When FreightWaves launched the AI Excellence in Supply Chain Awards, the goal was to cut through the noise of an industry where “AI” has become a marketing buzzword slapped on every press release, and instead spotlight the companies that are leveraging AI in truly revolutionary ways. The awards recognize real deployments and measurable outcomes as opposed to flashy pitches. Entries are judged on the strength of the AI application itself, how deeply it’s integrated into existing workflows, and the tangible results it produces. This year, YMX Logistics was named one of the honorees in the Operational AI Integration category for logistics companies. The honor goes to YMX’s Autonomous Yard Operating System (YOS), which applies AI to a part of the supply chain that has historically gotten the least attention and the least investment: the yard. The yard is where transportation and warehousing physically hand off to each other. Trailers, drivers, gates, docks, labor, safety, inventory, and sustainability initiatives all converge in the same few acres of asphalt. It’s also, according to YMX, one of the most under-optimized parts of the entire supply chain. “Autonomous” in YMX’s naming doesn’t mean replacing yard workers or deploying autonomous trucks at scale. It means using AI to sense yard conditions, forecast labor demand, recommend decisions, automate data capture, and orchestrate workflows. All of these elements help turn the yard into a continuously improving execution layer. YMX CEO Matt Yearling has described the shift in simpler terms. For decades, yard operations at even the largest shippers ran on “two channels on a radio and pen and paper,” with little to no visibility into how a yard was actually sized, laid out, or performing relative to what it could be. YMX’s system is built to replace that with an operating model that measures itself and improves