After decades in logistics, I don’t think there’s ever been a time when this industry wasn’t important. In 2025, chaotic tariff changes rocked the supply chain and both shippers and distributors have had to adjust to a new, uncertain normal. Once-established routes and sources are being reconsidered, while the ongoing freight recession continues to strain budgets and forecasts.
Essentially, surviving in this market means understanding the challenges at play and how logistics holds the key.
Back in 2018, I wrote a blog about the state of logistics and the increasingly important role it plays in the modern supply chain. Nearly a decade on, plenty has changed, but at the same time, many of the challenges we were contending with nearly a decade ago are still around. So that just leaves one question—is logistics still important in 2026?
The short answer is: yes, obviously.
But fully understanding where logistics fits into the current landscape means appreciating how the industry, and world, has changed in the last decade or so, and what the consequences of those changes have been. Make no mistake; this is a challenging, but thrilling, time to be in logistics.
Delivery expectations
One of the biggest changes we’ve seen since 2018 is delivery expectations.
Thanks to years of expanded next- and same-day delivery options from places like Amazon, consumers by and large aren’t willing to wait much longer than 24 hours if they have to. Today, those expectations permeate virtually every stage of the supply chain. In other words, we don’t just expect household goods to show up on our doorstep in an instant—we expect it with anything moving from one place to another.
But naturally, that means every single fleet is trying to accomplish the same thing: deliver to customers faster.
Ultimately, it becomes a math problem. How do we get trucks where they need to be in the most efficient manner, when everyone else is trying to do the exact same thing?
COVID, geopolitics & the supply chain
If people weren’t aware of how interconnected the global supply chain had become by 2020, COVID certainly made sure of it. The just-in-time (JIT) model came crumbling down as transit and lead times skyrocketed, and people learned that goods and materials need ships, trains, and, yes, trucks, to get from one place to another.
But COVID isn’t the only thing that’s shaken the supply chain in recent years. In 2022, a ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, blocking oceangoing traffic for weeks and adding even more chaos to the global economy. Wars and armed conflicts in Ukraine, Iran, and other countries have also weighed on trade and disrupted the supply chain.
Finally, we can’t forget to consider the impact that the ongoing tariff situation has had. The threat of new tariffs has already encouraged manufacturers to find new source countries for certain raw materials, resellers to reconsider where to import from, and buyers to look twice at the label before making a purchase. All of these decisions end up being absorbed by logistics. When buying patterns change, at any point in the supply chain, everyone relies on our industry to keep goods moving where they’re needed.
Analytics & AI
I don’t think anyone could’ve quite predicted just how prevalent fleet analytics and artificial intelligence would be by 2026. The latter is practicably inescapable.
But even broadly speaking, technology has been transformative for logistics. More and more fleets are seeing value in GPS and asset tracking telematics systems that give them unprecedented oversight over their entire operations. The challenge is taking all that data and drawing not just the right conclusions, but the relevant ones. AI can help us here, but we still need to be able to tell it what we want it to do.
Of course, technology is meaningless without implementation, so I’m almost more curious to see how many more fleets are using AI, telematics, and IoT tech in their everyday operations in, say, another eight years, as opposed to what new capabilities might be available in 2034.
Logistics today
The numbers don’t lie. According to the 2025 State of Logistics Report released by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, logistics costs for U.S. businesses now stands at $2.3 trillion and is worth 8.7% of the national GDP. The 2017 numbers I referenced in my prior piece were $1.5 trillion and 7.7% of GDP, so clearly this industry hasn't stopped expanding despite myriad and varied headwinds.
And those headwinds haven’t stopped blowing. Though a freight recovery seems imminent in 2026, the logistics industry will still need to contend with the fallout of this transition from “bust” to “boom.” Though the recent Supreme Court decision on last year’s sweeping tariffs could, once again, throw everything out of whack, the supply chain already seen shifts in port traffic and where trucks are picking up freight. This means finding new routes, learning the nuances of local roads, researching historical congestion patterns—essentially, starting over from scratch at a crucial, time-sensitive moment.
All that said, I couldn’t be more excited to be in logistics right now. There’s still a lot to play out between the traditional methods and practices used in logistics engineering and the impact of AI–enabled tools, but I think there’s room for both in this new age. How do we solve the worst trucking bottlenecks? How do we schedule deliveries to avoid overwhelming shippers, when there’s not too much traffic, when people are actually awake and working? These are the challenges that logistics will solve.
