The Ledger
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Flexport CEO says government hid port delays by moving ships offshore
“They passed this rule that the ships have to wait a 150 miles offshore so that the carbon, so that the pollution wouldn't hit LA, like reasonable, good. But then they kept using the same metric for how many ships are waiting right outside the port. And it went…”
Petersen: 60% of Amazon third-party sellers are Chinese companies
“I think it's 60% of all the sellers on Amazon are these Chinese registered. They're not registered in the United States at all, just Chinese companies selling.”
Peterson: Houthi rebels will not disrupt Suez Canal long term
“The Suez canal is too valuable in my opinion, Too valuable to civilization, to the modern world, to believe that, you know, a group of rebels, no matter how well funded they may be, is going to be able to disrupt that for any long period of time.”
US ports have lower productivity than Mombasa, Kenya, says Flexport CEO
“Our ports operate with a lower throughput and productivity level than Mombasa, Kenya.”
Flexport CEO predicts severe retail inventory oversupply within six months
“I'm really worried that we're going to find out in six months or in some time period in the future here that people have ordered way too many goods, that these companies expected demand to stay high and keep booming. At some point, consumers start going to res…”
Petersen: Operators cannot run a non-union shipping port in the US
“And then but those as a condition of renting the port, you must agree to hire the ILWU. You can't run a non union port in the United States.”
Petersen: IMO 2023 carbon regulations will slash capacity and spike shipping prices
“It will reduce the supply of shipping capacity and slow everything down another 30%. That, that takes place January first, 20, 23. It's getting very little attention, but to my view, it's going to be massively disrupted. If we slow everything down, reduce the …”
Flexport CEO: US infrastructure bill allocates $17B without building new ports
“There's seventeen billion dollars allocated to ports. I went and read it, and I couldn't find any money that was going to be spent on building ports.”
Petersen: Ocean freight bookings from China to US dropped 60%
“And what has happened is a 60% decline in bookings of ocean freight from China to the US.”
Petersen: Trump administration exempted auto parts from tariffs
“But also earlier this week, they made it so that auto parts are not subject to the tariffs. They created a huge exemption.”
Petersen: Flexport makes thousands of daily AI calls to truck drivers
“So like we, we're making thousands of phone calls a day using AI calling truck drivers.”
Peterson: Houthi drones cost $20k while US interceptor missiles cost $2M
“They shoot a 20,000 dollar drone and we need a two million dollar missile to shoot it down.”
Peterson: Air freight prices will surge if Red Sea crisis lasts weeks
“I suspect if this lasts another week or two, you're going to see big run-ups in air freight prices.”
Petersen: Flexport ships for 80% to 90% of top DTC brands
“We ship for probably 80 or 90% of the hot new DTC brands.”
Petersen: Shein will generate $20B in revenue in 2022
“Yeah, I mean, actually, China's got, one of the companies to watch is Shein S-H-E-I-N. It's this Chinese kind of like the new Zara that is taking over the world. I think they're gonna do twenty billion dollars in revenue this year.”
Petersen: Shein launches 1,000 AI-generated SKUs per day
“They're launching a thousand SKUs a day. A thousand new SKUs a day. All like AI generated, and then if people order enough, they produce it, and it's like a really incredible company.”
Ryan Petersen: Global ocean carrier fleet will expand 25% over three years
“The world's ocean carriers, that's what we call the people that own the ships, have actually ordered 25% more ships, increased the fleet by 25% over the next three years.”
Petersen: Mexico's labor costs became cheaper than China's in 2020
“Two years ago, Mexico became cheaper than China in labor costs.”
Petersen: China shut down major ports for weeks over single COVID cases
“The zero tolerance policy has shown up, for example at least twice where one long, one port worker in a Chinese port got COVID and they shut the whole port down for like three weeks.”
Petersen: Global logistics market won't clear up for next couple years
“On the logistics market, I don't see it sorting itself out for the next year the next couple of years.”
Flexport CEO: Biden is better equipped than Trump for port deals
“And as far as union negotiations, Biden's probably pretty as equipped as any president's ever been to negotiate with a union and get them to play nice and not screw up his reelection with a strike. He's known as a union friendly president and go sit down and d…”
Petersen: Diverting US shipping volume to Houston will overload its port
“If everybody started to ship to Houston, guess what? Houston port won't be able to handle the volumes either.”
Petersen: IMO carbon mandate requires 13% global ship emission cuts in 2023
“On January first of next year, January first, 20, 23, which is tomorrow in shipping terms, that all the ships in the world will have to reduce their carbon emissions by 13%.”
