When tasked with retrieving a full pallet/s of product with our powered stand on jacks, a lot of the guys in our warehouse call them “stabs.” I call each one a “snag and drag.” Do you have a name for them or do you just call them what they are?

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As the title reads I was invited to a hiring event, they texted me to come tomorrow within 10am to 3pm same day offers supposedly. From what they said the pay is $18.50 for 4 weeks of training but after something called “production pay” (confused on that) $16-$26hr depending on performance.

I’m confused about how the process actually works and I’ve never done a group hiring event before what am I to expect ?

A few questions I need help with:

• What does the hiring event/usually look like?
• Is it stressful or pretty easy?
•How does production pay work in real life (is it hard to hit decent pay or is $16 more common)?

I didn’t intend on this being so long but I really just need help to decide if I should go tomorrow, thank you for any advice or answers you give I’ll appreciate it so much thank you!!

Every warehouse job is the same. Dumbass managers who can't properly staff or figure out they're just as expendable as us "team members" when their precious numbers are down and try to get the top 10% of workers to do the work of the other 90. Best to STFU, stay out of the high school gossip, DON'T TRY TO SLEEP WITH THE WOMEN and if possible get trained on the P.I.T. equipment. Get your $$$ and don't be afraid to move on to the next if someone decides to get a hard on for fucking your shit.

Bro, there is no bigger lie in a warehouse.
The screen swears there’s stock. You check the bin bone dry. You check the top racks nothing. Now you’re playing detective looking for a phantom pallet that probably got mislabeled two years ago, while management is stressing about cycle counts.
Honestly, if ghost inventory could talk, it’d tell you it’s hiding behind the broken forklift .
Who else is fighting for their life against the system today? Is it a lazy CSV. upload, a skipped barcode scan, or just straight up black magic?
Let me know your worst ghost stock stories below, because right now, I'm ready to fight the computer screen.

It's pretty common to run into guys at the warehouse who straight up take things. Usually a small amount but then there's those big fish who make a fortune by doing it over time and under the radar. I know most people just look the other way and do their thing but others try to get into the action. One guy even tried to get smart and attempted to blackmail one of the big movers here to keep quiet and ended up in a dumpster wrapped in plastic from the neck down. How does it go where y'all work?

Hey everyone,

If it's your first time reading one of my posts, I break down the top logistics news from the past week, so you're always up to date.

Let's jump into it,

The Supreme Court just ended freight brokerage's free pass

Freight brokers used to have a legal shield that made it almost impossible to sue them when a carrier they hired caused an accident. The Supreme Court just took that shield away. Unanimously.

The case goes like this. A guy named Shawn Montgomery lost his leg when a truck hauling plastic pots veered off the road in Illinois. C.H. Robinson was the freight broker that booked the carrier. Montgomery tried to sue Robinson for hiring a dangerous carrier. C.H. Robinson's defense was essentially: federal law protects us from these kinds of lawsuits. A lower court agreed. The Supreme Court said no, actually, it doesn't.

That defense, which brokers across the industry have leaned on for years, is now gone.

So what changes? Brokers can now be sued in any state if they hired a carrier that had obvious red flags and something went wrong. The legal standard isn't that brokers have to guarantee nothing bad ever happens. It's just that they have to do their homework before booking a carrier. Check their safety record. Look them up. If a carrier had a terrible track record and you booked them anyway and someone got hurt, you're going to have a hard time explaining that to a jury.

The scary part is how much information is freely available. FMCSA's safety database is public and free. Crash rates, inspection history, out-of-service records, all of it is right there. Plaintiff attorneys have known this for years and have been building cases in anticipation of exactly this ruling. Those cases are getting filed soon.

And it's not just brokers. The court wrote about brokers because that's who the case was about, but the same logic applies to 3PLs, freight forwarders, and anyone else who selects carriers as part of their business.

What this means for you: If you broker freight or select carriers on behalf of clients, you need a documented process for vetting them. Not a mental checklist. An actual written process with records you can pull up later. If your current approach is basically "they have a valid license and a truck," that's not going to cut it anymore. Call your insurance broker, too, and ask whether your current coverage would actually respond to this kind of claim, because many policies weren't written with this exposure in mind.

