The Freight Buyers' Club

In this clip from The Freight Buyers’ Club, host Mike King speaks with Cindy Allen, CEO of Trade Force Multiplier and a former Executive Director at US Customs and Border Protection, about the shift in US trade policy from national security to what she says CBP and the administration are now calling economic security.

Allen explains why CBP wants importers of record to trace goods back through every supplier and every border they have crossed, not just the last point of origin, and why she describes trade policy right now as “a team sport,” with the US on one side and most of its trading partners on the other. She also walks through the four legal authorities she says the administration is using to assess tariffs after the Supreme Court struck down its use of IEEPA, including forced labour tariffs she says now apply to more than 60 countries, and the use of a rarely invoked authority against Canada.

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/4s1XNmd5p6A

#FreightBuyersClub #Customs #Tariffs #USTradePolicy #SupplyChain #ImporterOfRecord #TradeCompliance #CBP #GlobalTrade #Logistics

What happens to your freight once the container is off the ship in America, and why is it costing so much more to move? In this episode of The Freight Buyers’ Club, host Mike King is joined by Dean Croke, Principal Analyst at DAT iQ, and Bill Cassidy, Senior Editor, Trucking at the Journal of Commerce, to explain what’s going on in the US inland market and what it means for importers and exporters around the world.

US truck rates are up by around a third on last year, but as Dean explains, it isn’t because there’s more freight. He says the market has been repriced by a mass exodus of trucking capacity, driven by tougher enforcement on driver licensing, immigration status and English proficiency, and he describes his own encounter with ICE officers checking drivers at a truck stop fuel island. Dean also explains why national averages hide what’s happening on the busiest import lanes out of Los Angeles, and why diesel prices that vary by state are changing where carriers are willing to run.

Bill sets out what shippers are actually paying, and why he sees a “K-shaped” economy shaping US freight demand. The pair also look at how the AI data centre boom has been holding up parts of the trucking market, and why Dean thinks that could be a bubble, as well as C.H. Robinson’s $5.8 billion acquisition of RXO, the $604 million verdict against C.H. Robinson and what it means for carrier vetting, the US midterms, the shift from road to rail, the proposed Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger, and what to expect in 2027.

The video version on YouTube and Spotify includes on-screen charts from DAT iQ, the Journal of Commerce and the Drayrates-JOC port drayage index, which are worth a look alongside the audio.

Thanks to Dimerco Express Group (https://dimerco.com/), our sponsor and your best partner on the transpacific.

In this episode
00:00 Coming up
01:00 Introductions
03:00 Why Americans call it “the freight market”
05:00 Truck rates up a third, but no more freight
07:00 ICE at the fuel island
10:00 West Coast imports and the lanes out of Los Angeles
13:00 Diesel and where carriers choose to run
15:00 What shippers pay, and the K-shaped economy
21:00 Drayage rates surge at the Gulf Coast ports
22:00 Data centres, flatbed and farm machinery
28:00 C.H. Robinson buys RXO
31:00 The $604 million verdict and carrier vetting
39:00 The midterms, diesel and the trucker vote
43:00 From road to rail
45:00 The Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger
46:00 What to expect in 2027
49:00 Thanks and goodbye

Related episodes
Air Cargo Unpacked: Peak Season, Wartime Costs: What’s Next for Air Cargo in 2027?
https://youtu.be/TJwYZQp7K0g

Cargo Theft, Double-Brokering and Chameleon Carriers: Nancy O’Liddy on the Fraud Hitting US Freight, with Nancy O’Liddy, Executive Director of the National Industrial Transportation League
https://youtu.be/4b4Pz1uN67I

More container ships are heading back through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, but does that mean the waters are any safer? Not according to the London insurance market.

Freight Buyers’ Club host Mike King caught up with David McKie, partner at Preston Turnbull LLP and a specialist in shipping and maritime insurance law, at the Cyprus Shipping News event in London on 13 October 2026. They discussed how war risk insurers actually assess danger, and what that means for the costs that end up being passed down the supply chain to cargo owners.

David explains the difference between hull and machinery cover and war risk insurance, and how the Joint War Committee in London decides which waters count as high risk. That covers the Black Sea, the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, along with what happened to premiums once the Hormuz crisis kicked off in early 2026. He also sets out what would need to change before shipowners, and ultimately their customers, start paying less.

