Supply Chain Reality from a Major Forest Products Importer

CMPC moves pulp, lumber, plywood, and industrial and consumer packaging from 16 manufacturing sites across South America into North America. Roughly 10,000 TEUs and 300,000 tons of breakbulk annually, touching every Incoterm. Charlie sat down to break down what it actually feels like to run that supply chain through live tariff uncertainty, legacy system inertia, and a Manifest conference floor full of vendors asking for 25 minutes to understand how he procures freight.

This conversation was originally recorded on March 11th 2026

Connect with Charlie and CMPC

• Charlie's LinkedIn
• CMPC Website
• CMPC LinkedIn

Watch this episode on YouTube

Other episodes mentioned: 

• Charlie's visibility panel at Manifest, which Blythe moderated
• EiL's Shipper POV series 
• Happy Robot Series B Raise and their founder Pablo Falafox on EiL

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Transcript

Charlie Cunnion: 0:37

It, yeah, our vertical integration is, is quite wild. You know, it's everything from, you know, a biologist in our labs in Chile developing, you know, essentially a pied corn, a seedling to be, you know, planted in the warm Chilean sunshine on a hillside all the way through to, you know, the paper towel that cleaned up my kids breakfast this morning.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:09

Today's guest moves pulp, box, board, lumber and sack, craft bags from South America to customers all across North America, if you use toilet paper held a medicine box or stood in a building with wood trim, you've touched his supply chain. He's doing it all through tariffs and canal disruptions and a tech market that over promises constantly. Charlie cunyan, VP of supply chain at cmpc Forest Products North America, welcome to everything

Charlie Cunnion: 1:36

is logistics. Thank you so much, and thanks for that kind introduction.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 1:40

Absolutely. And now, as we were I kind of alluded to before we hit record, is I want to start with the stuff that is making everybody sweat right now. That's geopolitics, that's tariffs, that's, you know, supply chain, disruptions. I want to know how you guys, how you particularly are dealing with all of this right now?

Charlie Cunnion: 2:01

Yeah, certainly you don't have to go far to find a lot of challenges. We we often joke, you know, we've got more problems than a math book to deal with right now. But if I were to break it down, we start with tariffs, and you know, it's implication for importers like us. It's certainly been challenging. I think where you know CNPC, we've made our own luck is we have, you know, 16 different manufacturing sites throughout South America and up into Mexico. So we've been able to move our manufacturing base for some of our like materials, in order to mitigate our risk to those tariffs. But the execution of that, you know, never reflects how much we're bringing in. So for all that effort, maybe we're hitting 10% of the time on that and of course, we've taken a stance of being very transparent with our customers, so that savings immediately is passed on to them and where we can't, you know, again, we're having these transparent conversations about what these tariffs are doing to our cost structures, and for the most part, our countries of origin were, I can't say, enjoying only a 10% but that's for the most part where it's been, and we've been able to pass that on, for the most part to all of our customers. They've been really understanding. But the real challenge in the tariffs for us has been in the commercial and sales conversations. A lot of our a lot of our customers here in the US, you know, are anxious about, you know, what are they going to wake up to tomorrow? It does 10% become 50% or 100% and really trade prohibitive? And for us to set up a program with that customer and they want to understand that we're going to be there for the long term and day to day, it seems like things are changing. And touch wood, you know, we haven't really had any news for a little while, which, in our world is good news. So those have been tricky to navigate through. And again, our policy has been transparency, which I think has been appreciated our customers also, knowing full well that there's not many secrets within supply chain, costs and customs amounts are going to be found out eventually. And so we've been able to be fairly successful, I think, when you benchmark against some of our competitors, and then you look at other geopolitical noise and to us, to me, wake up this morning and I'm looking at Costa oil, and you know, want to be respectful to what's going on. But again, to boil it down to that, without getting on a tangent, we're anxious that, you know, general inflation, that will come with increased oil prices, is just going to be another challenge for us, you know. But my message internally, and my message, quite frankly, to myself, is we've always had these challenges in some shape or form, whether it's covid, whether it's low sulfur or VGM, there's always one of these. You know, going to change the way you do business, going forward, type deals, and we still have to find ways to carve out market share and then, most importantly, take care of our incumbent customers. So again, despite all of these challenges, we we feel like we can continue to form a supply chain that adds value, even in a really hard market, and keep pulling on those levers, keep it empowering smart people within the team. And so far so great,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 5:10

like you just mentioned, you know, checking the price of oil, you know, this morning, what does, I guess, sort of like your Do you have, like, a dashboard that you're looking at and following all of these things, or is it just, I guess, sort of, quote, unquote, regular news consumption that you're just keeping on top of, yeah, for

