Thank you to everyone who wrote in after my maiden column on the paradox between scale and profitability in the 3PL business. The question I heard most often: so what do we do about it?
Let me pick up where I left off.
The old growth formula — adding trucks, warehouses, and capacity — no longer guarantees profitability. With the cost to serve still rising, 3PLs must think differently about how we maximize our assets, technology, data, and people.
Of those four, only one can improve the other three.
Technology can transform a system. But only people can transform an organization.
There is no shortage of talk about AI in logistics. Most forums I attend focus on what technology can do. But the better question is: are our people ready to make the most of it?
We can invest in sophisticated transport and warehouse systems, AI-powered forecasting, route optimization, real-time visibility. Yet if our people cannot apply these tools to the decisions they make each day, that investment sits idle.
The real measure of digital transformation is not the technology we deploy, but the capability we build around it.
This matters more as our workforce grows multigenerational.
Our more experienced employees carry something that cannot be downloaded into a system: institutional knowledge, operational judgment, a deep understanding of customers, and years of navigating the time- and cost-sensitive calls that shape a customer’s day.
Our younger employees bring something different. They approach problems from fresh angles and question how things have always been done — properly channeled, one of the most underrated sources of innovation in our industry.
Imagine what happens when we put them in the same room — when the person who understands why a process exists works beside the one who sees how technology might redesign it.
That combination does not happen by accident. It happens by design.
Here is where the Philippines has a real and underclaimed advantage.
We have a deep bench of supply chain professionals running complex operations across 7,000 islands — through typhoons, port congestion, and roads that test the best-laid plans. Operating here teaches an adaptability few markets can replicate.
We also have a young workforce that is digitally fluent and, in my experience, hungry for work with meaning.
Most markets have one or the other. We have both.
Stop treating these as competing strengths, and we build a distinctly Filipino logistics workforce ready for the next era of supply chain.
That is why we treat talent development as a strategic priority, not a support function.
Learning cannot happen only when a new system is launched. It has to be continuous: new tools, unfamiliar problems, collaboration across generations, adapting when conditions change.
We have doubled down on agile problem-solving because our customers rarely send us tidy problems. They arrive urgent, incomplete, and seldom twice in the same shape. Our job is to make their businesses more efficient and more resilient: reducing costs, resolving issues faster, designing solutions they can rely on.
That same philosophy guides how we develop our leaders. We relaunched our Management Trainee Program to build the next generation of FAST leaders — as much for the veterans who mentor them as for the graduates themselves. Programs such as Rockstar combine classroom learning, coaching, and practical application to prepare aspiring managers. Our Leadership Development Programs do the same for current leaders, strengthening capabilities and sharing best practices.
We are also preparing our people for technology that does not yet exist.
Some of the skills we will need five years from now may look nothing like those we value today. We cannot predict which. But we can build organizations curious enough to keep learning and resilient enough to keep moving.
Behind every warehouse operation and every shipment is a series of decisions — hundreds a day, made by people under pressure, often with incomplete information.
As our networks grow in scale and complexity, our competitiveness will depend less on the infrastructure we own than on the adaptability, judgment, and capability of the people operating it.
We cannot buy our way out of the paradox I wrote about last month. We can only build our way out of it.
We have the experience. We have the talent. We have the technology. Bringing them together is a choice, and it is ours to make.
The best time to make that choice was yesterday. The next best time is today.
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I look forward to continuing these conversations at the SCMAP Supply Chain Conference on September 10–11. This year’s theme, “Reenergize Your Supply Chain Through Talent, Transformation, and Collaboration,” captures both the opportunity ahead and the responsibility that comes with it.
Manuel L. Onrejas Jr. is the CEO for Logistics of FAST Logistics Group, with nearly 30 years of experience in driving supply chain growth and innovation. He leads FAST in expanding its 3PL capabilities across warehousing, multi-modal transportation, cold chain, cross-docking, and toll manufacturing or value-added services. For inquiries or collaboration opportunities, reach out at marketing@fast.com.ph.
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