Where the math is defensible.
Long-form research on live enterprise decisions. Publication is selective. Every number traces to a named source. No takes without evidence.
Container Shipping in 2026: Newbuild Glut Meets Geopolitical Reroute
Red Sea closure has propped up rates that the largest orderbook in a decade should otherwise have crushed. Alliance reshuffling, IMO carbon rules, and the prospect of Suez normalization will define which carriers survive the next downcycle.
Container shipping enters 2026 with two opposing forces in equilibrium. The largest newbuild orderbook since 2008 is delivering roughly 30 percent of fleet capacity across 2024 to 2026, front-loaded in 2024 and 2025. Houthi attacks in the southern Red Sea have meanwhile kept the bulk of Asia to Europe traffic on the Cape of Good Hope rout...
South Africa Logistics Reset: Transnet, the GNU, and the 2026 Recovery Path
Transnet Freight Rail volumes fell from 226 million tonnes in fiscal 2018 to 152 million in fiscal 2024. The Government of National Unity has to convert the 2022 National Rail Policy and Operation Vulindlela into a credible third party access regime by 2027.
South African logistics is the most expensive drag on the export economy, and the binding constraint is Transnet. Transnet Freight Rail moved 226.3 million tonnes in fiscal 2018, fell to 149.5 million tonnes in fiscal 2023, and recovered modestly to 151.7 million tonnes in fiscal 2024. The Sishen to Saldanha iron ore channel shipped 50.4 ...
The software defined warehouse: US logistics labor and automation through 2026
Warehouse and storage payrolls have given back roughly 100,000 jobs from the 2023 peak while Amazon now operates 750,000 mobile robots inside its fulfillment network. Symbotic, Locus, AutoStore, and Geek+ have moved from pilots to platform contracts. Real wages in the sector are still 20 percent above the 2019 line. The question for 2026 is how much further the substitution can run before the political economy pushes back.
United States warehouse and logistics labor sits at an inflection point. BLS Current Employment Statistics put warehousing and storage employment at 1.85 million in Q4 2024, off from a 1.95 million peak in Q1 2023. Amazon, the single largest private employer of warehouse labor, disclosed 1.5 million plus employees globally and a deployed ...