The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 70 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
Petersen: I am firmly anti-tariff because it hurts Flexport's business
“I'm very firmly anti-tariff. It's bad for my business.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Petersen: Panama Canal Operating at Roughly Two-Thirds Capacity
“Panama Canal is only operating at about two thirds capacity.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”