Notes from inside the industry.
Thoughts on AI in chemical distribution: what's working, what to skip, and how operators are putting it to use.
Latest posts.
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April 23, 2026Your surfactant line has 75 SKU's. Your sales team can explain maybe 5.
When a sales team can only explain a handful of the 75 SKUs on a surfactant line, every conversation defaults to price. Organizing the portfolio by what each product does (wetting agents, emulsifiers, dispersants, degreasers) turns reps into consultants who sell outcomes.
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April 22, 2026Your freight invoices have errors. You do not have time to find them.
Freight over billing and hazmat errors eat margin, and the proposed UP-Norfolk Southern rail merger could make lane planning and rates worse for chemical shippers. A Claude Code script that checks carrier invoices against your rate table is a Tuesday project that pays back the next week.
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April 21, 2026$127 billion in tariff refunds are up for grabs. Most of it will go unclaimed.
There's $127 billion in tariff refunds available, and most of it will go unclaimed because claiming it means matching every eligible entry number against criteria and filing through ACE before the liquidation window closes. For a distributor moving hundreds of shipments a month, that's a data problem Claude Cowork can actually solve, pulling entry data, matching eligibility, and generating the CSV to file.
→ - April 21, 2026
Your keyboard is costing you an hour a day. You just never added up the minutes.
I stopped typing most of what I write and switched to Wispr Flow to capture ideas, draft emails, and log meeting notes by voice. It's one of the few tools that actually delivers on frictionless input.
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April 17, 2026Ask anyone what a barrel of oil makes. They'll say gasoline. That is maybe half the story.
A 42 gallon barrel of oil yields about 45 gallons of finished product, and only 43% of it is gasoline. The last 11%, the sliver that becomes solvents, lubricants, and the petrochemical feedstocks behind coatings and surfactants, is where most of our business lives, and it moves whenever crude does.
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April 17, 2026Six hours to process 47 SDS files. The same job now takes four minutes.
A job that used to eat six hours, pulling data from 47 SDS files, now takes four minutes with a tool like Claude Cowork doing the extraction while a human still checks the work. With the 2026 SDS label changes underway, distributors need that time back for compliance and growth.
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April 16, 2026Tariffs are not a supply chain problem. They are a data problem wearing a supply chain costume.
US chemical imports from China dropped nearly 30 percent last quarter, and the distributors keeping up are the ones who can model the margin impact by customer and SKU in hours, instead of waiting weeks for someone to build a spreadsheet. That speed comes down to data work.
→ - April 15, 2026
Companies use less than five percent of the data they collect. For chemical distributors, I would bet that number is even lower.
Most companies use less than five percent of the data they collect, and I'd bet chemical distributors are even lower than that. Every sales order, purchase, and inventory adjustment is a data point sitting there, and the only thing missing is the decision to start using it.
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March 16, 2026Who's leading who?
A one-line reminder, borrowed from the idea that true leaders eat last, on what leadership actually looks like.
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February 24, 2026In a recent interview, Matthew McConaughey talks about how this book changed his life.
Matthew McConaughey talked in a recent interview about how The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino changed his life. I recommend it too, especially for anyone starting a business, and share one of my favorite quotes from it.
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February 9, 2026Last week’s trip to Utah wasn't just about the beautiful views—it was about the future of our industry.
I presented to the Chemical Distribution Network on using AI to solve real problems in distribution, on behalf of Real Data Solutions. After 25 years in this industry, seeing this much enthusiasm for new tools was rewarding.
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January 26, 2026Some ROI's are infinite.
A short reflection on parenting, one of the hardest and most rewarding things in life, and a return that can't be measured.
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