Sysco and US Foods rank second and third among private carriers in terms of number of tractors, according to Transport Topics. Other distributors in the top 20 include Reyes Holdings, McLane, Performance Food Group, United Rentals and Gordon Food Service.

Avnet's transformation in the past three years has included creating an internet of things ecosystem to help customers develop and commercialize their ideas, according to CEO William Amelio. Securing internal buy-in was key, along with acquisitions and partnerships that helped Avnet develop a scalable platform, Amelio writes.

FedEx Freight Direct has expanded its last-mile delivery services of bulky items to homes and businesses to include select ZIP codes in 11 states, including Florida and Texas. Other companies are also looking at last-mile delivery for these items as consumers are making more bulky purchases online.

To satisfy growing e-commerce demands, retailers and fleet operators are shifting distribution networks and delivery strategies and implementing new technologies, writes Seth Clevenger. Retailers such as Giant Food Stores are combining online and physical retail businesses with curbside pickup, Walgreens stores have become FedEx pickup/drop-off locations, and Walmart, Kohl's and PetSmart offer incentives for online shoppers to retrieve goods at their brick-and-mortar locations.

Some 95% of business-to-business marketers say their demand creation plan is either somewhat or very successful, and 80% report that they're currently using demand creation strategies, per LeadCrunch and Ascend2. Respondents said the top channel for both lead generation and lead nurturing strategies is email, followed by content or video.

Creativity is a worthy trait in an employee and can help companies make strong hires without worrying as much about personality, writes Bill Nottingham. "You need teams that can sharpen and build on each other's contributions, without regard for who will get credit (or blame)," he writes.

Bad leadership is one major cause of stress and burnout among workers. Companies can use several tactics to prevent this, starting with spending more time evaluating managerial candidates.

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According to Jia Wang, HR and organization development researcher, scholar and practitioner, in today's fast-changing workplace, many distributors struggle to find the right talent with the right skills. Even with a well-designed hiring system in place, distributors may still experience a high rate of failure in getting the right people on board. Why is this the case? What are the roadblocks? Read her blog post.