Charlie Cunnion: 5:28

this regular news consumption, I mean current events. Not only do I have personal interest in that, but, you know, I see three ships got hit, you know, overnight. Going through the street, and I can't help but think, Okay, what's going to be the impact on our business? So, you know, now my attention is a little bit more on that, so I'll read a little bit more into that. How that will then translate into fuel surcharge or bunker pricing. You know, I don't know exactly what that exact correlation the internet will give some opinions on that, of which I'll take you know. We'll have to again have that open, transparent conversation with not only internally, for you know, our stakeholders, amongst my colleagues, but also to our customers. So I don't have a dashboard with bunker pricing on it, but it's only a

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 6:18

click away now, with everything that's going on, I guess you know, the Strait of Hormuz it, how does, if your locations are in South America, outside of oil, is there anything else that those situations would affect your shipments? It would be,

Charlie Cunnion: 6:34

you know, a tangent to get to. You know, that direct correlation. But certainly, if we see, you know, stalls and and shipments getting through transshipment ports, you know, that will ripple through, but for the most part, we will be insulated on that north south trade from, you know, compared to folks who are doing the age of the Europe trade, who are probably going to feel this a little bit more, having said that, you know on the container side, for which we operate the most, you know that they're still going to be going around Africa, as they have for some time now. So I'm not sure it's going to touch the container guys as far as blocking and tackling, moving origin to destination. But certainly on the cost side, if this maintains, I would expect some inflationary pressures. I say that cautiously, because I don't want to talk myself into a rate hike, but it's certainly coming.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 7:23

Do you find that you know what we've been dealing with? I've heard people refer to and I like this phrasing of like a BC versus AC, so like a before covid versus after covid. Do you find that the disruptions that we've experienced as an industry over the last handful of years are, you know, kind of a similar, I guess, quote, unquote, threat level as the previous BC era, or is it just same problems, or same kind of the same problems, just different era?

Charlie Cunnion: 7:54

Great question all. They all have a little bit of a different flavor, but they're really just challenge what we've had established and we quickly learned through. But I'm not convinced that these are, you know, once in a lifetime events. Again, I could rattle off, you know, I can remember when I green fence and we we got rid of waste paper to China. We had low sulfur, we had the vgms for which, at one point, you know, we had a spreadsheet of every container in circulation among the top 18 steamship lines, and we were going to try to manage vgms via spreadsheet that way. I mean, that ate up a month or so and creates all kinds of contingencies. Again, where is XYZ carrier going to bunker with very little sulfur? Because there's not enough. You know, turns out there's plenty. I just feel like there's always something. And then for covid, I feel like we had that initial shock where everything shut down, and then we enjoyed the problems of, oh my goodness, like demand and sales are through the roof, and now I need to hustle in order to make that happen. So any situation where the correlation of our effort reflects how much money we're going to make, give me those problems all day long. And don't get me wrong, I'm a little bit of a glass half full when it comes to those things. But again, even in a downfalling market, we can find ways to carve out market share, and especially our new joint venture that we have in the United States, we have the opportunity to really insert ourselves into the market in a big way with different ideas. And I don't care what the market's going to do, we're going to enjoy some successes with with the new model that we have,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 9:32

and as a high level view, for somebody who doesn't know anything about forestry supply chain. You mentioned that the 16 sites in South America, are they all, you know, sort of divisions where it's like, I know sustainability is also a really important aspect to the company as well. So is it with these 16 facilities? Is it, you know, is it the the growing and the processing? Is it the tree removal? Like, is all of that happening at each of those spots, or is it kind of a spread out supply chain?

Charlie Cunnion: 10:03

Yeah. And also, certainly we have, we are largely vertically integrated. And thanks for mentioning the sustainability spot. I never want to miss a chance to plug that. You know, according to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, we're the most sustainable forest products company in the world for a third year in a row. It's something we really take very seriously and are very proud of, again, which I'm unashamed to continue to plug that. But yeah, our vertical integration is is quite wild. You know, it's everything from, you know, a biologist. In our labs in Chile developing, you know, essentially a pied corn, a seedling to be, you know, planted in the warm Chilean sunshine on a hillside all the way through to, you know, the paper towel that cleaned up my kids breakfast this morning. And so it's really fascinating, a lot of fun to kind of go through that. And being vertically integrated, again, allows us a lot of flexibilities to manage through these disruptions where, you know, I'm not beholden on a lot of third party vendors for the inputs into our supply chains, and the same principles that go into that we want to take toward our customers here in the US, because we're often upstream in their supply chain. So what would it like? What would a third party vendor feel like if it was almost vertically integrated into them? So what can I do to just feel like an extension of their manufacturing process? So looking internally at what we do there, and then trying to apply that to our customers has been, has been really successful.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 12:29

And so then I guess, from like, more of a logistics angle of it is, so the all of the product is, it's not like, like a rare mineral, where you have to extract the rare mineral and then send it over to this country for refinement and processing and then it goes back to this country. Is it all primarily the, I guess the processing done in South America, or is it kind of shipped up to maybe Central America, or, you know, a port in the US?