For context, at the time of recording the Joint War Committee had not relaxed its view of the Red Sea at all. In July 2026 it pushed its high-risk zone further north along the Saudi coast, and in September 2026 it extended its Black Sea listing to cover almost the entire basin. So more transits through Suez reflected carriers choosing to pay the premium, not insurers deciding the risk had gone away.

The Freight Buyers’ Club, hosted by award-winning freight journalist Mike King, brings together the people shaping freight procurement and supply chains. Subscribe for more conversations like this one.

Peak season has arrived with wartime costs attached. In this month’s Air Cargo Unpacked, Mike King and Neel Jones Shah ask whether there is still such a thing as a traditional peak season. They look at how soaring jet fuel prices are hitting airlines and shippers, and what the conflict in the Middle East means for air cargo, from the attacks on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport to container ships sunk in the Strait of Hormuz.

Neil Wilson, editor of TAC Index, calculating agent for the Baltic Air Freight Indices, takes us through the latest rates. Global rates are up 24.3% year on year, Hong Kong to US is far outpacing Hong Kong to Europe, and jet fuel is up 111% year on year.

Plus the outlook for peak season and 2027 from Elaine Low (Maersk), Peter Kerins (Magna Aviation), Henk Venema (DHL Global Forwarding), Simon Milne (Solent Freight Services), Peter Scholten (Air One) and Steven Polmans (Swissport). We also discuss the US midterms, and finish on the first flight of the Airbus A350F and the FAA exemption that lets Boeing keep building the 777F.

Also mentioned: Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Spirit Airlines, airBaltic, Lufthansa, IAG, Air France-KLM, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Atlas Air, FedEx, Kalitta Air, the FAA, WorldACD, BIMCO, Air Cargo News, CNN and the Baltic Exchange.

Next week on the Freight Buyers’ Club: Bill Cassidy (Journal of Commerce) and Dean Croke (DAT Freight & Analytics) on the US domestic trucking market. Next month on Air Cargo Unpacked: David Shepherd, Managing Director, IAG Cargo.

Watch: Is Global Trade Fragmenting for Good? Customs, Tariffs and the New Rules of Importing: https://youtu.be/4s1XNmd5p6A

Read: Mike King in the latest issue of Cargo Airports & Airline Services (CAAS), on the Asia Pacific market (pages 4-10) and interviewing Robert van de Weg, CEO of Mexican carrier mas (pages 14-16): https://caasint.com/latest-issue/

Rates data courtesy of TAC Index and the Baltic Exchange. Produced by Karen Ball.

#AirCargo #PeakSeason #FreightRates #JetFuel #TACIndex #BalticExchange #FreightBuyersClub

A year ago, we asked whether global trade was entering an era of chaos. A year on, it looks less like chaos and more like a new, fragmented normal: the US has built a new, stacked tariff regime out of four separate legal authorities, the EU has ended its duty-free threshold for cheap parcels, and customs authorities on both sides of the Atlantic are quietly redefining what it means to import something legally.

In this episode:

• The US’s new tariff regime, stacking four separate legal authorities, including fresh forced labour tariffs on sixty trading partners
• The EU’s flat €3 customs duty on parcels under €150, and its impact on Shein, Temu and AliExpress
• US Customs and Border Protection’s purge of millions of importer records
• The EU’s Customs Data Hub and where European customs reform stands
• WiseTech’s VerifyWise, built in part on its newly acquired FRDM.ai, and how it maps suppliers and minimises risk

Is this a genuinely new global trading order, or the same old protectionism with a new label on it?

Featuring:
Stephen Tracey, General Manager for Customs Product Europe, WiseTech Global
Cindy Allen, CEO, Trade Force Multiplier
Roel Gevaers, Professor, University of Antwerp / Academic Director, Antwerp Management School

Chapters:
00:00 Coming up, cold open and introductions
03:00 Opening salvo: fragmentation, data as the new border, and economic security
07:00 Cindy: trade as a “team sport”
12:00 Cindy: this summer’s tariff changes, explained
17:00 Stephen: where fragmentation bites hardest for European traders
19:00 Stephen: the EU’s three euro parcel duty
21:00 Stephen: the Customs Data Hub and EU reform timeline
23:00 Stephen: where AI actually helps in customs
25:00 Stephen: VerifyWise, FRDM.ai and supplier risk
27:00 Cindy: are the forced labour tariffs genuine, or IEEPA relabelled?
31:00 Roel: Europe’s view on the forced labour tariffs, and risk to Shein and Temu
35:00 Roel: is there a precedent for this pace of change?
36:00 Roel: China’s response, and how the e-tailers adapted
40:00 Roel: the European carmakers analogy, and whether this is good policy
43:00 Roel: where next for the WTO and WCO?
44:00 Cindy: SME importers, refunds and the cost of compliance
48:00 Stephen: how CargoWise responds to a sudden rule change
51:00 Five years out: can trade stay connected as policy diverges?
55:00 Final thoughts: the one thing to get right next year
57:00 Thanks and goodbyes

