Supply Chain Intelligence Brief

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TRUCKING

Old Dominion: Freight market ‘starting to feel a little bit better’

Fleet Owner Geert De Lombaerde February 6, 2026

Executives of Old Dominion Freight Line say the freight market appears to be growing stronger, citing healthier customer outlooks and a strong reading this week from a closely watched economic indicator.

Link: Old Dominion Freight Line Press Release Old Dominion Freight Line Reports Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Per Diluted Share of $1.09

AAA Cooper seeks to build new facility in Spokane, Washington

Trucking Dive David Taube February 6, 2026

The project calls for a new 24,558 square foot warehouse/distribution facility and an attached 4,600 square foot office building along with parking areas for semi-trucks and trailer staging areas, a city summary says.

Will the weather shock fade into a long term shift for trucking?

Freight Waves Zach Strickland February 7, 2026

For those trying to determine whether the market has finally broken out, the SAMA points to a baseline that is meaningfully higher than at any point over the past three years. The model shows STRI reaching a low of 6.98% in early May, historically the softest point in the post-COVID market. Notably, that level is roughly in line with last year’s summer peak around the Fourth of July.

UPS plans cuts of 30,000 jobs, irking Teamsters union

Logistics Management John Schulz February 6, 2026

UPS also plans to close 24 buildings in the first half of this year as part of its cost reduction plan. Additional buildings to potentially close later in the year, Dykes said. The carrier closed 93 buildings last year.

SHIPPERS / 3PLs

Tight Truckload Capacity Among Factors in RXO’s Q4 Net Loss

Transport Topics Connor D. Wolf February 6, 2026

“In the fourth quarter, tightening in the freight market accelerated, driven by continued reductions in truckload capacity.” RXO CEO Drew Wilkerson said. “This impacted our buy rates and squeezed our brokerage gross margin. While demand remained soft, we have significant sales momentum. The brokerage late-stage pipeline for new business grew by more than 50%.”

Link: RXO Fourth Quarter 2025 Results

As the market turns, broker stress tests are already underway

Freight Waves Mary O’Connell February 7, 2026

The freight market has spent the better part of two years grinding along the bottom, offering little relief to brokers operating on thin margins and tighter credit. But as early signals suggest the cycle may finally be inflecting upward, recent earnings calls from RXO and C.H. Robinson offer a timely warning: a rising market does not automatically mean an easier one.

Amazon’s Q4 retail sales grow amid broadening assortment

Retail Dive Dani James February 6, 2026

The e-commerce giant will continue to carry luxury offerings, though everyday essentials were one out of every three units sold in fiscal 2025.

Amazon grows Q4 2025 sales via AWS, AI and same-day delivery

Digital Commerce 360 Abbas Haleem February 6, 2026

Amazon Prime members in the U.S. received more than 8 billion items for same- or next-day delivery in 2025.

Walmart Invests $330M to Update Louisiana Distribution Center

Transport Topics Noël Fletcher February 6, 2026

Louisiana officials praised Walmart’s new $330 million investment to modernize a regional distribution center with robotics to double traditional shipments in a Gulf South logistics hub.

Why L.L.Bean Hit a Wall at 50 Stores and Rethought Its Supply Chain

Supply Chain 24/7 February 6, 2026

L.L.Bean’s supply chain had been designed for a world where most orders went directly to individual customers. Inventory systems, fulfillment processes, and workflows were optimized to send “one or maybe two or three products to an individual customer,” as Chief Supply Chain Officer Kirsten Piacentini described it. As stores expanded, the same model was repeatedly retrofitted to serve retail, wholesale, and omnichannel needs.

INDUSTRY

New Jaxport project to boost Toyota volumes

Freight Waves Stuart Chirls February 9, 2026

A new Vehicle Processing Center at The Port of Jacksonville, Fla., is expected to boost Toyota’s volumes at the maritime hub.

The $145 million port project includes two state-of-the-art processing buildings with the addition of on-site rail connections and truck loading areas.

TECHNOLOGY

Here’s Where AI Is Tearing Through Corporate America

The Wall Street Journal Chip Cutter and Sebastian Herrera February 6, 2026

“Illogical” was the same word JPMorgan analyst Mark Murphy chose to describe, in a note to investors, the “expectation that every company will hereby write and maintain a bespoke product to replace every layer of mission-critical enterprise software they have ever deployed.”

How Gen Z Uses Gen AI—and Why It Worries Them

HBR Bejamin Lira et al. January 28, 2026 $Subscription Based

The data we collected reveal strikingly different patterns from those suggested in online forums and by tech companies. While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently claimed that “older people use ChatGPT as a Google replacement” whereas “people in their 20s and 30s use it like a life advisor,” our data tell a story of young users prioritizing productivity over social uses.

I tested ChatGPT-5.2 vs Claude 4.6 Opus in 9 tough challenges — here’s the winner

Tom’s Guide Amanda Caswell February 7, 2026

As someone who spends every day testing the "holes" in AI logic, I’ve been eagerly waiting to see how the landscape shifts with the release of Claude 4.6 Opus. We are no longer in the era where "it works" is enough; we are looking for nuance, meta-awareness and the ability to handle the messy contradictions of human thought.

SUSTAINABILITY / SAFETY / SECURITY

Samsara unveils AI-powered Coach, promising to radically reduce truck accidents

Freight Waves John Paul Hampstead February 8, 2026

Land drew a direct comparison between professional driving and elite athletics, noting that while coaching has become a sophisticated science in sports, where a player might receive upwards of 100 coaching moments during a training session, professional driving lacks similar support systems despite the life-or-death stakes involved.

Cruz Advocates for National Autonomous Framework

Transport Topics Eugene Mulero February 6, 2026

“Autonomous vehicles, or AVs for short, are no longer theoretical,” said Cruz. “Like it or not, they are here and will be central to the future of roadways. AVs are now providing mobility to the disabled, improving auto safety and advancing technologies that have the potential to save millions of wasted hours in traffic, but most importantly, save thousands of American lives.”

Waymo Says Genie 3 Simulations Can Boost Robotaxi Rollout

Transport Topics/Bloomberg News Natalie Lung February 6, 2026

Waymo’s new system can also take real-life dashcam datasets and convert them into scenes and depth maps for vehicle simulations, the company said. The combination will aid in making autonomous vehicle systems more reliable in uncommon scenarios.

Link: Waymo World Model: A New Frontier For Autonomous Driving Simulation

How Cybercrime Is Reshaping Cargo Theft and Fleet Risk in 2026

Heavy Duty Trucking Ben Wilkens February 4, 2026

As a result, cybersecurity can no longer be discussed in a vacuum. It must be part of a broader transportation security conversation that treats cybersecurity, operational security, and physical security as inseparable components of resilience.

BUSINESS AND THE ECONOMY

2025 saw the most industrial M&A deals over $500M since 2021: KPMG

Manufacturing Dive Jeffrey Kinney February 5, 2026

2025 saw the most industrial M&A deals over $500 million since 2021, including a surge toward the end of the year, according to KPMG data shared with Manufacturing Dive.

INDUSTRY EVENTS

Manifest

February 9-11 Las Vegas, NV

The Future of Supply Chain & Logistics

CLDA

February 18-20 Austin, TX

Final Mile Forum

Truckload Carriers Association

February 28 -March 3 Kissimmee, FL

Truckload 2026

S&P Global

March 1-4 Long Beach, CA