Charlie Cunnion: 12:58

Yep. Yeah. So for most forest product Mills, whether it's a liner board mill, a pulp mill or paper mill, you know, their access to fiber often dictates their success. So again, we're very fortunate that, you know, the Radiata pine that grows in Chile and the eucalyptus that we manage in Brazil all within a very tight radius of our mill. So those inland costs, which go into really, again, how competitive we can be in the market are crucial to our success. So having everything in within, you know, a day's truck drive is super important to us, and that would, you know, lend true to any mill within the US that owns its own fiber, and by fiber, I mean, owns

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 13:41

its own trees. Oh, that's interesting. There's all this like industry slang that you're throwing out here, and I'm trying to decipher it because it sounds, it sounds really fascinating, because I, when you think of forestry products, I wouldn't have thought of eucalyptus as a forestry product.

Charlie Cunnion: 13:56

Yeah, eucalyptus, it's, it's a hardwood that grows extremely quick. We have several plantations that we own, heck acres upon heck acres of it in Brazil, for which we bring into our mill. And it and it provides kind of that opacity and that that strength to a lot of tissue and towel products that we use here, also in specialty papers. And I'll try not to geek out on the pulp and paper side, but it, it touches so much, you know, from TV screens to toothpaste to paper towels.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 14:30

Oh, wow. So hold on, actually, double, double tap into that, because I want to hear you geek out about that stuff.

Charlie Cunnion: 14:37

Yeah, there's, it's incredible what forest products and what fiber can do within, or to learn what it does within so many products, just like I mentioned, and especially for us on, you know, the sustainability angle, how many of the products that plastics are using we can replace with these forest products, because they are so versatile. You know, the fiber in most of these things, which can provide so much as a base material into any of those other materials that I've mentioned. So it's a great story to tell. It's a lot of fun, and I can be a chore walking around the grocery store because I'm pointing out all the packaging and how that, you know, where maybe our product might be in the grocery section, but also in the trays, and

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 15:25

then all kinds of other packages, with being number one three years in a row for the Dow Jones on the Sustainability Index. I think I said that, right? You did. How do you practice sustainability in is it, you know, just simply reprint, replanting, you know, trees. Is it, you know, recycling items? What does that look like, the sustainability aspect?

Charlie Cunnion: 15:47

Sure, yeah. And you know, we're, we're planting 10 for every one we cut right? But I think where we really make hay on that is on the water usage. You know, our ability, again, to have, like a tight knit supply chain where our footprint is very contained, but it is also a reflection of all the investment we've put into the mill. So we have fairly newer Mills, relative to a lot of others around the world, which could be 100 years old, but we've continued to reinvent or reinvest, rather and bringing in the best machines, the best technology, and especially, think within our commodity world and a lot of others, we also enjoy a lot of spots where, you know, our capitalist motivations are aligned. With our environmentalist once, you know, an efficient supply chain makes me the most money and also saves, you know, the most, does the most sustainable impact. So we get to double down on that. And that's, again, a great story for us to tell. Have you

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 16:45

found that there's any, you know, I guess, disruptions that were surprising, you know, maybe in the last six or seven years of moving these kinds of goods, is there, has there been a disruption that you're like, wow, I didn't see that coming. Like, how could that possibly affect us? And then all of a sudden, it does. It's hard to be

Charlie Cunnion: 17:03

surprised anymore, I think, but still often reminded, you know, the rain in Panama is going to trip us up at some point when the when the water is low in the canal. Fortunately, we saw some devastating floods in Brazil that really affected us. And yeah, of course, there's something Dusting up all around the world at any time. So yeah, again, I think it would be hard to be surprised by anything, but weather is probably the one that you can't really predict. And even just this winter, we've had a heck of a winter, and it's caused disruptions that have continued to affect us. Now we're still, we're still seeing some network on the rail side, network problems that are maybe originated back you know, with some of the snowstorms we saw this

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 17:51

winter offhand, just wondering, like, what is sort of the mix that you guys are, the freight mix that you guys have? Is it mostly container, rail, truck? What does that split look like? We have a very

