Published February 25, 2026
Carvana: Company Culture, Execution Challenges & Near-Death Experiences
inpractise.com/articles/carvana-vs-carmax-inside-carvanas-culture-execution-and-near-death-experiences
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That's interesting. Carvana, for a major chunk of its business, it is a logistics business.
Indeed, that's exactly what I'm saying. It wasn't a concept. They had John Piatak and he had four or five people. That was the entire supply chain logistics. They were only transportation people. They knew how to route those trucks and deal with the drivers. It was the equivalent of a dedicated fleet. We had drivers, we had trucks. They were very expensive trucks. They were big and they allowed for the maximum number of vehicles. They're called stingers. They let you have one more vehicle on there, but they pivot in the middle, so they're legal in all 50 states. It's as big as you can drive legally. They maxed out the equipment and all the transportation stuff was done right. But supply chain is transportation plus distribution plus forecast and demand, plus inventory. It's the whole piece from end to end. All vendors in, all products out. Supply chain 2.0 is another layer—the vendor's vendor and the customer's customer. In this case, there's only one, usually, because they're not selling fleet. They didn't understand it. I'm not saying they didn't know about it. I'm saying they never used the word. It wasn't used once in the first couple years that I was there.
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