#GlobalTrade #Customs #Tariffs #ForcedLabour #SupplyChain #Logistics #FreightBuyersClub

Container shipping has become "advantage carrier", according to John McCown of The McCown Report. US demand on the transpacific has been flat for a second year, yet spot rates have soared, and by John's count carriers made around $6bn in net income in the second quarter, seven times the first. So what can shippers actually do about it?

In this container shipping special, produced with the support of Dimerco Express Group, Mike King is joined by three people who track this market more closely than most:

John McCown, publisher of The McCown Report and author of Giants of the Sea

Nick Bailey, co-founder of The Signal House and former lead analyst for logistics and services at A.P. Moller-Maersk

Jimmy Suroto, founder of Nava Analytics & Research and a PSA veteran

We cover:

Why rates have climbed so sharply while US demand stays flat, and what John calls "gotcha surcharges"

Schedule reliability falling to 49.9% in August, the lowest since 2022 according to Sea-Intelligence, and why Nick says a global average hides your real exposure

Port congestion in Asia, a typhoon season John calls the worst in a decade, the Middle East war, and why he believes carriers have learned to profit from disruption

Why Asia-Europe and transpacific spot rates have gone in opposite directions

Nick's argument that supply chains are now constrained by architecture, not capacity, and how to separate customer, defensive and distortion demand

The long shift from West Coast to East and Gulf Coast ports, Jones Act waivers and US maritime policy

COSCO, the FMC and the 9 November deadline for US port fees on China-linked ships

Jimmy's 2027 forecast of 2% to 5% trade growth against BIMCO's forecast of 9% fleet growth, and what that wave of new ships could mean for rates

Mentioned in this episode:

▶️ EXCLUSIVE: FMC Chair Laura DiBella on Trump's Maritime Dominance & Global Enforcement Powers

https://youtu.be/GlZPTBKUzA4

Produced with the support of Dimerco Express Group (https://dimerco.com/), your trading partner connecting Asia with the US and beyond.

If you enjoy the show, please like, subscribe and leave a comment telling us what you'd like us to cover next. We're working towards 10,000 YouTube subscribers this year, and every subscribe helps.

Chapters:

00:00 Coming up

00:49 Welcome: Jimmy Suroto, Nick Bailey and John McCown

05:03 John McCown: flat US demand, soaring rates and "gotcha surcharges"

08:06 Nick Bailey: connected, cascading and compounding risk

11:04 Jimmy Suroto: what most container forecasters miss

12:10 Reliability falls to 49.9%: who is on time and who isn't

15:34 Port congestion hotspots and how carriers profit from disruption

18:40 Why transpacific and Asia-Europe spot rates split

21:27 Nick Bailey: architecture, not capacity, and why a bigger fleet won't save you

24:13 Customer, defensive and distortion demand on the transpacific

27:11 Efficiency or protection, and the headline rate trap

31:50 John McCown: advantage carrier, and the long shift to East Coast ports

34:27 Peak season, tariffs and chaos from the White House

37:30 Will container lines ever lose money again?

39:13 Jones Act waivers and the gap in US maritime policy

43:58 COSCO, the FMC and shots across the bow

47:30 Jimmy Suroto: back to baseline on the transpacific

49:25 Asia-Europe's new growth path

50:28 The Gulf and a 2% to 5% forecast for 2027

51:18 Why listen to Jimmy? His forecasting track record

51:58 A 9% bigger fleet: when does overcapacity bite?

53:35 John McCown on the 9 November port fee deadline

57:55 Nick Bailey: resilience versus efficiency in 2027

1:00:00 Thanks and goodbye

#ContainerShipping #FreightBuyersClub #OceanFreight #SupplyChain #Logistics #Transpacific #ShippingRates #Tariffs #Shippers #FreightForwarding

In this extended interview from Air Cargo Unpacked, retiring Airforwarders Association Executive Director Brandon Fried looks back on a career that started almost by accident: a relative in the forwarding business, warehouse work, fine art logistics, legal document delivery, and eventually his own operation in Washington DC before joining AfA.