Charlie Cunnion: 18:03

dynamic, very diverse supply chain. So again, operating those four business units, wood products, plywood molding, industrial packaging, consumer packaging and pulp. Each of those comes with different commercial approaches. Each of those commercial approaches comes with different supply chains. So really, we're touching every single Incoterm and with that every modality. So we're doing a lot of break bulk. We're doing a lot of containers, probably quietly, 10,000 Fs a year, and 300,000 tons of brake bulk, and we have to support on the commercial side, everything from end caps on big box stores for some of our molding products to 10,000 ton a month feedstock order into a large manufacturer, and everything in between. So it's diverse and challenging, and also, again, what makes it a lot of fun? There's so many opportunities within a supply chain like that for us to really sink our teeth into opportunities and problems to be solved.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 19:03

Have you? I'm sure you've heard of this, but the cardboard index go on of where? Okay, so if you have more cardboard orders, then there's more economic movement that's going on, especially at the consumers. Consumer level. Is that, do you guys watch that? Is that like a true, actual index?

Charlie Cunnion: 19:23

Absolutely. Yeah, you so you know, CNPC forest products are 5050, joint venture between CNPC proper, based in Santiago, and international forest products in Foxboro, Massachusetts, which happened to be my legacy employer for 14 years. But that side was the International and trading side of the craft family's significant paper and packaging interest. So we have sister companies domestically making cardboard boxes, making the lighter board for that. So, you know, quick kind of you want to test the wind, you just call our friends at any one of our box plants, and how does the order book look? And it is a very good indicator of overall where things are going, or as paper prices fluctuate, how much of that can actually be passed down to the to the box makers. Very interesting for an amateur economist, to dive into some of those numbers,

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 20:19

I was gonna say, what is it looking like right now? Are we is it shaky? Or is it maybe signs of promise?

Charlie Cunnion: 20:26

It's flat. It's flat. Yeah, you can't say it's bad. You can't say it's good. It's kind of this purgatory of, you know, hoping whatever needs to happen for these to bounce up off the bottom, happens and again, that's where, you know, that's mentality we need to continue to carve out market share, take care of our customers, and if we can get through these leaner times, when the overall good times pick up, we'll be ready to we'll be ready to take advantage of those economic circumstances.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 20:58

Now I imagine with with your role it you've probably already had a seat at, you know, sort of the boardroom table, you know, the boardroom meetings. But there's kind of a joke that goes on in our industry that, oh, supply chain actually has a seat in the boardroom meetings. Now, have you found that you know that are more people, your colleagues or family members? Are they asking you more about you know, what's going on with the supply chain? What's going on cargo ships stuck in the Suez Canal? Are, is that happening to you?

Charlie Cunnion: 21:33

Yeah, yeah, certainly. The Suez Canal elicited, you know, text from my mother about, you know, work related stuff and small talk with people at cocktail parties. You know, people are a little bit more interested in what I do. But yeah, I have the one anecdote, you know, at one point, you know, it's a family owned company, the Son and the Father there I was in between their offices. They're very spread out. But, you know, every once in a while, boss would walk by and, you know, drop, you know, big red pen circled article in Wall Street Journal. Hey, what's this mean to us? Or, you know, can we do anything to take advantage of that? Maybe I'd get that every six weeks. You know, covid starts to hit, and all the disruption happens six weeks turns into six days, which turns into, you know, I'm going to pop my head in the office every day, and so, yeah, I think as an industry, it's been a shot of life for a lot of folks like me. I've benefited it from it, no doubt of that. But I think people, from consumers to C suite understand just how important the supply chain is and continues to be. It's not like we had covid and then it kind of swept back, as much as sometimes I like to think we don't remember the sins of our past. We have short memories. But no, no, this has had lasting power, which, again, is has been nice

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 22:52

now, when we saw each other at manifest, because for, maybe for folks who don't know, and I'll link to it in the in the comments, in case you want to check it out. But we were on a visibility panel together a couple of years ago, and when I saw you at this year's manifest, that I was asking you, you know, sort of where, what do you find value in? Where? What's the technology that you're checking out? I don't know if you want to share maybe some of that, for fear of vendors reaching out, but I am curious of like, what's in your tech stack, and then what do you think is missing?

