Above the Fold: Supply Chain Logistics News (April 10, 2026)

By Adrian Gonzalez

I woke up to snowflakes in the air this past Tuesday — the big, puffy kind, like bits of cotton candy floating down from the sky.

It’s April, isn’t it?

I watched the snow falling through the kitchen window, waiting for my coffee to brew. Slowly, the lawn was turning white.

A squirrel, waiting for his morning nut, stood upright beneath the oak tree in my yard.

He watched the snow falling too, and then, maybe sensing me at the kitchen window, he turned his head and looked right at me. I recognized the look on his face because it was the same look I had on mine — you know the look, the one that says, “WTF.”

We both shook our heads and went about our day.

That’s April in New England for ya.

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Moving on, here’s the supply chain and logistics news that caught my attention this week:

The Tehran Toll Booth

The good news: there is a ceasefire in the war with Iran, albeit a very tenuous one.

The bad news: Iran is in firm control of the Strait of Hormuz, charging tolls of up to $2 million per ship to pass through.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, “eight dry bulk and container ships moved cargo to Iran on Thursday [April 9], according to Marine Traffic data. That’s up from four ships that were allowed to pass Wednesday, the fewest so far in April, according S&P Global Market Intelligence. In peacetime about 135 ships a day move in and out of the Persian Gulf, which puts this week’s traffic at a trickle.”

This situation is affecting oil and gas markets the most, along with petrochemicals and fertilizers.

While a $2 million toll fee is a big price to pay, the bigger price is the precedent this could set if this Tehran Toll Booth is allowed to continue. As Tom Fairless reports in the Wall Street Journal today:

Approving a toll system for Hormuz would roll back the freedom of navigation that has been a bedrock of U.S. strategic global positioning for at least 150 years, said Jacob Kirkegaard, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C.

It would set a global precedent, potentially inviting countries around the world to impose similar fees on trade through global chokepoints — a form of institutionalized piracy. Denmark, for example, could theoretically reimpose the transit tolls that for centuries were a principal revenue earner for the Danish crown, Kirkegaard said.

A new risk for supply chain executives to add to their already long list.

Betting Big on AI

In his annual letter to shareholders published yesterday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy refers to AI as a seminal shift in the industry:

Choosing which inflections are truly seminal versus “just interesting” requires judgment. Reasonable people can disagree. But, if you believe you’ve found one of these disproportionate shifts, you want to invest as aggressively as you responsibly can. This will create investment spikes that will invite scrutiny, but the game-changers don’t typically accommodate smoother investment horizons.

One of these seminal shifts is AI. Every customer experience will be reinvented by AI, and there will be a slew of new experiences only possible because of AI. I’ve followed the public debate on whether this technology is over-hyped, whether we’re in “a bubble,” and if the margins and ROIC will be appealing. My strong conviction, at least for Amazon, is that the answers are no, no, and yes.

As a result of this seminal shift and strong belief that “margins and ROIC will be appealing,” Amazon plans to invest about $200 billion in capital expenditures this year, most of it focused on the AI infrastructure.

Although not to the same scale, every supply chain and logistics software vendor is making a similar bet on AI. You can’t go a week without a vendor issuing an AI-related press release. Just look at the list above.

The big news this week was project44’s acquisition of LunaPath.ai, “an AI-native logistics automation company specializing in orchestration and execution-focused agents.” Here are some details from the press release:

Most AI in supply chains struggles to deliver value because it lacks context. Logistics data lives across disconnected ERP, transportation management, visibility, yard management and ecommerce systems, forcing teams to interpret signals and manually close execution gaps. project44’s supply chain data graph unifies those systems, partners and events into a single contextual model of how freight moves.

LunaPath’s agents operate within that contextual model at both the orchestration and execution layer. Purpose-built for logistics, they autonomously manage the full job to be done, from carrier check calls and proof-of-delivery retrieval to claims initiation and appointment confirmations, without waiting for human intervention. Grounded in live shipment data and historical performance patterns, LunaPath’s operator agents understand downstream impact before acting, enabling them to prioritize, escalate and resolve exceptions the way an experienced logistics professional would.

project44 also announced “a portfolio of AI agents covering the most consequential jobs facing shipper operations teams.” Here’s the list of agents from the press release:

Freight Procurement Agent: Continuously benchmarks contracted rates against live market conditions, automates carrier selection, and flows negotiated rates directly into execution, reducing freight spend and eliminating manual bid cycles.
Disruption Management Agent: Scans global events in real time and maps their impact across the shipper’s network, initiating coordinated response actions before exceptions escalate and protecting revenue and on-time performance.
Network Operations Agent: Continuously monitors carrier connectivity, equipment ID accuracy, and milestone completeness, resolving data gaps automatically to maintain accurate visibility and reduce the manual effort of network management.
Exceptions Management Agent: Detects and resolves shipment exceptions across modes, including missed pickups, delivery failures, and route deviations, reducing dwell time and the downstream costs of unresolved issues.
Slot Booking Agent: Manages inbound and outbound appointment windows automatically, reducing scheduling friction, improving dock utilization, and accelerating inventory receipt to lower carrying costs.
Carrier Onboarding Agent: Accelerates carrier onboarding through proactive outbound engagement and 24/7 inbound support, reducing time-to-activation and the manual effort required to expand and maintain the carrier network at scale.

I haven’t been briefed on the acquisition or seen a demo of the agents yet, so I can’t comment on these developments, specifically. But I am reminded of what I wrote this past October in “When AI Agents Run The Supply Chain”:

After a month on the road, attending various supply chain and logistics events, I’ve come back with a serious question: If all the promises of AI and AI agents in supply chain management come true, what will be left for us humans to do?

I guess I’ll have more time to look at squirrels.

And with that, have a meaningful weekend!

Song of the Week: “Sally, When The Wine Runs Out” by ROLE MODEL