Inbound Logistics | July 2026

WHAT’S THE WORD

ECOMMERCE: GETTING UP TO SPEED Q-commerce

The Language of Logistics

Short for quick commerce, Q-commerce refers to ecommerce

Cushioning Cargo

deliveries that are completed in less than one hour.

CRUSH PROFILE How much compression, weight, or impact a load

Amazon, Instacart, and DoorDash lead the q-commerce flock in the United States. Meanwhile, in India, q-commerce deliveries—for everyday essentials and assorted products—often clock in at under 10 minutes. Drawing billions of dollars from global companies and investors, the q-commerce market in India is expected to soar to $50 billion by 2030, up from $8 billion in 2025, according to a report from Deloitte and Google. “Wait, how fast do you want this delivered?!”

can withstand in shipment. Shippers should determine a load’s crush prole and work backwards from there to ensure they use the most suitable securement materials. A recent RXO study highlighted the importance of crush prole considerations and

accounting for lane topography to calculate the burst and crush risks associated with each dunnage bag material, such as 4-Ply Kraft paper, woven polypropylene, and polyvinyl chloride.

CYBER PHYSICAL DAMAGE A cyber event that causes physical cargo damage. Businesses storing temperature-sensitive goods like pharmaceuticals and food face this often overlooked insurance coverage gap. Say a cyber attack were to disrupt warehouse temperature controls and spoil inventory, neither a traditional cargo nor cyber policy would apply. Traditional cargo policies exclude cyber events, while traditional cyber policies exclude physical damage. Consider a standalone cyber physical damage cargo solution dening triggers covering system breach scenarios. –Kelly Malynn, Senior Risk Manager, Beazley

LET’S TALK WAREHOUSE: Targeted Cost to Service A new nancial metric from warehouse performance management platform Easy Metrics. This workload- adjusted earned budget dynamically reects the actual operational work performed. TCTS continuously recalculates targeted operational cost based on real operational conditions, including order prole, process complexity, product mix, and workow variability. “TCTS gives shippers a workload-adjusted view of what their operations should cost, accounting for order mix, SKU complexity, and service requirements. It puts shippers and their providers on the same factual footing.” –Dan Keto, President and CTO, Easy Metrics

Decoding AI VIBE CODING Using AI prompts to generate source code, coined by millennial computer scientist Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI HITL

Human in the Loop or AI/human workflows: work processes that incorporate human decision-making and judgment calls to guide AI outputs

16 Inbound Logistics • July 2026