Petersen: Companies stay in China for quality manufacturing, not cheap labor
“Labor costs in China are not, are you're not there for cheap labor. You're there for quality manufacturing at this point. Like there's much cheaper labor in Southeast Asia or other parts of the world than there is in China.”
Peterson: 30% of ocean container traffic passes through Red Sea
“About 30% of all ocean container traffic flows through the Suez and through the Red Sea.”
Peterson: Asia-to-Europe ocean freight prices jumped 3x for January
“Prices are coming out now for January freight for ocean freight, Asia to Europe. You're seeing about a three X increase in the price of ocean freight versus where we were a month or two ago”
Petersen: Flexport on track for $5B in 2022 revenue
“First revenue was in 2014. We did two million dollars in revenue that year. We're on track this year to do five billion dollars in revenue.”
Petersen: Flexport leased 10 passenger planes exclusively for cargo transport
“So we've actually got 10 passenger planes that we've leased, and we'll, we'll keep doing more that are not flying any passengers. We're just filling them with freight.”
Petersen: Flexport raised $25M via GoFundMe with Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis for Ukraine relief
“So we created a GoFundMe Campaign partnered with Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. Ashton's an early investor in Flexport. And we raised twenty five million bucks to pay for shipping to deliver goods.”
Petersen: Early Flexport investor Yuri Milner donated $100M for Ukrainian relief
“Uri Milner, who's an early Flexport investor, just donated a hundred million dollars.”
Petersen: Port of Rotterdam has been fully automated for 20 years
“Rotterdam's been fully automated for 20 years, so if they want to run 24 seven and keep containers flowing through the port, they can do that with self-driving trucks and everything.”
Petersen: China's zero-COVID policy kept manufacturing running normally for 18 months
“So for the last 18 months, China had this total zero tolerance policy and was very successful in keeping COVID out of out of their country. And so manufacturing just kept running as if not no problem in China, which is the majority of this manufacturing.”
Transit times from Asian factories to US rose to 115 days
“It's now taking a 115 days on average across our customer base from when the factory says, Hey, these goods are ready. Come pick them up. To when they finally get delivered to a warehouse in the United States. Before the pandemic, that was 50.”
Ryan Petersen: Big companies went from paying lowest to highest freight rates
“Pre pandemic, the biggest companies paid the least for freight because they buy the most freight. So they negotiate good rates. Now they're paying the most.”
Flexport CEO: Ocean shipping rates spiked from $550 to $20,000
“2016, it was 550 bucks. Last year was 20,000 dollars. So it's up 10 X over normal.”
Ryan Petersen: SoCal law restricts truck yard container stacking to two high
“So in Southern California, you can't stack a container more than too high in a truck yard by law.”
Long Beach eased container stacking rules hours after Flexport CEO's tweet
“I tweeted about it at six AM by three PM. The city of Long Beach had changed the zoning law to allow stacking up to five high, I believe.”
Petersen: Port night shifts fail because truckers and warehouses stay closed
“No, they do have a third ship, but nobody's showing up is the problem. So truck drivers don't work in the middle of the night. Warehouses aren't open in the middle of the night.”
Petersen: US ports are owned by local cities, unlike Europe's national assets
“So the local cities own the ports in the United States. That is a difference between United States and Europe, for example, where there's sort of national strategic assets.”
Petersen: Flexport's AI customs classification reached high 90s accuracy
“Six years ago in a hackathon, we got to like, 70% accuracy. We're now in high nineties accuracy versus what a human trained expert will get to.”
Peterson: Rerouting around Africa adds 8% transit time to US vs 20% to Europe
“To go around the southern tip of Africa around the Cape of good hope to get to the east coast, it's like an eight percent increase in transit time versus 20 to Europe.”
Petersen: About half of Flexport's volume originates in China
“Probably about half of all of our volumes come out of China.”
Petersen: 2016 ocean freight rates hit historic low of $600/container
“In 2016, there was so much excess capacity of ocean shipping, oh, so many extra ships were purchased, that the price of ocean freight hit the lowest in all of human history. It was like, 600 dollars to ship a container.”
Ryan Petersen: 50% of global air freight travels in passenger planes
“50% of all the world's air freight flies in the belly of passenger planes, and there's way less people traveling to and from Asia than there were.”
Petersen: Half of global air freight moves in passenger plane bellies
“50% of all the world's air freight flies in the belly of passenger planes.”