UniUni is heading for a public market debut

Four weeks ago, we covered the Canadian 3PL expansion story in Edition 41: GXO opening in Mississauga, Arvato acquiring Think Logistics, IMC, and DP World planting flags north of the border. The thesis was that Canada's 3PL market, projected to nearly double to $49.7 billion by 2033, was finally ready for its moment.

This week, the biggest Canadian last-mile story yet: UniUni, the Richmond, BC-based delivery company, is reportedly planning to go public via a SPAC merger.

According to The Globe and Mail, the deal would merge UniUni with MAK Acquisition, a TSX-listed SPAC led by former Dye & Durham CEO Matthew Proud, valuing the combined entity at over $1 billion USD. UniUni is also raising $100 million in a PIPE alongside the deal. MAK confirmed it's in discussions but hasn't signed anything.

The numbers in the confidential memo obtained by The Globe and Mail are striking. Revenue grew from $113 million in 2023 to $295 million in 2024, then to $683 million in 2025. The company expects $1.1 billion this year and $1.5 billion in 2027. They lost $70 million in 2025 but expect profitability this year and $125 million in pre-tax profit in 2027.

UniUni runs a gig-powered delivery model, with 100,000 registered drivers delivering 1.2 million packages per day. Its primary customers are Shein and Temu. The company raised $85 million just two months ago from Beijing-based Rockets Capital and RBC, bringing total funding to $285 million.

There are some things worth watching carefully here. Uni's labor practices have drawn scrutiny, including multiple proposed class-action lawsuits. Media reports last year surfaced sordid conditions at a Connecticut warehouse. A company going public with that kind of background will face a different level of examination than a private operator.

But the growth trajectory is hard to argue with. And the timing, landing right as the Canada 3PL market is heating up and as Shein and Temu continue scaling North American operations, isn't an accident.

Trucks are the new ships

We've been tracking the Gulf crisis since the Strait of Hormuz closed, and one of the stories nobody expected to write is this: the global economy is partly being held together by 3,500 trucks running around the clock across the Arabian desert.

The Hormuz closure forced a rapid rerouting of trade. Shipping lanes built around a single chokepoint suddenly became unusable. What happened next was improvised on a scale that's genuinely hard to process.

Saudi Arabia's state-controlled mining company, Maaden, which exports phosphate fertilizer to global markets, had its entire supply chain misdirected. Its CEO, Bob Wilt, dispatched executives to Red Sea ports within days of the conflict starting. Two weeks later, he had rail and truck operators lined up. Six hundred trucks became 1,600, became 2,000, became 3,500. Each truck runs with two drivers to keep moving around the clock.

Wilt said Maaden will have caught up on its export backlog by the end of May. The cargo is already reaching Djibouti, Thailand, and Argentina via the Red Sea port of Yanbu.

And Maaden isn't the only one. MSC and Maersk are trucking goods across the Arabian Peninsula. Etihad Rail Freight moved hundreds of Nissans by train from Fujairah to Abu Dhabi, the country's first vehicle transport by rail. The UAE's port of Khor Fakkan saw truck traffic explode from 100 a day to 7,000. Weekly container traffic at the port went from 2,000 to 50,000. The operator, Gulftainer, hired 900 people in two weeks.

A UAE supermarket chain dispatched trucks loaded with British snacks on a 16-day journey from Kent through Western Europe, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to Dubai. This is the kind of supply chain improvisation that doesn't fit in a playbook.

Trucking routes can't match the capacity of ocean shipping or compete on cost. And they don't fix the energy crunch. But they've become a meaningful shock absorber in key markets, sustaining trade flows that would otherwise have collapsed.

It's also worth reading alongside the Mexico corridor story from a few weeks ago. Whether it's Mexico's Interoceanic Corridor, the Arabian desert routes, or LNG tankers taking the long way around, the same pattern keeps showing up: when a single-point bottleneck breaks, geography and improvisation fill the gap faster than anyone predicted. The traders who are ahead of it are the ones who already had contingency options mapped.

The tariff refunds are actually showing up

Back in Edition 42, we told you the CAPE portal was going live on April 20 and that the government was sitting on up to $175 billion in tariff refunds from duties the Supreme Court struck down in February. We told you to get your clients moving.

Here's the update: the refunds are coming. Faster than expected.

Customs began accepting refund claims on April 20 and said payments would start hitting accounts around May 11. That timeline held. As of last Friday, at least one importer had money in their account. Others received approval notices indicating payments would follow within days.

