By Alex Stark
I spent the week traveling to our corporate headquarters in Seattle for a company-wide meeting. Operations leaders, transportation managers, and department heads from across the country gathered for our annual Year Beginning Meeting. This meeting reflects on the previous year’s performance while setting the tone and goals for the year ahead.
This year’s meeting theme was Honoring the Past, Gearing for Growth. As a 162-year-old company, the organization’s legacy of extraordinary service is the rock-solid foundation for its next chapter of growth. Our CEO, Brien Downie, takes this personally. It’s his company. He is the majority shareholder in the private enterprise and is dedicated to being a good steward, placing his faith in his professional team to guide the company into the next century.
It was an invigorating and culture-affirming experience. It was terrific to engage with other leaders from across the network. To hear updates from their specific operations. To become better connected as a team and as humans, we focused on helping each other be better while prioritizing initiatives that will further delight our valued customers.
In a week chock-full of excellent experiences, I welcomed the chance to hear directly from a couple of our business partners. One was a vendor partner, OneTrack, and the others were from sessions we labeled “Voice of the Customer.”
OneTrack delivered an outstanding session on bridging the gap between deciding to act and actually taking action. AI technology is a powerful enabler for closing that gap. AI is no longer just about reasoning, answering questions, or generating content; it is actively doing work. Their team is actively working to assist companies like Holman in tackling the daily challenges faced across all aspects of our work throughout the network.
Knowing what needs to be done is only half the battle. The other half involves execution, across every shift and at every site. Having a partner like OneTrack to break through and deliver safer, more productive operations is a true differentiator.
Even though I was completely occupied by our annual Year Beginning Meeting, socializing with operations leaders from across the country, and talking with our customer and vendor partner guests, I did carve out some time to catch up on industry news and the events impacting the supply chain. Oil is, of course, top of mind, but the U.S. consumer sentiment troubles me more.
The “fragile economy” may begin to see some additional cracks. In a piece from Retail Dive, the writer noted that mounting credit card debt, weakening employment, and surging fuel costs may have begun to weigh on retail in general.
“Household delinquency worsened in Q4 (2025), and ‘serious delinquency ticked up for credit card balances, mortgages, and student loans,’ according to the most recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Buy now, pay later delinquencies are also higher than expected, according to Tom Sebok, NECG managing partner and principal.”
One contributing factor to rising prices is that freight rates continued to climb through February, according to data from Cass Information Systems. FreightWaves reported that, “After 3.5 years of capacity contraction in the for-hire market, rates have begun a supply-driven recovery, even amid soft freight demand.”
Overall volume is sluggish across nearly all sectors of the economy. It’s the supply constraints that have finally started to drop off through a combination of regulatory enforcement measures. Now, just as this is beginning to bring a silver lining to transportation, diesel fuel has risen 30% over the past two weeks. Small- to mid-sized trucking outfits will find it difficult to recoup the higher fuel costs as long as this situation persists. That, in turn, will trickle down to the consumer, who will ultimately have to bear the financial burden.
One area where lower costs are boosting business is Kimberly-Clark’s Huggies diaper brand. Kimberly-Clark’s CEO, Michael Hsu, aims to make their brands the most affordable options in the store while promoting new features. Research shows that the wealthiest 10% of the U.S. population accounts for about half of all consumer spending. Hsu’s goal is to increase market share among the remaining 90%.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported on this transformational mission at Kimberly-Clark. The success of the reimagined diaper is creating ripple effects that Hsu wants to capitalize on.
The picture (to the left) shows the testing that the scientists at Kimberly-Clark are performing. The scientists use mannequins to test the product, analyzing flexibility and comfort.
The composition of the diaper is being tested by various teams across the globe. The teams are employing best practices in materials, design, absorbency, and assembly to streamline production.
“Hsu is hailing it as the model he wants everyone else at Kimberly-Clark to learn from, as he pushes the company to implement his strategy of delivering—as he has said over and over—’the best products at the lowest cost.’ When teams reply with ‘got it, you want to lower costs,’ he’s been known to correct them with: ‘not lower. Lowest.’”
Winding down the week, most people will turn their attention to college basketball’s March Madness. Both the men’s and women’s events are taking place at the same time. Even if you don’t know a lick about where teams are located…Prairie View?
Texas – Prairie View A&M Panthers.
High Point?
North Carolina – High Point Panthers, as well.
People love to fill out brackets.
Across online platforms like ESPN, Yahoo, and CBS, over 36 million brackets were submitted. It is estimated that, with office pools and family-fun pools, close to 100 million brackets are filled out.
Chances of getting a perfect bracket? Let’s just say, a person would have better odds getting struck by lightning seven times. And AI performance… It’s been shown to be no better than that of a well-informed fan. As one might expect, AI is the right tool to identify trends, metrics, and probabilities. However, reassuringly, like us humans, it cannot reliably predict the outcomes. It is called March Madness for a reason.
Enjoy the Madness. And remember (even if you crash out in the early rounds), it costs nothing to be kind. In fact, March 20th is Fred Rogers’ birthday, the epitome of kindness. Who wouldn’t want to be his neighbor?