Charlie Cunnion: 23:22

Yeah. So yeah. We met at manifest two years ago, and I can remember the trip report I wrote after that. You know, my number one recommendation was turn cmpc to cmpc.ai. And I said that with some cynicism and sarcasm, because there was a lot of these great ideas, but that that really hadn't taken hold, and there wasn't any tangible progress on software or kind of on the physical side. And then, you know, jump ahead two years to manifest where we were sat a couple weeks ago, and my expectations have been blown away the leap that we've taken. And I know it's almost cliche at this point, with the implementation of AI toward a lot of these legacy problems that we've I think in some cases, I've dealt with for hundreds of years in supply chain. The rate of acceleration towards solutions is is wild. So I left this manifest motivated, inspired, also with a tremendous amount of urgency around we need to catch up with some of the solutions that are out there. And so I in my mind, to kind of have it broken down into three. Now you've got the physical kind of yard management tools, or, you know, the drones in your warehouse, or you know that robot dog walking down the aisle at manifest with your UberEATS order, or what have you. And you know, all super interesting, but maybe not, maybe not applicable to us unto themselves, but certainly I would love my vendors to start looking at those. And then you look at, you know, the two pieces of software, or SAS two buckets, if you will, got the enterprise wide, you know, for supply chain and order management and visibility and kind of touching it all. And then you've got the A La Carte agentic AI that you can apply to single friction points within value chain, operations, supply chain, what have you Yeah, we're going to burn the candle from both ends. We really can't afford not to be looking at all of them all at same time, all at once. And certainly, you know, we joked about the happy robot, and I can shout them out because they've been kind to me after but that demo that I got with the the voice AI, again, maybe not 100% applicable to me, but wildly fascinating. And I can never have too many friends who are that smart. Ai, so yeah, I'm going to listen to exactly what they're pitching. I think that's super cool. And then I look at, you know, the guys at gals at raft, I think, again, an excellent product, and people for that enterprise approach. And I know they have an Nvo product, again, maybe not applicable to me now, but they're teasing a BCo product that I think is would be really interesting, just their approach to data, to processes, to, you know, relationships between all of those things and outside vendors can hyper refreshing to have outside industry folks coming and having a different point of view and a different angle toward, again, some of these supply chain problems that have plagued us for for generations.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 26:30

What kind of problems when you when you say something like that? What are a couple that come to Yeah,

Charlie Cunnion: 26:35

and I've got a lot of miles out of this bit So, so I'm sure people have heard it before, but I still have an office here at IFP and I had walked through our documentation department down the hall, and you'll see on the counter, you'll see 10 bills of waiting printed out, you know, awaiting stamps and signatures and so I joke, if you were to Bill and Ted Christopher Columbus into our office, he would be just as familiar with this BL and the process as he would have been 400 something years ago. And that just does not fundamentally sit well with I think a lot of that has to do with technology. But I also think, you know, there's pinch points in vendors capability and maybe even more willingness to help move the entire value chain. So we run into this is where I'll bite my tongue on some of my my bit. But we, we can now bypass those vendors who weren't able or willing to help move it all forward. And I think a lot of that will happen through AI's ability to move blockchain forward where it stalled out, maybe previously or maybe not true blockchain, but at least you know that digital letter in the cloud, that ledger in the cloud that we can all have one truth and interact with, yeah, and again, still, what got on the ship at trans shipment point, and you know how many rail cars made it past, you know the hump and are on the way to the short line. Some of those things are still requiring a phone call and a message and a follow up, and, gosh, a radio call or what have you. AI is going to help us with a lot of those little friction points. And so

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 28:15

that's maybe, if I'm reading between the lines here, that sounds like what your tech stack is, is like a couple legacy systems, and then maybe a couple independent tech solutions, and then where maybe all of those companies might not be willing to make the necessary upgrades for AI, or even from a data hygiene standpoint, maybe some of these other players are coming in to offer. Is it almost like a band aid to a broken leg, or is it, you know, almost just like, I don't know, like a GLP one boost or something?

Charlie Cunnion: 28:47

Yeah, I think it's more like Tony Stark to that broken leg. And, yeah, we have a lot of legacy systems that are super sticky, and the way we operate day to day, and the idea of kind of unwinding those from our operations is daunting, but here, if I could distill down like I have this friction point, that friction point, and I just think of it as a big old diesel engine that's very reliable, but it's not a race car, and we can pour synthetic in that now, and all these little friction points are going to start to go away, and maybe some of that, some of those friction points are going to be inconspicuous when they get solved. And just, you know, maybe six months, 12 months, 18 months down the line, we're like, oh, we don't have to deal with that anymore. And I think there'll be some other splashy results, but I do think we have a ton of these little things where, you know, it takes another email, it takes another phone call, and again, another takeaway from manifest, you know, in describing some of our use cases, we would get some very pointed, candid questions back. Well, why are you doing that? And for someone who prides himself on continuous improvement, it was good to be challenged on that and say, You know what goodness I've normalized the fact that I need to make another phone call in order to find out that information. Why isn't that happening happening automatically? So very exciting. It's a process.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 30:11

Documentation has a way of humbling you, feeling like you have to rip out your entire life and your your company legacy in order to start fresh and start new. And, you know, it's, it's almost like two sides of the same coin, where it's like, you know, you need to innovate. But then there's a, there's a reason why, you know, some of these legacy systems have been around for as long as they have. So it's like, you almost want to strangle them a little bit, but at the same time, it's like, well, that that software was built, you know, with through the the blood, sweat and tears of developers, probably over years and years of time. So it's, it's, it's a rough balance of trying to figure out what can fit and what just doesn't make sense yet, right?

