity. On ocean, roughly 130 container ships remain stuck or delayed in the Persian Gulf despite a ceasefire announcement, with trans-Pacific eastbound blank sailings rising as carriers manage costs. Savannah continues to see about a two-day vessel queue delay. "The big thing is not so much capacity right now as it is the price of fuel," said David Grinevald, regional director for air freight at Flexport.

So What? Flexport executives expect elevated fuel surcharges to persist through Q2 with limited relief on either mode. Budget for higher all-in rates regardless of volume levels. The 130 vessels still stuck in the Persian Gulf are the leading indicator to watch, because their movement will signal when carrier cost structures start normalizing.

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Hacked carrier email leads to $140K frozen meat theft despite clean booking

A $140,000 frozen meat shipment moving from Virginia to the Bronx was stolen after a legitimate carrier’s email account was compromised, according to Direct Traffic Solutions Director of Safety Christopher Griffin in the Fraud Watch podcast. The carrier had an existing relationship with the shipper, passed every internal verification check, and showed no history of issues. Everything tracked normally through the morning of delivery, when driver updates stopped matching tracking data. By that point, the load had already been diverted and was moving through multiple parties. Direct Traffic Solutions tracked the shipment through each handoff but the product had been improperly stored by the time it was located. The customer rejected it. The entire shipment became a claim.

So What? When tracking data and driver communication stop matching, treat it as loss of control, not a delay. Every hour of hesitation is another handoff. Carrier verification at booking doesn’t protect against mid-shipment email compromise. Continuous verification through the shipment lifecycle is the gap this case exposed.

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From the Research Desk

What We’re Watching

▸ Project44’s June-July agent launch window. The Freight Procurement Agent is live. Stockout Risk Monitoring, Last Mile Disruption response and Dynamic Slot Booking all go live June-July. Watch whether operations teams can restructure workflows fast enough to capture the efficiency gains. Abercrombie & Fitch’s Kravitz identified process and people — not technology — as the binding constraint. She’s right.

▸ Persian Gulf vessel count. About 130 container ships remain stuck or delayed in the Gulf despite a ceasefire announcement. Until carriers resume normal rotations, emergency bunker surcharges stay in place and Q2 ocean rate normalization stays off the table. Five ships left the Gulf this week — watch for that number to accelerate.

▸ USPS July 12 rate implementation. The Postal Regulatory Commission review of the 4.8% increase is still pending. Combined with the already-approved 8% fuel surcharge, July 12 means a meaningful cost increase for USPS-routed last-mile and marketing mail. Revise the cost model before the invoice arrives.

That’s your Daily for today. See you tomorrow.

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