Hangar A

I read the peak surcharge this morning. September 29 to January 18. A whole 112 days. The highest was $8.75 per package. It's all published by July. This gets crisis status every year, but it’s the most scheduled crisis in business that I know of. I can sit and drink my coffee, look at what the surcharges will be, knowing capacity won’t meet demand. The dates are public and the prices are already on rate cards. The crunch then isn't a prediction failure, but a crowd issue. And the forecast can’t fix the crowd, just ensure you know you’ll be standing in line in it. 112 days now. Peak used to mean the stretch between Black Friday and Christmas. A decade ago, these surcharges barely existed. Then everyone tried to get ahead of the crunch and book earlier, ship earlier, pull inventory forward. The carriers priced this new behavior, and the window stretched out to meet it. So the schedule now starts in September. Which is why the standard peak playbook keeps disappointing people. Earlier bookings, tighter forecasts, better dashboards. All of it sharpens your position in the same line. The move that can change everything is a different line, and there are more of them than most brands use. Regional carriers have capacity that the nationals don't touch. There is air for the long lanes, lifting the middle mile off the ground network entirely. The big networks jam together on this schedule. And when peak is a third of the year, a second network that fails independently is worth more than a discount.

For a decade the answer to fast national delivery was simple in theory. Stand up another regional warehouse. Five or six nodes spreading out the inventory so every order ships a short hop by ground. More nodes, more coverage, more speed. That logic has broken, not because it stopped working but because money got expensive. Cheap money hid the real cost. A warehouse carries two bills most people underweight when capital was free. The first is the inventory sitting inside it, cash that is frozen in stock that isn't moving necessarily moving in that region. Then the building itself, leased and staffed against demand you projected (and we know the projection is already outdated). At near zero rates, being everywhere was painless. When money got expensive, both bills showed up at once, and it was hard to justify Brands grabbed space in a panic through the shortage years, buffering just in case, and a lot of that footprint is still being dealt with. Then demand growth cooled back toward normal. The everywhere network that looked smart in 2021 started to look like capital sitting in place. So now we have to look at if the node can earn its cost. Once you've priced what a node truly costs, you don't un-see it. Being close to the customer is one way of the ways to be fast. It is also expensive. Move quickly enough from a single origin and the problem changes shape. You stop guessing where demand will land and start answering it from where you already are. One or two locations. National reach. No forecast to hedge. The warehouse was a proxy for speed. Turns out you can buy the speed directly. You do not need to be everywhere. You need to be fast from somewhere.

Hangar A has been named the Overall Digital Freight Shipping Solution of the Year in the 2026 SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards. The recognition highlights Hangar A's innovative approach to express delivery, combining our air-first Express Delivery Network (eDN) with the Express Cargo Management System (eCMS) to help businesses achieve fast, reliable next-day and 2-day shipping across North America. By leveraging underutilized capacity on commercial passenger airlines and integrating first-, middle-, and final-mile transportation through a single platform, we're helping retailers, manufacturers, distributors, and e-commerce brands expand market reach, improve delivery performance, and better serve their customers. Thank you to our customers, airline partners, transportation providers, and team members whose support and dedication continue to drive our success. Read the full press release in the comments below. #Logistics #SupplyChain #ExpressDelivery #Ecommerce #Innovation

Hangar A has been named the Overall Digital Freight Shipping Solution of the Year in the 2026 SupplyTech Breakthrough Awards. The recognition highlights Hangar A's innovative approach to express delivery, combining our air-first Express Delivery Network (eDN) with the Express Cargo Management System (eCMS) to help businesses achieve fast, reliable next-day and 2-day shipping across North America. By leveraging underutilized capacity on commercial passenger airlines and integrating first-, middle-, and final-mile transportation through a single platform, we're helping retailers, manufacturers, distributors, and e-commerce brands expand market reach, improve delivery performance, and better serve their customers. Thank you to our customers, airline partners, transportation providers, and team members whose support and dedication continue to drive our success. Read the full press release in the comments below. #Logistics #SupplyChain #ExpressDelivery #Ecommerce #Innovation

