10 transformers wrangling supply chain chaos, from former driver collectives to mastering drone deliveries

• The effects of a congested global supply chain will make themselves felt through the end of 2022.
• American consumers are ordering more goods than ever, and expect affordable and timely delivery.
• Here are 10 people changing their companies and industries by charting new paths through the tumult.

If there were any doubt that supply chain chaos has gone mainstream, an October episode of NPR's news quiz show, "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me" put the question to rest when a contestant named the global logistics crisis as the reason holiday shoppers should be ready for disappointment this year.

"It is so complex and wide-ranging you can blame everything on it," host Peter Sagal said. "Christmas gifts unavailable? Oh, supply chain. Father emotionally unavailable? Supply chain. Oh, I'm sorry. What was the date of your one-man show again? Oh, I can't make it. Thank you, supply chain."

The mess is here to stay: Experts predict that the effects of port congestion, delayed trucks, railroad snafus, and more will make themselves felt through the end of next year. Meanwhile, consumer demand for everything has hit a crazy level, up more than 10% over 2020, which itself was up 8% over 2019.

The crisis has made some people's jobs impossible — and allowed others to stand out.

For the Delivery section of this year's edition of Insider's 100 People Transforming Business, we've highlighted 10 of those transformers, people up and down the supply chain who have taken the opportunity to change their companies, industries, and lives for the better by charting new paths through the tumult.

A smarter role for big tech

While the likes of Amazon, Alphabet, and UPS work on drones that can drop packages on our front steps, FlyTrex CEO Yariv Bash is focusing on a narrower sector of the could-be flying delivery market. Restaurants love the idea, he told Insider, since today's delivery platforms eat up to 35% of an order in fees.

Matthew Johnson-Roberson's Refraction AI is going by ground, making local food deliveries with a three-wheeled autonomous robot that sticks to the bike lane, where driving is a bit simpler than it is on the open road. "We wanted to make sure that what we were going to do was not going to be the same as what everyone else was going to do," Johnson-Roberson said.

Refraction's not the only self-driving company focused on deliveries. Under Cosimo Leipold's direction as head of partnerships, Nuro — which developed a toaster-looking, cargo-only vehicle to make local deliveries — has struck deals with grocery chain Kroger, Walmart, Domino's, and FedEx.

For long-haul work, David Liu's Trucks is taking a Tesla-like approach to getting his tech on the market in the near future, offering a limited version of autonomy in his 18-wheelers to start, with more capability to follow and landing a big deal with Amazon.

The human touch

For all the promise of robots, moving goods along the supply chain remains a deeply human process. That's why Lidia Yang, cofounder and CEO of NEXT Trucking, is working with port terminal operators to connect drivers with loads more efficiently. "If we can just keep drivers moving, you can largely increase your capacity for the port," she said.

At UPS, CEO Carol Tomé has used the pandemic-induced chaos as extra motivation to focus on profitability over volume and weed out ventures that didn't adhere to her "better, not bigger" philosophy. "Low-value projects often take as much time, effort, and resources as high-value initiatives. So, they need to be stopped. Quickly," she said.

Indeed, getting people to do more is crucial. In 2019, when Sarah Mastrorocco became Instacart's head of pickup, the company was powering pickup from 1,000 stores in North America. A year and a half into the pandemic, it covers 4,500 stores in 45 states. Under CEO Kelly Caruso, Shipt has grown its footprint throughout the pandemic, going beyond food to add customers like CVS, GNC, and Bed Bath & Beyond.

Caruso told Insider that protecting people is as important to her as growing her business. "You have to invest in growth and people," she said, even if those goals can contradict.

That same concern for the people in the supply chain is what compelled Penelope Register-Shaw to join the Frontdoor Collective, a last-mile delivery company formed of more than 100 small fleets that deliver for Amazon and other major players. She worried that drivers were suffering from worsening pay, working conditions, and safety.

"If you enter this job, you should have a reasonable expectation that you can make a career out of it, not that you will last six weeks or six months," she said. She said she's in it for the long haul, too. "I will stay with this as long as it takes to be successful."