Why Caraway hasn't switched 3PLs in seven years

Plus what brands are actually evaluating once they know you can move the boxes.

Author

Slotted Admin
August 27, 2026

Why Caraway hasn't switched 3PLs in seven years

Plus what brands are actually evaluating once they know you can move the boxes.


Heading back from NYC after two great events focused on getting operators together, I had the chance to talk with a lot of brands and fulfillment providers about what makes these relationships work.

One thing kept coming up: alignment matters more than almost anything else.

Brands with experienced operators tend to buy heavily on relationships and trust. Transactional relationships can work too, as long as both sides understand that's the relationship they're entering.

Where things seem to go sideways is when expectations don't match reality. "Fast" is relative. So is "complex." A brand and provider can use the same words and mean very different things.

Someone compared finding a 3PL to interviewing an internal hire, which I thought was pretty accurate. By the time a provider gets deep into an RFP, the brand generally knows you can move the boxes and support the volume. Continuing to "sell" that isn't particularly helpful. They're trying to figure out whether they trust you and whether you understand the parts of their business that make it difficult to operate.

Mark Riskowitz from Caraway summed up what that looks like over time during his panel. Caraway hasn't moved providers in seven years because he feels alignment from his provider's leadership around where Caraway is going and what they need to get there. That commitment goes both ways. Choosing a fulfillment provider means handing over a critical part of your business, and Caraway treats the relationship accordingly.

WHAT’S TRENDING

📦 The middle mile is where the money is going

Gatik raised a $200 million Series D to scale its driverless box trucks on fixed DC-to-store routes. The company has more than $600 million in contracted revenue, reports a 99% on-time rate across 85,000 fully driverless orders, and plans to have more than 100 trucks operating by year end.

Amazon is focused on the same part of the network, combining its air and ground operations under one team to improve middle-mile efficiency.

Repeatable transfers and shuttles are a natural place for autonomy to take hold. For 3PLs running those lanes today, this is likely where driverless transportation starts affecting the economics first.

📦 Retailers are turning stores into fast-delivery hubs

Home Depot rolled out delivery in three hours or less nationwide using more than 2,000 stores as fulfillment points. Walmart continues expanding 30-minute delivery, while Foot Locker now offers on-demand delivery through DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Instacart.

Stores are becoming fulfillment nodes while order sources continue to fragment. For providers, proximity and the ability to handle different order channels cleanly become more valuable. Same-day doesn't require a massive network if the inventory is already in the right place.

Also This Week

📦 Tariff refund claims have become a tradable asset. IEEPA refund claims are reportedly trading at roughly 75 to 85 cents on the dollar, with some importers selling rather than waiting for CBP to pay. Brands taking a discount for immediate cash is also an interesting liquidity signal for providers extending payment terms to importing customers.

OPPORTUNITIES IN FULFILLMENT

Account Executive @ Rippling | Remote

Vice President, Services Support @ NFI Industries | California & New Jersey

Vice President, Commercial Frieght Forwarding @ DP World | North Carolina

Chief of Staff @ Stord | Georgia