Above the Fold: Supply Chain Logistics News (May 8, 2026)

By Adrian Gonzalez

I can’t find my bike helmet.

I was all ready to do my first outdoor ride of the year — technically, it was my third ride, but the first two were in San Diego a few weeks ago, so they don’t count — but I couldn’t find my helmet.

I’ve looked everywhere, including places where it couldn’t possibly be, like the refrigerator and clothes dryer.

It’s gone — or stolen, because that’s how my raised-in-Brooklyn mind tends to work sometimes.

I rode 29 miles using my wife’s helmet.

I’m done looking for it. Later today, I will visit the bike shop and buy a new helmet so that I can ride with my wife this weekend.

And not long after, I will almost certainly find
my lost bike helmet.

—

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

Amazon Supply Chain Services: Much Ado About…?

“By 2030, 20% of the 3PLs operating today will be out of business.”

Brittain Ladd made that prediction earlier this week on LinkedIn in response to Amazon’s introduction of Amazon Supply Chain Services. That’s quite the prediction — and one most people will forget by next Friday afternoon, let alone four years from now.

First, here are excerpts from Amazon’s announcement, which has triggered plenty of commentary this week:

Today, Amazon is announcing Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS), opening its full portfolio of freight, distribution, fulfillment, and parcel shipping capabilities to businesses of all types and sizes, not only Amazon sellers. With this launch, Amazon is expanding its third-party logistics capacity to support businesses in industries such as healthcare, automotive, manufacturing, and retail.

Amazon is bringing the infrastructure, intelligence, and scale of its supply chain services — proven over decades — to businesses everywhere, much like Amazon Web Services did for cloud computing,” said Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services. “Supply chain wasn’t just a function at Amazon — it was core to providing an exceptional shopping experience. Our differentiator. The reason we could offer fast, dependable delivery that nobody else could. And with the launch of ASCS, we’re confident we can give any other business access to the same cost efficiency, reliability, and speed that we’ve built for Amazon customers.”

My initial reaction to the news was simply, “Okay.” Mainly because this isn’t really something new — it’s the culmination of what Amazon has been building toward for many years.

As Amazon highlights in the press release, it has been offering fulfillment services to sellers on its platform since 2006. Also, consider these headlines from 2015 and 2016, which I highlighted in an August 2016 Talking Logistics post titled, “Amazon: Disruptor Or Distraction?”:

Amazon just bought thousands of its own branded truck trailers (Business Insider – Dec 2015)
Amazon expands logistics reach with move into ocean shipping (Reuters – Jan 2016)
Confirmed: Amazon Flex officially launches, and it’s like Uber for package delivery (GeekWire – Sep 2015)
Amazon to compete with Fedex, UPS and Alibaba with secret ‘Dragon Boat’ plan, report says (GeekWire – Feb 2016)
Amazon Partners with Atlas Air Worldwide for Cargo Services (WSJ – May 2016)
First branded ‘Prime Air’ jet in Amazon’s fleet to fly at Seafair (The Seattle Times)

Amazon also launched freight brokerage services in 2019. See the post I wrote at the time titled, “Amazon Brokerage And Uber Freight: Why 3PLs And Brokers Need To Innovate.”

Going further back to 2013, I highlighted in “Amazon Inside P&G Warehouses: A Case Of ‘What’s In It For We’” how Amazon had set up operations inside at least seven P&G warehouses worldwide — according to a Wall Street Journal article at the time, which oddly no longer appears online — where “each day, P&G loads products [such as paper towels and diapers] onto pallets and passes them over to Amazon inside a small, fenced-off area. Amazon employees then package, label, and ship the items directly to the people who ordered them [online].” Amazon’s partnership with P&G had reportedly started three years earlier. At the time, Amazon was also reportedly doing the same — or in discussions to do so — with companies including Seventh Generation, Kimberly Clark, and Georgia Pacific.

I could go on, but I’m short on time this morning.

My takeaway is this: Amazon has been pressuring third-party logistics providers to “innovate or die” for more than a decade now. Sure, Amazon setting up a dedicated business unit to bring all of its supply chain and logistics assets, technology, and services together is a notable development. It makes a statement: we’re serious about becoming a dominant player in the third-party logistics market and growing our market share in it.

But if 20% of 3PLs go out of business by 2030, it won’t be because Amazon launched Amazon Supply Chain Services this week. It will be because — for the past decade or more — they failed to be bold and different, failed to innovate their business models, and failed to step back and ask themselves: “What business are we truly in?”

And with that, I have to go buy a bike helmet.

Have a meaningful weekend!

Song of the Week: “High” by The Cure