June 13, 2025
Welcome to the chaos of modern logistics, where crisis meets opportunity and your shipping budget is about to get very interesting. Trade wars just handed 3PLs their biggest jackpot in decades. UPS decided to celebrate by unleashing fresh surcharges. Construction delivery data somehow managed a spectacular 91% uselessness rating, and the trucking bloodbath that killed thousands of carriers over recent years finally reached equilibrium, sending rates skyward. Yet amid all this beautiful mess, Bob’s Discount Furniture proved you can still deliver sofas and save communities simultaneously because, apparently, some logistics operations still have souls. Buckle up!
Chaos breeds opportunity, and the freight world’s current mess proves it. While shippers pull their hair out over tariffs and trade tensions, third-party logistics providers just stumbled into their biggest break in decades. The catch? They can’t just sit back and collect — winning requires serious relationship building and operational upgrades.
Trade policy uncertainty turned shippers into nervous wrecks practically overnight, and that panic became 3PLs’ golden ticket. Companies that spent years managing their own logistics suddenly realized they were in over their heads when supply chains started resembling an earthquake. The 36th annual Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals State of Logistics Report, crafted by Kearney after doubling its usual interviews with shippers, carriers, and analysts, revealed how desperate these companies have become for end-to-end logistics support.
The days of running simple point-A-to-point-B routes with cost-plus pricing died quickly, and smart 3PLs are looking to reinvent themselves before someone else eats their lunch. Many companies are already pushing hard into fourth-party logistics territory, where they become the single contact point for entire outsourced supply chains. But here’s where it gets tricky: Retail and e-commerce customers want their stuff ASAP, which means 3PLs need to buddy up with less-than-truckload and last mile providers that can deliver speed without breaking the bank. The winners will throw tech at demand planning and inventory management while automating their warehouses, especially those multi-tenant facilities handling pallet distribution and individual order picking.
UPS decided May was the perfect month to unleash a surcharge bonanza. It rolled out fuel fee hikes, slapped a new $12 international collect-on-delivery charge on the books, and shuffled delivery area ZIP codes like a deck of cards. But the real kicker? Come August 17 oversized shipments get hit with completely rewritten bulky package math that could hit where it hurts.
UPS bumped domestic fuel surcharges by 100 basis points on May 26, instantly making Ground and Ground Saver shipments pricier. The math is simple but painful: When diesel hits $3.20 per gallon, shippers now pay 18.75% instead of 17.75% — pocket change that adds up fast when moving volume. And since UPS adjusts these fees weekly based on fuel prices, shippers are essentially riding the energy market roller coaster whether or not they signed up for it.
Patio furniture, aftermarket car parts, and recreational equipment shipments are about to get schooled in new math as well. Effective August 17, UPS will ditch the old length-plus-girth formula and switch to pure cubic inch calculations for large packages and additional handling surcharges. Packages over 110 pounds or larger than 17,280 cubic inches will trigger the large package fee, while anything exceeding 8,640 cubic inches gets slapped with the additional handling charge.
Do you know the feeling when a delivery shows up, and the paperwork makes absolutely no sense? You’re not the only one — it’s way worse than you think. Fresh data from over 1 million deliveries shows that 91% of construction documentation is basically useless, and 95% of deliveries come with paperwork so bad it might as well be written in crayon.
You’re trying to track construction materials, but 72% of deliveries are missing basic info like weight or volume — the stuff you need to do your job. Meanwhile, waste removal records are so incomplete that 60% are missing essential details like how much things weigh. Beyond the sheer annoyance, this kind of data chaos makes compliance audits a nightmare, leaving you explaining to safety inspectors why you have no clue what’s in your building. Only 34% of material records are accurate enough to calculate carbon footprints, which means when corporate starts asking about sustainability targets, you’re shrugging and hoping for the best.
Even worse? 80% of contractors have no structured way to handle delivery data, and it takes an average of four weeks for delivery information to become remotely useful. Four weeks! You’re making procurement decisions, tracking inventory, and managing budgets while flying completely blind month by month. Since materials eat up over 40% of project costs and poor materials management wastes 5-11% of budgets, this data disaster is hemorrhaging money.
The freight market spent the last few years drowning in too many trucks chasing too little cargo. And all that excess capacity got flushed out the hard way as thousands of small to midsize trucking companies went belly-up. Now that the dust has settled as the market chases equilibrium, rates are surging.
Running a truck costs 34% more than 10 years ago, but spot rates remain at 2014 levels. RXO put it bluntly in its quarterly report — carriers were “running with unsustainable unit economics.” Small and midsize operators couldn’t keep hemorrhaging cash forever, so they quit. The carnage was so severe that even “a couple of atypical months of operating authority growth in March and April” couldn’t stop the bleeding. RXO noted that “we’re as close to equilibrium, in terms of carrier supply and shipper demand, as we’ve been in over two years” and called the current capacity situation “much more fragile” than last year.
Rejection rates tell the whole story. When the national average Outbound Tender Rejection Index hit 6.67% by June, carriers immediately started saying no to cheap freight. TL spot rates shot up 9.1% year over year in Q1, riding the momentum from an 11.6% jump in Q4 2024. Even contract rates finally broke their losing streak with a 1.4% annual increase — the first time they’ve gone up since 2022. The regional picture gets wild: Southeast rejection rates blasted past 10% for the first time in nearly three years, while Atlanta (8.89%), Chicago (7.07%), and Dallas (6.86%) all ran way above the national average. Only the West Coast stayed cool, but that’s because long-haul freight jumped to rail instead.
Bob’s Discount Furniture showed every retailer how to win awards while running deliveries. Bob’s grabbed Social Impact Retailer of the Year at the inaugural Last Mile Retail Awards in Nashville on May 21 by doing something radical — making its trucks pull double duty for its communities.
Most last mile delivery operations focus on getting from point A to point B as fast as possible. But Bob’s logistics team asked a different question: What if our trucks could accomplish two missions per route? Its drivers coordinate food pantry stops, handle mattress recycling pickups, and manage charity collections while running standard furniture deliveries. Ivan Kucher, vice president of delivery operations, summed up the strategy: “At Bob’s, we believe our responsibility goes beyond furniture — it’s about lifting up the communities we serve.”
Bob’s channels $2.75 million annually into local charities while its fleet chomps through over 11,000 tons of recycled materials yearly. The genius move is embracing reverse logistics: picking up old mattresses during new deliveries, essentially turning trash runs into added value. Bob’s wove charitable coordination into its warehouse systems and delivery routes, proving that doing good can make operations smoother when you build it in from the start.
While 3PLs cash in on trade chaos, UPS reinvents math, and trucking rates explode faster than construction data accuracy tanks, one thing’s crystal clear: agility wins. The logistics and transportation world may look bumpier, but that’s precisely when having the right delivery partner makes all the difference.
At FRAYT, we’re ready for anything. Our delivery network, vehicles, and solutions are your constant in these unpredictable times:
Ready to supercharge your deliveries? From the middle mile to the last mile, we’ve got your back. Sign up with FRAYT now and watch your supply chain transform from good to great.