CMCBrands, a St. Louis apparel company, received notice that its first claim for roughly $42,000 had been approved. Their CEO said she was shocked by how fast it happened. A small wine importer, one of the lead plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case, expects to receive $100,000 and plans to use most of it to pay off suppliers. An art supply company in Washington plans to use part of its $18,000 refund to pay down a credit line and fund new product development. A California-based flowerpot importer expecting $150,000 is planning a sourcing trip to Vietnam.

The catch: about 63% of shipments subject to the tariffs are eligible in this first phase. The rest could take until 2027 to process. And the refund process is not automatic. You have to opt in, file the right paperwork, and wait. Some importers are still running into errors on the portal.

If your clients haven't filed yet, get them moving. Make sure their customs paperwork is clean before they submit, because errors will slow everything down. And if you want an intro to someone who can file the paperwork and offer upfront cash while they wait, reply to this email.

QUICK HITS

LAST MILE ‘Amazon Now’, a 30-minute delivery service for groceries and household essentials, is now live in Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, and Seattle, with rapid expansion planned through the rest of the year. Prime members pay $3.99 per delivery. This isn't a shot at FedEx or UPS. It's Amazon planting a flag directly in Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart territory, going after the "I need it now" consumer who's been the whole bet for gig-economy delivery platforms.

M&A Fulfillment Crowd, the UK-based tech-led 3PL backed by Palatine private equity, acquired Fulfilment.nl, a Dutch e-commerce logistics specialist. Fulfilment.nl will operate independently within the group under its existing management team. The Netherlands is a critical European logistics hub, and for fulfilmentcrowd, this is a direct play at cross-border EU volume. The mid-market 3PL consolidation story isn't only happening in North America.

PARTNERSHIPS Instacart added Ace Hardware to its same-day delivery platform, with delivery in as fast as one hour from thousands of locations nationwide. We covered Instacart's acquisition of Instaleap in Edition 42, which was about accelerating international retail partnerships. This is the domestic version of the same strategy: turning Instacart from a grocery app into a local retail delivery layer. The platform now works with more than 2,200 retail banners across nearly 100,000 stores in North America. The pace of category expansion is not slowing down.

ENFORCEMENT A California aluminum company, Perfectus Aluminum Inc., agreed to pay $549.5 million to resolve allegations it evaded antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese aluminum extrusions. The company imported millions of aluminum extrusions, spot-welded them into "pallets" to misrepresent them as finished merchandise not subject to duties, then imported over 2.2 million of them between 2011 and 2014. A jury convicted the company in 2021. The settlement resolves the civil case. $549.5 million is not a slap on the wrist. With the Trade Fraud Task Force operating at full speed, duty evasion is a much riskier calculation than it was five years ago.

INFRASTRUCTURE CH Robinson's Robinson Fresh division opened a 142,600 square-foot facility in Pharr, Texas, just miles from the US-Mexico border near the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge. The facility has 69 dock doors, multiple temperature zones, and is designed specifically for fresh produce cross-border supply chains. 55% of all fresh produce imported from Mexico enters through Texas. As we've covered, Mexico's role in US supply chains is only getting more entrenched, not less, regardless of what happens in the courts on tariffs. Fresh produce was always going to need infrastructure that matches the volume.

INFRASTRUCTURE Dollar Tree opened a 1 million-square-foot distribution center in Litchfield Park, Arizona, which will serve about 700 stores across the West and Southwest starting next month. A second DC in Marietta, Oklahoma, is scheduled to open in 2027, replacing the facility destroyed by a tornado in 2024. The Arizona opening is part of a deliberate push to reduce transit miles and get product closer to stores. When a retailer whose entire brand promise is price talks about investing in speed, it's usually because transportation costs are eating into margins.

That's all for this week. If you found this useful, consider subscribing.
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Anybody here work with Order Pickers for picking? I’ve been thinking about trying that side of warehouse work, but I’m not even gonna lie, heights mess with me a little. I’m okay climbing ladders and stuff, but being lifted way up while moving around pallets sounds very different in my head. A guy at my old job used one of those Atomoving order pickers during busy shifts, and he kept saying you get used to it after a while, but I still can’t picture myself being comfortable up there right away. I’m curious what it feels like once you start doing it for real. Is the machine stable enough that you stop thinking about the height after a few days, or does it still feel sketchy sometimes? I’ve watched videos, and everyone in them looks super relaxed, but I know videos never really show the nervous part people feel at first. Also wondering if fear of heights is something most people get over naturally, or if some people just never fully adjust to OP work.