Charlie Cunnion: 30:53

Yeah, and we do a lot of benchmarking amongst peers and adjacent industries. We're not alone in those problems. And I think again, as fast as cmpc is attacking and adopting AI, I think it'll be a real differentiator for us to to be able to navigate through some of those big, clunky ERPs that kind of hold back a lot of things, and, quite frankly, keep me up at night. So I'm excited for those opportunities to put synthetic into this, this old, clunky diesel engine

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 31:27

that we have. Has there been an example where you've used. AI, and you're like, Wow, this is incredible.

Charlie Cunnion: 31:34

Yeah. I mean, outside of some of the demos we saw at manifest, which, again, still mind blowing, stuff that's happening, the most fun part, I think, for for me at cmpc, is to be seen seeing, like, the bottom up approach, I am so far behind. You know, my team with their adoption, and it's everything from as simple as co pilot or GPT, but then some of the just within the Microsoft suite, what they're doing to get through, you know, their inbox is to get some process maps and some some simple logic going. And, I mean, quite frankly, I think some of these younger folks are really close to just developing their own agentic style, to implementing AI again, super fun to watch. And quite frankly, the challenge for folks like me is stay out the way. Let them cook. They've got it, you know, and then whatever I can do to enable them to scale that again, very, very fun to watch from my perspective.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 32:37

Now, on the flip side of, I guess maybe the flip side, but a side conversation, with all the tech revolution that's been happening and freight over the last, you know, 510, years, is the visibility conversation. You know, this is a conversation that we had at manifest a couple of years ago. We were talking about some of the gaps that still remain. Has there been a lot of movement since we had that conversation? Is has visibility improved?

Charlie Cunnion: 33:02

I don't think so. I don't think so. I think that would be my opinion too. Yeah, we've kind of reached, we've been at the state of the art for the last two years since we probably had that panel, I think that you could look at how many new entrants into the visibility space have, have there been in the last two years? And I'm not aware of any big, splashy entrances. And I think they ran into again, where you've got a couple prohibitive vendors or processes or or agencies that you can't really get around and that will forever be the ceiling to that again, sprinkle in this magic fairy dust that is AI, and I think those will now become more powerful and more useful. And I hate to say this for all my friends in visibility, but it's really becoming commoditized there. You know, it's table stakes to have visibility across your supply chain. And I think all of these vendors now who have aI enabled supply chain tools, visibility is is already baked into it, or they're able to take whatever legacy system you have and kind of give it that boost into more pragmatic, more practical approaches to supply chain management.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 34:22

Have you seen any improvement on the trucking side of things? Because, because my understanding, from a visibility standpoint, is that the ocean carriers are kind of, you know, already there intermodals kind of already there air freight, you know, last mile providers definitely are there. But on the trucking side of things, or like long haul trucking, it's still missing there, because there's so many of the smaller operators who haven't adopted the visibility tech stack. Is that still kind of maybe like the linchpin of where the lack of visibility is

Charlie Cunnion: 34:55

coming from, still, and I think maybe one of our challenges, and at least my personal preference, is like, I love working with the mom and pop truckers, that small outfit whose service is really above and beyond, and maybe geographically place exactly where I need them, compared to some of the bigger national outfits that sure I can get every piece of technology I want, but then I don't get that touch and feel that sometimes, quite frankly, like I need the truck or that, you know, woman or gentleman representing us as they deliver. And so there's that toss up between the two. It also challenges us to really think about what's the least amount of information that we need on this? You know, do I need an update when they're two hours out from delivering? Sure, it's cool. Do I really need that? No, you know, is Joey truck driver going to call me after and say, Yeah, delivered, no problem, and I'm going to fax you the pod when I get back. Like, okay, you know, I can live with that again if that fax comes in. And we've now got the technology to take care of all of that, so it allows us to be inclusive of any vendors, tech stack in a lot

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 36:09

of different ways. Now we kind of joked at manifest that you know you're you walk around, but maybe hide your your badge a little bit so you don't get accosted by all of the brokers that are at these shows and hounding you for your freight. What I am curious, what does a successful pitch look like to.

