The obvious supply chain savings have been taken. What is left takes people who can work across transportation, fulfillment, pricing, and assortment at the same time.
Retail Brew's report on how high diesel prices are forcing retailers to optimize their supply chains carries a subhead that says most of it: are they running out of runway? Diesel prices have climbed nearly 90% since the start of the year, according to federal data cited in the piece, and that cost lands on every truckload, every parcel, and every store replenishment run heading into the holiday season.
Retailers have absorbed shocks like this before. In past cycles, they leaned on reshoring, efficiency investments, and harder supplier negotiations to keep price increases away from shoppers. The concern now is that many of those levers have already been pulled. As Douglas King, VP of transportation at fulfillment operator Cart.com, put it, it's getting harder.
When the easy savings are gone, the next ones come from judgment, not from a single contract or tool. That makes this a hiring story.
The article lays out a range of responses. Retailers are cutting transportation and warehousing costs where they can, changing how often they ship and deliver, and using AI-powered tools to find efficiencies. Some are making hard decisions about shipping speed and pulling back on free shipping. FedEx has raised its fuel surcharges, and King said Cart.com passed none of that increase on to its customers.
Logicbroker CEO Omar Qari described clients using agentic AI to shift distribution from warehouses to stores, or to cut products and categories that have become too expensive to move. His view is that retailers still have many levers to pull for margin. King's advice is to treat fuel as a strategic variable rather than a passive cost.
Jess Dankert, VP for supply chain at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, noted that retailers have done a lot of work to insulate shoppers from cost increases, but that so many variables go into pricing that it is hard to say whether efficiencies alone will keep prices down this season.
| Lever | What it requires | Who has to own it |
|---|---|---|
| Carrier contracts and fuel surcharges | Freight benchmarking and negotiation leverage | Transportation and logistics |
| Shipping from stores instead of warehouses | A fulfillment network that can flex by order | Omnichannel fulfillment and network planning |
| Rethinking free and fast shipping | A clear view of what shoppers will pay for | Pricing, DTC site, and loyalty |
| Cutting high-cost products and categories | Landed cost by SKU, not just margin by SKU | Merchandising and category management |
| AI-powered optimization | Clean data and people who can act on the model | Analytics and retail technology |
When carriers raise surcharges, the retailers that hold their margins are the ones with someone who knows what freight should cost, which lanes have alternatives, and when to shift volume between parcel, LTL, and regional carriers. That is a different profile from a logistics coordinator who manages bookings.
This sits in our Supply Chain & Operations practice. Look for transportation managers and directors who can show you a freight spend they reduced, how they did it, and what it did to delivery performance. As we covered in the real cost of a bad supply chain hire, a weak hire in this seat rarely fails loudly. It shows up as margin you never get back.
Shifting distribution from warehouses to stores is one of the most direct ways to cut miles, and it is exactly what Logicbroker's clients are using AI to do. But ship-from-store only saves money if store inventory is accurate, labor is planned, and the order routing logic knows which store should take which order.
That is the job of an omnichannel fulfillment or network planning lead. Our guide to hiring an Omnichannel Fulfillment Manager covers the profile, and our post on retailers partnering with DoorDash and Instacart covers another way retailers are pushing the last mile out of their own cost base.
Every retailer in the article faces the same question: who pays for the fuel? Absorbing it protects traffic and hurts margin. Passing it on protects margin and risks losing price-sensitive shoppers to a competitor. Changing free shipping thresholds or slowing delivery promises sits somewhere in between.
That decision needs an owner who understands both cost and customer. Our post on hiring a Director of Pricing and Revenue Management explains the role. For brands where the shipping promise lives on the site, it also involves DTC Site Management, since threshold and speed changes have to be tested and communicated, not just switched on.
Cutting products or categories that are too expensive to ship is the hardest lever to pull, because it means giving up sales. It only works when someone can see landed cost by SKU, including freight, packaging, and returns, and compare it with what that SKU actually contributes.
That puts Merchandising & Buying and Category Management at the table with supply chain. The strongest candidates have made assortment decisions based on cost to serve, not just gross margin. Bulky, low-price items are usually where this shows up first, and returns can make it worse, which we covered in how to hire a Returns & Reverse Logistics Manager.
King's point about treating fuel as a strategic variable is really a point about analytics. If fuel is a line item that finance reports after the fact, the business reacts late. If it is an input to routing, pricing, and assortment models, the business can act before the margin is gone.
That is Analytics & Data Science work, supported by Retail & Digital Technology for the AI tools themselves. Look for analysts who have built cost-to-serve or network models and then seen operations change because of them. AI optimization tools are only as useful as the people who can trust the output and act on it, a theme we covered in hiring a Head of AI Transformation for retail.
The first round of supply chain savings comes from contracts and tools. The next round comes from decisions that cross departments: what to ship from where, what to charge for it, and what to stop selling. Those decisions need people with the authority and the data to make them.
Holiday volume is weeks away, so a permanent supply chain hire started today will likely join after the peak. That is not a reason to wait. Carrier contracts, fuel assumptions, and 2027 budgets are being set over the next few months, and the person who owns transportation or fulfillment strategy needs to be in place before those decisions lock in.
Retail Brew reported in October 2026 that diesel prices have risen nearly 90% since the beginning of the year, based on the latest federal data. Carriers including FedEx have raised fuel surcharges in response.
Retailers are cutting transportation and warehousing costs, changing shipping and delivery cadence, rethinking shipping speed and free shipping, shifting fulfillment from warehouses to stores, cutting high-cost products and categories, and using AI tools to find additional savings.
Five functions matter most: transportation and logistics leaders who negotiate with carriers and manage freight spend, network and omnichannel fulfillment planners who decide where orders ship from, pricing leaders who decide what to absorb and what to pass on, merchandising and category leaders who cut products that are too expensive to move, and analytics talent who model fuel as a variable instead of a fixed cost.
A permanent hire started in mid-October will usually join after the holiday peak, but that is still the right time to start. Fuel costs and carrier pricing will shape 2027 budgets and contracts, and the person who owns that work needs to be in the seat before carrier negotiations and annual planning begin.
Source: Retail Brew, "High diesel prices force retailers to optimize their supply chains," October 13, 2026.