EDIT: THANK YOU GUYS FOR ALL YOUR REASSSURING MESSAGES.

I am 1 of 3 women on nightshift in a warehouse, I work primarily on a cold dock and I’ve been having a terrible time trying to figure out how to stay warm, comfortable and not feel like a ugly troll in the process. Working nightshift has made it pretty much where I don’t go anywhere except for work and my appearance has suffered a lot because of it. Where is the balance between looking feminine and better to feel good about myself without drawing the wrong kind of attention or like I’m “trying too hard”, I also have to wear a huge freezer suit that makes me feel huge, fat, and self conscious (i’ve recently lost a lot of weight) and sometimes it is too heavy and hurts to wear, but when I layer up with hoodies and sweats I feel like I’m trying to hard. I just want to feel my best but still fit in and fly under the radar. Am I over thinking this? How do you look and feel your best in this type of environment?

Wanted an area for more receiver related issues.

Please voice concerns and let's help each other out.

It's been 8 months without a job and man i'm here struggling for a breakfast . I am a hard working guy i can grind , hustle everyday if i get a job , part time job i am seeking and i need to pay tuition fee as well fkedupp situation ..... Any help would be a great ....

I’m about 3 months in at my warehouse. I’ve done very well in terms of numbers, it’s not hard for me to hit incentive pay. What I find extremely challenging and draining though is the repetitiveness and the lack of mental stimulation. Do yall have any advice for alleviating that because it’s genuinely my only complaint with the work.

In all honesty I'm just trying to find a job that I can work and make a livable wage

I'm below average as far as intelligence goes, especially with math. I'm willing to work hard and put in effort at my job, I'm just stupid

Learning to drive the pallet jack is completely hard for me I’ve worked with the manual ones and I got the experience I got pros but the cons outweighs it. I just feel horrible I’m one of the few young guys in the field and within my training group everyone was doing it so perfectly, I just feel out of place and feel like I don’t fit in especially in the break room everyone just stares at me and here and there some laugh…

I understand I shouldn’t care but being that kinda environment it’s toxic asf I’m learning to be a order picker and already had my first experience on the electric pallet jack I could really use advice on that I seem to struggle backing it up to grab pallets and parking pallet within area any advice would be great I haven’t even got the experience of order selector but I feel I wanna give it one more day tomorrow but as of rn I feel so misplaced I don’t feel I belong here I don’t want to be that guy that quits on his 3rd day but idk I jus need sum type of guidance, I don’t plan on staying here forever but idk ..

Any advice at all will be very appreciated?

I worked at Dollar General Distribution jn Central Florida for 9 years. Gonna be starting a new job at Ben E. Keith Distribution next week.

Their pay structure is unique in that you get paid by the case. I know Sysco is like that as well. I am a pretty hard worker. At DG, we had production and we got incentive pay on top of hourly pay, but as you would guess, it wasn’t really significant unless you were getting 120% and holding that for most of the week. Obviously, getting paid by the case is a little different but I would guess it’s not as bad as it sounds (or maybe it is) I don’t know.

Does anyone have knowledge with this? What are downsides and upsides to it? Do you know of any other companies that do this?

This is the only thing that has me a little hesitant but again, that might be because it’s new. I am currently not working so not trying to be picky. Been looking for jobs for two weeks and no luck (until now). And of course, I got offered a position to work as an Amazon driver. I really wanted to do that, but asking people I know all suggested the warehouse. I know Amazon is less pay and more b.s. (definitely more demanding mentally than physically compared to warehouse, in my opinion). Even if a job is “easier” physically, I don’t automatically gravitate towards it. I enjoy working in a warehouse setting, just didn’t like the b.s. at DG.

But yeah, what is your experience working at a warehouse that js 100% incentive based? Any thoughts? Upside? Downsides? Has anyone heard of Ben E. Keith? The shift is Monday-Thursday and every other Friday is mandatory. Leave when the work is done (but that’s how DG was but we still knew around when we were leaving.

Oh yeah, because state law in Fl requires us they pay us overtime pay, they take whatever we pick per hour and times that by how many hours. So if we average $21 an hour picking, and we work 8 hours overtime, they times 8x21.