A lot of companies are running their shipping on a map they drew years ago and never looked at again. Here's what I mean. Somebody, at some point, decided which warehouse ships to which region. Which carrier covers which lane. Where the hubs are. It made sense at the time. Then the business grew. Customers moved. New markets opened. Rates changed. Carriers shifted what they wanted to carry. And the map stayed exactly the same. That gap, between the network you have and the network you'd design today, is where the money quietly leaks. Extra days in transit. Packages crossing the country when a closer node would do. Lanes you're overpaying for because nobody re-ran the math. This is what network modeling actually is. Not a fancy term. Just the discipline of asking, with real data, "if we started from scratch today, would we move things this way?" The answer is almost always no. And the distance between "no" and what you're doing now is the cost of never asking. The wild part is how few companies do it. They'll renegotiate a rate to save pennies a package and never question the routing decisions that are costing them dollars a package. So here's my question for the operators. When's the last time you re-ran your network, not tweaked a rate, but asked whether the whole map still makes sense?

In e-commerce, the race is to be faster. In 2026, you have to be fast and reliable. Speed sells. I know that better than most. It's literally what I do. Fast is the reason a customer picks you over the other tab they have open. That's reality. But fast has a catch to consider. 93% of shoppers say a company's delivery performance shapes how they feel about the brand overall. Not the product. Not the site. The delivery. The box on the doorstep is the last thing they experience. And it sets the tone for everything they think about you. Here's where some brands get it wrong. They treat speed and reliability like the same thing. They're not. Fast gets you the sale. Reliable gets you the next one. A two-day promise that lands on day four didn't fail to be quick. It broke a promise. And that's the part customers remember. 35% will permanently walk after a single late delivery. One missed date, a third of them gone. Anyone can be fast once. The hard part, the valuable part, is being fast every single time. Same-day means nothing if "same-day" only happens four days out of five. And while we're here, tracking is table stakes now. Customers don't just want the package. They want to watch it coming. The brands that make people refresh a support email asking "where is my order" have already lost a little of that trust, even if the box shows up on time. Visibility is part of the promise. Knowing where it is and when it lands is what reliability feels like from the customer's side. Customers don't just want it fast. They want to trust the number you gave them. They took the afternoon off. They waited for the signature. They told someone it would be there. Fast is the promise. Reliable is keeping it. Tracking is how they watch you keep it. I've spent years on the operations side of expedited shipping. The goal was never just faster. It was faster, every single time. So be honest with yourself. Is your weak spot the speed, the consistency, or the visibility? Because the brands pulling ahead aren't picking one. They nail all three.

The Friday Download: Last week I asked Home Delivery World to get me involved and they delivered 📦 ✈️ I’ll be leading an executive roundtable on How to Scale Without Destroying Unit Economics No pressure getting people to join a 12:15 roundtable, but if cost, speed, and customer expectations are all colliding in your world right now, it will be worth delaying lunch. 📍 May 21 🕛 12:15–12:45 I would love to have you join me! Worst case, you walk away with something useful. Best case, we stop accepting tradeoffs that don’t actually need to exist.

Not a bad backdrop for a team meeting. Hangar A in Chicago yesterday, touring United, getting after it at our QBR and geeking out over planes.

We’re honored to announce that Hangar A has been named a Trailblazer in Logistics Excellence at ISM World 2026. The recognition reflects our team’s work to rethink express delivery through an air-first, dock-to-door model that combines commercial air capacity, ground logistics, and automation to help businesses achieve fast, reliable 1–2 day shipping at rates competitive with traditional ground transportation. Thank you to the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), our customers, and our airline and ground transportation partners for being part of the journey. As we continue expanding our Express Delivery Network (eDN) and Express Cargo Management System (eCMS), we remain focused on helping businesses reach more markets, improve delivery performance, and drive revenue. Read more in the press release linked in the comments below. #Logistics #SupplyChain #ZoneSkipping #Ecommerce #ISMWorld2026