Charlie Cunnion: 36:30

You, yeah, and you know what? As a testament to the folks at manifest and Katie day and her team, they take such great care of my colleagues and I, I do think it's a really well run professional show. It is one of the few places where I'm ready for it like I want to be pitched on on everything and anything. So you know, I'm holding my badge up proudly. I think the most success we've had with logistical service providers is when you know, articulate to us what you do really well. Again, I've got a big, diverse supply chain and different commercial activity to support all the great products that we move. There's probably a good chance whatever you do well, we can align with that, and let's start that way with some wins. It's tiresome. I'm trying to be polite when you know, if you're to look through my LinkedIn inbox and see Charlie, can I have 25 minutes your time where you can describe to me how you procure freight? Thank you. I'm sure you're lovely, but I don't have time for that, believe me, I've been I'm thinking about it all the time. So I think, yeah, if we can find out, like this is what you do really well, awesome. There's a great chance I'm going to be able to do that. We get in, and then we build from that, you know, and old anecdote, I want to take that relationship and form it into partnership. Challenge me with your continuous improvement approach. What can you do better for me? How do we make money together? How do we service our customers best? Those are, those are where we've had the most success. Now, are these

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 38:01

people like contacting you, like in person, or is it like a cold email that maybe catches you at the right time,

Charlie Cunnion: 38:07

all shapes and sizes? Yeah, you know. So, yeah, you know. And I don't want to encourage it, because I get enough of these, but we often joke, you know, sometimes just feeling frisky, I'm going to pick up a cold call and see where it goes. Yeah, it is, but it's, you know, we've had some success with it, too. And listen, we're out there hustling. We're out there selling to. So I have an appreciation for people wanting to, you know, having and needing to have someone else pick up the phone on the other side. So maybe it's just me trying to build up some some karma. I guess along the way, some

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 38:45

sales karma are Is there any pitch that was really successful that surprised you as of late.

Charlie Cunnion: 38:52

Yeah, that happy robot one again. I've got some I've got some miles out of this already. But, you know, I think it was day two of the of manifest. Everyone's tired, just a lack of sleep, maybe a touch of dehydration. And certainly, my social battery at this point is pretty low. And the gentleman, you know, we get through the niceties, and I could see it on him. He's, he's wiped out too. He's like, Hey, listen, man, let me just have your phone number, and I give him the phone number, and his his bot calls me, and I can't say she but it kind of walks me through, you know, hey, what can you do for a midsize distributor of building products, and it was a very, very pragmatic, very kind of well timed and comfortable response to it. How would I pay for this? Walked me through the pricing structure, yeah, quite frankly, I can't shut up about it, because it still is that kind of, that, that interesting.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 39:47

So the bot, the bot called you, yeah, happy robot, they've been a guest on the show. Shout out to Pablo and the team over there. They've built something really incredible. And I've heard one of these demo calls, and they they sound incredible, but I guess that it may be not specific to happy robot, but just in general, people are like, Oh, if I hear I'm talking to a bot, I'm hanging up immediately. But here you are saying you had a pleasant experience with it.

Charlie Cunnion: 40:15

Well, I will say I learned something about myself. I don't want to be fooled by AI that to me like just immediate distrust, and I'm going to at the same time, and also I want to be comfortable in the tempo and the articulation and the flow and tenor were were comfortable. So I knew his AI, but it was also okay with it, because I do think it would be uncomfortable if you have to guess where, if, like, after a couple, after a minute, you then realize it's AI. I'm not I'm not sure I want that, and I'm sure there's far smarter people in me thinking about that? And you probably have a name for that, but that's

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 40:55

actually really interesting, because if you know that almost maybe releases a little bit of the pressure, because if say, I sign up for a tech demo, then I know I'm going to have to sit through the sales pitch, and then I know I'm going to get a series of emails and all of these things where I'm going to, if it's not a good fit, I'm going to, you know, politely decline or just ignore the email. But on on the flip side of it, if you know that there maybe isn't any pressure, that you're going to have to be converted on that call, that you can just get some information without sitting on a webinar, then maybe that's a, you know, a right. Way to pitch some of these, you know, freight services that are using these tools is that, hey, this is an AI that you can call, and it is an AI, so, just so you know, ahead of time, but it's going to give you all the information that

Charlie Cunnion: 41:43

you want. Yeah, and again, I probably won't sign up for that, just because I don't really need kind of that vocal AI approach, but all the other things that they do are super interesting to me, and I can draw inspiration and knowledge from that again. I can't have enough friends, you know, who are that smart. And in this space, you know, it's just I'm here for that again. And then I'll go back to that enterprise side, you know, the way, the way raft, I think, is approaching almost as a, I won't say the C consulting word, because that's not true of it, but it really looking at how that interconnectivity of it's more than just process of mapping between, you know, bills of ladings and bookings and, you know, operational milestones, and then also, like, behavioral stuff on who's going to touch what and how fast I see how they do that so quickly and so elegantly. It is, again, one of those things where it just immediately builds a sense of urgency that I need myself, my team, my bosses, everyone also thinking that way, and we, I haven't. We've been promised so many technologies that are going to change the way we do business for many years. I feel like finally, we're here

