As you prepare your 2026 supply chain strategy, staying ahead of market trends and operational disruptions is more critical than ever. C.H. Robinson recently released our 2026 Freight Market Outlook, offering expert guidance for shaping strategies in the face of ongoing uncertainty, shifting trade policies, and evolving customer expectations.
Looking at those macro trends, here are the top takeaways for retailers and their suppliers as you plan for the year ahead:
1. Build flexibility into your transportation and sourcing strategies
After years of market volatility, freight rates across most transportation modes have stabilized, with only mild changes expected for 2026. Spot rates appear to have bottomed out, but mild increases are likely, especially in truckload and LTL. However, lingering inflation, labor pressures, and regulatory shifts mean we can’t afford complacency. For retailers, this means building flexibility into your sourcing and procurement strategies: diversifying suppliers, planning for rate cycles, and ensuring contracts allow you to pivot as the market shifts.
To support that flexibility, retailers should:
- Use a mix of contract and spot market buying
- Align RFPs with rate cycles rather than fixed calendars
- For more seasonal or variable needs, leverage market-based KPIs for index-based pricing models
2. Trade policy volatility: monitor, adapt, and diversify
Rapidly changing U.S. tariffs, especially those impacting imports from China, Southeast Asia, and Mexico, continue to reshape global sourcing patterns. For retail supply chains, this underscores the need to closely monitor policy developments and be ready to shift sourcing to mitigate risk. With Mexico’s role as a nearshoring hub expanding, and Canada’s importance in critical supply chains growing, global sourcing strategies continue to grow more complex. Agility in cross-border logistics and supplier relationships remain more important than ever.
Building resilience in this environment requires a proactive approach:
- Reassess inventory models to support more regional distribution and cross-border diversification to buffer against disruptions and minimize carrying costs
- Map supply chain risks early to identify vulnerabilities
- Develop alternative routing strategies and pre-negotiated contingency plans to maintain continuity as tariffs and border constraints evolve
Invest in scenario planning and alternative routing to ensure continuity—closely monitor policy developments, be ready to shift sourcing, and proactively diversify your supplier network with evolving tariffs and border constraints.
3. Evaluate your existing carrier base with operational cost pressures in mind
New regulations, ranging from stricter emissions standards to changes in commercial driver licensing, are likely to contribute to declining carrier supply and increasing operational costs. The ripple effects from these are likely to be felt across all transportation modes. Retail shippers should prioritize partners that can adapt to regulatory change, rationalize their carrier base, and plan ahead for seasonal disruptions that can trigger rate spikes.
Remaining mode-agnostic is key. By closely monitoring truckload markets as a bellwether, shippers can stay prepared to shift between truckload, intermodal, LTL, or air as cost and service dynamics evolve.
4. Resilience as a competitive advantage: beyond cost-cutting
In today’s freight environment, resilience has become a defining competitive advantage. Rather than focusing solely on cost-cutting, prioritize developing a supply chain that is agile, capable of adapting and recovering quickly, and able to outperform competitors when faced with disruption.
That resilience is built through several interconnected strategies:
- Continuously optimize your transportation mix across truckload, LTL, intermodal, and air as needed to balance cost, service, and speed
- Consolidating partnerships with select, reliable carriers to improve efficiency and reliability
- Automating shipment tracking, tendering, and exception management to reduce manual workloads and improve accuracy.
- Leveraging predictive analytics and digital twin modeling to anticipate demand, strategically position inventory, and test “what-if” scenarios, strengthening your network’s ability to respond to whatever challenges arise
- Making AI-driven forecasting and end-to-end visibility the baseline for decision-making, and partnering with logistics providers that offer advanced digital and agentic supply chain capabilities to accelerate execution speed and responsiveness
Looking ahead
As retailers plan for 2026, success will hinge on building supply chains that are flexible, diversified, and resilient by design. Balancing strategic procurement with opportunistic buying, actively optimizing transportation networks, and embedding technology into everyday decision-making can help organizations navigate volatility while positioning themselves for growth.
For retailers looking to take the next step, working with experienced supply chain experts can help turn these strategies into action. With the right partners, data, and tools in place, retailers can begin optimizing their supply chains today—building the agility and resilience needed to compete in an increasingly unpredictable market.
