Global Logistics Focus

Special Report

COMMENTARY

By Paul Tonsager

The procurement risk is paying for today’ s scarcity as though it is permanent.

US logistics costs fell 1 % in 2025, but transportation did not become broadly cheaper. Ocean normalization was the principal factor behind a nearly $ 50 billion decline in the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’( CSCMP) water transportation category.

Trucking and parcel costs rose. For freight procurement, the ocean decline worked as a temporary subsidy, absorbing increases elsewhere. The same offset is not visible so far in 2026. Drewry’ s World Container Index stood at $ 4,473 per FEU in late August, more than twice its level a year earlier.

Truckload pricing is also firming, even though demand isn’ t. According to Cass Information Systems, shipments fell 4.8 % year over year in July, but its Truckload Linehaul Index, which measures rates excluding fuel and accessorials, rose 8.6 %. The market is being shaped more by capacity attrition than by strong demand.

Supply-driven scarcity can support rates, but it does not make the cycle permanent. Better carrier economics eventually attract capacity, while higher transportation costs encourage shippers to redesign networks, change service requirements or move eligible freight to other modes. The procurement risk is paying for today’ s scarcity as though it is permanent.

I have worked through the other side of this cycle. When capacity was the overriding issue, trucks, chassis and third-party labor had to be secured, and the rate became secondary to keeping freight moving. The harder work came after the market normalized.

In one post-disruption trucking program, we moved from a fragmented supplier structure to a more deliberate allocation model. That meant identifying lanes, aligning product and delivery stakeholders, reallocating freight, updating systems, and managing carrier performance. The rate work was the fastest aspect.

Unwinding crisis economics is an operating exercise, not simply a sourcing event. Procurement must decide which costs are structural, which reflect temporary scarcity and which capacity commitments still have strategic value. Cutting too quickly can damage relationships; waiting too long leaves crisis economics in a normalized market.

Large shipperrs rarely manage transportation as one economic portfolio. Ocean may be negotiated globally, truckload regionally, chassis and drayage by separate teams, and warehousing or third-party labor by operations. Each function has its own budget and systems. A given category may meet savings targets while increasing cost elsewhere in the network.

Capacity crises temporarily break those boundaries. Companies create war rooms because the objective becomes simple: move the freight. Procurement, operations, commercial and finance work together because an ocean decision can create a chassis problem, and a port decision can change inland cost. When the crisis passes, organizations often return to their silos as the task shifts from securing capacity to unwinding premiums and workarounds.

The components of that model are beginning to appear. project44 launched an AI Freight Procurement Agent in 2026 that continuously benchmarks rates and carrier performance and can automate sourcing and negotiations across modes. Target is using its Proxima digital twin to test middle-mile inventory decisions before changing the live network.

Neither publicly describes a system optimizing ocean, rail, truck, chassis, warehousing and inventory as one economic portfolio. And, although the pieces exist, the integrated operating model is still emerging.

That’ s the opportunity: Use AI to evaluate those categories together, rather than optimize each independently. The larger obstacle may be organizational, since costs typically correspond to different systems, and no single owner is accountable for the combined number.

Procurement officers still set strategic relationships, capacity insurance, service requirements and risk tolerance. AI can run the allocation and sourcing analysis from an enterprise view when there is no crisis to get everyone into the war room.

When a major transportation category is falling sharply, procurement can capture savings the market already provides. Without somewhere obvious to run, procurement must manufacture the offset through network design, modal conversion, asset utilization, inventory placement, service trade-offs and the removal of costs justified only by scarcity.

Modal conversion is one response when truckload pricing firms, however, the decision cannot rest on rates alone. The rail service product has to be durable enough to hold the freight through the next change in the truck market.

The immediate question for freight procurement in 2026 is how to protect needed capacity without locking temporary scarcity into the cost base, and how to manage transportation as one portfolio when the organization itself is still divided into categories.

email: paul. tonsager @ multimodalsolutions. io

30 Journal of Commerce | October 5, 2026 www. joc. com