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 43:03

that's super interesting. And I think that that's a good place to to kind of round out the conversation, because from your lens, from from your role, your position. What does the rest of 2026 look like for you guys? If you can even plan that far out in advance, yeah,

Charlie Cunnion: 43:21

I think it'll be more the same, you know. And I know that's maybe not the most fun answer, but you know, we're, I don't see much happening on the tower front. I don't see, you know, we're going to have those geopolitical disruptions. And unfair to call such a serious situation, like situations like that. But, you know, also fairly bullish on the American consumer. They continue to kind of chug through all of this, and we're going to be ready for that. And so, you know, we'll right size to exactly what's happening today, and we'll be ready for which, whichever way it goes in the future. And I do think, you know, eventually, we will rebound it to into something a little bit better than the market we

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 44:05

have now. And I just lied a little bit because I have one more or a couple more questions. How did you get into supply chain? How did you find yourself in this role?

Charlie Cunnion: 44:15

Yeah, I've by accident, of course. But, you know, I started supply chain, you know, on breaks and summers in high school, my mother worked at a secretary for as a secretary, you know, industrial safety supply company called mastermans in Central Massachusetts. So I was warehouse picking then, and I had no idea what I was doing, but now I know, you know exactly. And then, yeah, I got out of school and and spent some time in the army where, you know, everything we do is in logistics. And it was great to have moved some, you know, plywood and some of the crazier places in the world back then. And then I got out the Army in 2010 and joined the reserve. And so I was trying to find a air quote, real job. And you would have had five resumes of mine by now, and I was trying to network my tail off. But it was a difficult time to find a job. I had a shoe in at IFP for an accounting role, actually, and was actually hired for an operations role, which I've been so grateful for, to be able to join the craft family and then grow through there. And that role really touched a lot, whether it was supply chain, inside, sales, accounting, all of it. And I really enjoyed the, you know, kind of dynamic. Didn't know what you're walking to every day of supply chain, and so moved over to there. And, yeah, the rest is history with IFP. And then we formed this joint venture, cmpc forest products with our partners at cmpc and Santiago. And I was really lucky to be able to join this project, which I've been with since the beginning of 24 and yeah, I really like it. It does boil down to every day something new and the opportunity to make it better, which is a lot of

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 46:03

fun, for sure. And now for folks who, well, I don't know if you want to give this contact information out. I'll let you decide. Do you want people to connect with you on social media? Do you want people to visit the website? What's your pick your poison? I guess. Yeah, yeah.

Charlie Cunnion: 46:18

Cmpc, forest products, great website to check out. And I might as well, yeah, I'm on LinkedIn a lot, so feel free to reach out that way. And, yeah, don't. Pitch me with the 25 minutes to tell me, for me to explain how we procure freight.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 46:36

Don't just have an AI bot call you and then

Charlie Cunnion: 46:38

there you go. There you go. And I might not say yes, but my interest is because, again, I'm interested, and it has my attention, but maybe I'm not paying.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 46:49

Well, that's awesome. This was a great perspective. Thank you so much, Charlie for sharing that I told you at manifest that my audience loves hearing directly from shippers about, you know, their products and their preferences and how they like to be sold to, and just you know, general information more about their freight. And I think if we can educate the audience a little bit better on you know just how their sales pitches are landing or not landing. Maybe it's just a good lesson for everybody in the LSP environment to know your customer and to know their pain points. So thank you again for coming on and agreeing to share the shipper point of view.

Charlie Cunnion: 47:25

No Thanks for having me, and congrats on all the success with the podcast. Oh, thank

Blythe Brumleve Milligan: 47:29

you so much. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of everything is logistics, where we talk all things supply chain, for the thinkers in freight, if you like this episode, there's plenty more where that came from. Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you never miss a conversation. The show is also available in video format over on YouTube, just by searching everything as logistics. And if you're working in freight logistics or supply chain marketing, check out my company, digital dispatch. We help you build smarter websites and marketing systems that actually drive results, not just vanity metrics. Additionally, if you're trying to find the right freight tech tools or partners without getting buried in buzzwords, head on over to cargorex.io where we're building the largest database of logistics services and solutions. All the links you need are in the show notes. I'll catch you in the Next episode in go jags. You you.