Assertion Supported
Petersen: Ocean Freight in 2016 Was the Cheapest in Human History
“In 2016, we had the cheapest ocean freight in human history. Oh. It was actually a glut of capacity. It was the opposite problem as now, but one of the Korean ocean carrier, Hanjin, went bankrupt that year.”
Disclosure
Petersen: I am firmly anti-tariff because it hurts Flexport's business
“I'm very firmly anti-tariff. It's bad for my business.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Petersen: Almost 10% of Flexport Deliveries Go to Amazon
“Well, I think we partner with Amazon a lot, too. I mean, we probably, like, almost 10% of our deliveries go to Amazon.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Petersen: Flexport ships technology faster with fewer engineers
“I think we actually, with fewer engineers now, we're shipping technology faster too, cause we're more focused and more like, yeah, there's real value in just like doing fewer things, but doing them better.”
Assertion Partly supported
Petersen: Amazon only offers freight forwarding for goods sold on Amazon
“Amazon does not see global freight forwarding for brands unless they're shipping the product and selling it on Amazon. And so we just took a different, we don't compete with them in that regard. There's some overlap certainly in the fulfillment piece, but in t…”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: Over 90% of Container Ships Are Bypassing the Red Sea
“More than 90% are routing around.”
Assertion Partly supported
Petersen: Asia-to-Europe Shipping Rates Jumped Fivefold Following Red Sea Crisis
“So we saw the price of shipping from Asia to Europe went up, up about five times. Between December and now.”
Disclosure
Petersen: Flexport uses OpenAI and Adept APIs for discrete workflow tasks
“We, we've actually using OpenAI's APIs as well as a company called Adept which their CEO used to be the head of engineering for OpenAI and so they, but we're using these, the thing that's working for us is that the fact that we've taken, you know, a complex tr…”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports stand at 30% plus historical duties
“Tariffs are currently 30% plus whatever was pre-existing, so that's a pretty big deal.”
Assertion Partly supported
Petersen: US-China container shipping costs jumped from $2,000 to $5,000
“I didn't check this week, I've been traveling, but it's probably 5000 or so from China to the United States. States. ... It was at two a couple months ago. Before the tariffs hit.”
Disclosure
Petersen: Flexport fulfillment centers use minimal robotics
“At least at Flexport, we're so, we have minimal robots in our fulfillment centers. We're mostly people.”
Disclosure
Petersen: Flexport has 400,000 drivers on its app but 200,000 loads yearly
“So we have 400,000 truck drivers on the mobile app... But we only have 200,000 loads a year.”
Assertion Partly supported
Petersen: AI voice technology prices dropped about 90% in the past year
“It's that the price of that's come down about 90% in the last year and it's becoming quite commodified.”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: Panama Canal 2024 capacity dropped to two-thirds with 21-day delays
“2023 was quite a dry year, and that led to 20 24 not having enough water in the canal to operate at full capacity. So that led to only about two thirds the number of ships trans transiting the canal as were theoretically capable of transiting which led to huge…”
Assertion Contradicted
Petersen: Flexport is third-largest US freight forwarder and top 10 globally
“We're, you know, we're the third largest American freight forwarding company, top 10 globally.”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: Largest freight forwarder holds only 3% to 4% market share
“The largest freight forwarders in the world are worth 30 to fifty billion dollars, depending on the year of what Wall Street's, how Wall Street's valuing them and the biggest one has three or four percent market share, and that's just in freight forwarding.”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: Flexport operates 4 million square feet of fulfillment facilities
“We've got four million square foot facilities, and that was an investment we did with Dave.”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: Panama Canal Operating at Roughly Two-Thirds Capacity
“Panama Canal is only operating at about two thirds capacity.”
Disclosure
Petersen: Flexport had containers on ships struck by missiles
“Did have containers on some of these ships and yeah, it's never a dull day in our industry having to notify customers like, oh, your ship was hit by a missile.”
Assertion Supported
Petersen: Container ships disabled satellite transponders to avoid attacks
“And a lot of these container ships, like the first thing they did was turn off their satellite transponders so that it would be harder for the terrorists to attack them, to find them.”
Disclosure
Petersen: Flexport charters three Boeing 747 aircraft through Atlas Air
“We have three Boeing seven 47 in the Flexport fleet. They're not really our planes. They're run by Atlas air. We they paint them with our logo because we we've signed long-term contracts to commit to buying capacity from them.”
Assertion Partly supported
Petersen: Tesla and Volvo paused European production due to component shortages
“We saw this in Europe recently where both Tesla and Volvo announced that they were shutting down their manufacturing lines for a few weeks. I think they've reopened by now, but they had to shut down their lines. Because they couldn't get the components in.”
Ryan Petersen