Spotlight: Mercury Acquires King Courier in San Francisco

Mercury is excited to announce the expansion of our San Francisco presence through the acquisition of King Courier. This growth strengthens our ability to support clients on the West Coast with the same responsive, time-critical logistics solutions Mercury is known for nationwide.

The expansion is an important step in Mercury’s continued investment in healthcare, life sciences, and specialty logistics services, helping us provide broader coverage, deeper local support, and greater flexibility for our clients.

Industry Knowledge

Mercury CEO Named 2026 Supply Chain Rising Star

Supply & Demand Chain Executive recognized Mercury CEO Josh Medow as a 2026 Rising Star in its annual Pros to Know Awards, which honors leaders delivering measurable impact across the supply chain industry. In an interview published alongside the recognition, Josh outlines the operating philosophy behind Mercury's service model, including the "Band-Aids and Stitches" framework the team uses to continuously improve shipment outcomes, how Mercury rebuilt its technology platform to reduce delays by 40%, and why staying close to the work matters most in healthcare logistics.

👉 Read the full article

DCT Logistics: Direct-to-Patient Shipping Guide

Decentralized clinical trials move investigational products directly to patient homes, removing the access barriers that cause 80% of trials to miss enrollment targets and 85% to struggle with retention. Direct-to-patient logistics adds significant complexity: cold chain management for biologics and advanced therapies must hold through residential delivery, sample collection kits must return from patient homes to central labs within tight analytical windows, and compliance documentation must satisfy Good Distribution Practice standards regardless of whether the destination is a clinic or an apartment. This guide covers the full logistics architecture required to run DCT programs at scale across domestic and international markets.

👉 Read the full article

Biologics Stability Testing for Shipping

Stability data from your laboratory directly determines how your biologic must be packaged, routed, and monitored in transit, yet many organizations treat these as separate workflows. This article explains how ICH Q5C stress studies reveal the exact time window a product tolerates outside its labeled temperature range, how to translate accelerated stability results into maximum transit limits and packaging validation requirements, and what the 2025 WHO guidelines and DSCSA traceability mandates add to the compliance obligation. An estimated 20% of temperature-sensitive products suffer damage during distribution, and the gap between lab data and logistics execution is where most of those losses originate.

👉 Read the full article

Medical Device Recall Logistics

A medical device recall does not wait for convenient timing, and the FDA's effectiveness check requirements at 72 hours, 10 days, and end-of-recall mean logistics decisions made in the first few hours carry regulatory consequences for weeks. This guide covers how the FDA's Class I, II, and III classifications set different response paces and documentation obligations, why reverse logistics for recalled devices requires lot-level chain-of-custody records from pickup through final disposition, and how replacement shipping often carries more urgency than retrieval, particularly when recalled devices are still supporting active patient care.

👉 Read the full article

Product Updates

Shipment List & Tracking Enhancements 🔎

• Better Filters and Sorting
  You can now filter shipments by requestor, grouped status, and pickup date. Status options are grouped as: In Transit, Exception, Future Shipments, Delivered, Cancelled. New sort options include Created Date and Expected Delivery Date, both newest-to-oldest and oldest-to-newest.

• Copy Tracking Link 🔗
  A new “Copy Link” button has been added to the Thank You page so you can quickly share the public tracking URL.

Cold-Chain & NFO Updates ❄️✈️

• New Package Component
  Cold-chain shipments now include a unified Package section for shipment contents, temperature needs, dangerous goods, lithium batteries, supplies, shipper details, and insurance. You can also request one insurance option across all packages.

• NFO Requests Through Cold-Chain Form
  You can now request NFO shipments through the Cold-chain form by selecting “General Cargo.” Manual Simple SCC and Simple NFO creation has been removed from the Portal and replaced by the updated Cold-chain/NFO flow.

Customs & Commercial Invoice Updates 🧾

• Tax ID Field Added
  A Tax ID Number field is now available on address forms and will automatically populate the relevant Commercial Invoice fields when applicable.

• Pharmaceutical End-Use Reason 💊
  For HS codes beginning with “30,” you will be asked whether the item is a pharmaceutical product. If yes, you must select an end-use reason: Research and Development, For use in Laboratory/In Vitro use only, For use in Animals/In Vivo, Clinical Trial Medicine, API for Further Manufacture, Finished Licensed Medicine, Other. The selected reason will be added to the Commercial Invoice description.

• Simplified Commercial Invoice Upload 📄
  Clients uploading their own Commercial Invoice no longer need to enter commodity details manually. You will only need to enter the Total Customs Value. If Mercury is creating the Commercial Invoice, the commodity section will continue to work as it does today.

Billing & Pickup Updates 📦

• Bill To Visibility 💳
  If only one billing account exists, the Bill To section will appear as read-only with the billing address pre-selected.

• References & Billing Accounts for Pickups
  You can now add a billing account and reference when creating a one-time pickup. Required references will be enforced, and pickup billing details will carry over automatically when created through a parcel shipment.

• Phone Number Required ☎️
  Phone numbers are now required for FedEx and UPS pickups, both for one-time pickups and parcel shipment creation.

Insurance Updates 🛡️

• Insurance Requests for SCC and NFO
  You can now directly request insurance during SCC and NFO shipment creation.

• High-Value International Reminder 🌍
  For international shipments valued at $5,000 or more, you will see an insurance reminder before the Thank You page if no insurance was requested.

Address Book & API Updates ⚡

• Default Origin Address 📍
  You can now mark a new address as their default origin address during address creation.

• Sameday Shipments via API
  Sameday shipments can now be created through the Mercury platform API. This is currently available for Oddity and can be enabled for other clients upon request.

Employee Spotlight

Meet Colin Brady, Director of Business Development Midwest

Colin Brady brings something rare to a business development role: he has worked both sides of the operation. After building his logistics foundation in operations at a global freight forwarder, Colin spent more than 15 years in healthcare and life sciences sales, including four years navigating some of the most demanding supply chain conditions the industry has seen. That combination gives him a perspective most sales professionals simply do not have; he knows what it takes to make a promise, and he knows what it takes to keep one.

What makes Colin's story even more compelling is what he does outside of work. A USA Boxing board member, a certified health coach, and the oldest Pennsylvania Golden Gloves champion in history at age 37, Colin lives by a standard he carries into every client conversation: competition is optional, discipline is mandatory. He joined Mercury because he saw a team that operates the same way: plugged in, accountable, and built around the kind of dedicated support that specialty logistics clients have always needed but rarely received. Read the full spotlight on our blog to learn more about Colin's career, his path to Mercury, and why he believes amateur boxing belongs in every city and suburb across the country.

👉 Read Colin’s full story