Yum.
As someone that has worked for both of these organizations, this is like two of the exact same things merging. There is literally almost no difference between the two. This eliminate a lot of competition between the two. If I was a restauranteur, I'd be a bit concerned about this monopoly. If I were an independent, small food distribution company I would be jumping up and down with joy.
On the east-coast US Foods is (was) actually bigger than Sysco. They were the second largest food distribution company in the US. It's a big deal in the restaurant world... at least for restaurants that serve crap food. Honestly, they're all just repackaging and rebranding the same shit.
For the most part I'd say your cynicism is right on. Oddly I have to say that Sysco delivered some of the best quality herbs I've ever seen. I'd buy a case of basil and be hard pressed to find a leaf with spot while even the best of produce companies would deliver product with 5-10% waste. It always blew my mind, the quality of the herbs, like they picked it from the garden that morning and inspected each leaf. Their herbs were extremely competitive on price if you considered wastage. Still blows my mind. Also if you need 200 odd deep fried chicken dishes they always had your back.
The Sysco "Natural" line of herbs is definitely a thing of beauty. They're really nice, really well packaged and really pricey until, like you point out... you do a cost analysis on waste vs usage. What I find hilarious is that LITERALLY the same Tyson chicken will be put in to a Sysco "Imperial" box that is put in to a US Foodservice "whatever their premium line is" box and an idiot chef will proclaim affection for one over the other. I'd wager that 90% of what the two sell are analogous products. The homogenization of American Food. Woo-hoo!