Brandon reflects on what he's most proud of: helping build the modern cargo security framework in the wake of the Pan Am 103 bombing, working with the TSA and Customs and Border Protection to create the Known Shipper Program and canine screening. Neel Jones Shah, who worked alongside Brandon from both the airline and forwarder side, pays tribute to his impact on the industry. Brandon also shares his biggest concern for the future of air freight forwarding (uncertainty and poorly informed regulation, "you're either at the table or you're on the menu"), and his message to whoever succeeds him: stay engaged with companies of every size, not just the big ones. And yes, he confirms his next title: Vice President of Lunch.

From The Freight Buyers' Club Podcast.

#AirCargo #FreightForwarding #AviationSecurity #Logistics #SupplyChain

Mike King travels to Maersk's Southeast Asia head office in Singapore to talk with Elaine Low, Area Managing Director for Southeast Asia at A.P. Moller-Maersk, about the intra-Asia container trades. It's the world's biggest container trade, and one that rarely gets the attention it deserves, even with Drewry's Intra-Asia Container Index at three-year highs.

Elaine explains how manufacturers expanding across the region and fast-growing Asian consumer markets are driving demand. She highlights automotive and EVs, electronics and the semiconductor ecosystem as key industries. She also argues that the real constraint is landside infrastructure at Southeast Asia's many smaller ports, and says every port in the region is effectively full.

The conversation also covers how Maersk's Gemini hub-and-spoke network has helped it deal with typhoons and geopolitical disruption, the balance between contract and spot demand, how surcharges have been passed on, and what Maersk's integrator strategy offers shippers in Asia.

#Maersk #IntraAsia #ContainerShipping #PortCongestion #SoutheastAsia #FreightBuyersClub #Logistics

In this extended clip from The Freight Buyers' Club, Pawan Joshi, Chief Strategy Officer at e2open, digs into how far AI has actually taken supply chains, and where the real opportunity still sits.

Pawan explains that a lot of supply chain processes and company structures were designed decades ago, in a world before the internet, before cell phones, when even desktop computing was limited. Technology has moved on dramatically since then. His point is that the real opportunity isn't just adding AI on top of existing processes. It's rethinking them with today's connectivity and compute in mind.

He walks through a real example: monitoring temperature in real time on a refrigerated shipping container. Catching a broken cold chain early gives a business weeks of lead time to plan around a shortage, rather than finding out only when the container arrives. He calls this closing the loop, a concept borrowed from control systems. His argument is that closing the loop matters more than which specific technology, AI included, does the work.

Pawan also explains the logic behind e2open and WiseTech's CargoWise coming together. He breaks the supply chain into three groups: the people who make products, the people who sell them, and the people who move them. CargoWise was built for the movers, e2open for the makers and sellers, and bringing them together aims to connect the whole chain rather than stopping at the handoff points.

Finally, he addresses what actually blocks companies from sharing supply chain data across their networks. His answer: not a lack of standards, but a lack of trust.

an Dubai's ports ever recover from the Hormuz closure? Mike King and Drewry port specialist Eleanor Hadland analyse the region's shifting maritime landscape. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced a rethink of logistics across the Middle East. With global trade routes under constant pressure, this episode examines how Middle Eastern logistics are adapting to new geopolitical realities. Eleanor Hadland joins the show to break down the massive capital expenditure currently flooding into the region, including the new 434 million dollar terminal in Jeddah and the wider scramble for infrastructure investment. Beyond the Gulf, we look at the feasibility of alternative overland routes and the long-term outlook for Dubai's port sector. If you are tracking the future of global supply chain capacity and regional port investment, this analysis provides the expert perspective you need on where the money is going and why. This is a clip from the full episode of The Freight Buyers' Club. Check us out on YouTube and all podcast platforms. Thanks to Dimerco Express Group (https://dimerco.com/) for sponsoring the show. Can Dubai's ports ever recover from the Hormuz closure? Mike King and port specialist Eleanor Hadland analyse the region's shifting maritime landscape. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced a rethink of logistics across the Middle East. With global trade routes under constant pressure, this episode examines how Middle Eastern logistics are adapting to new geopolitical realities. Eleanor Hadland joins the show to break down the massive capital expenditure currently flooding into the region, including the new 434 million dollar terminal in Jeddah and the wider scramble for infrastructure investment. Beyond the Gulf, we look at the feasibility of alternative overland routes and the long-term outlook for Dubai's port sector. If you are tracking the future of global supply chain capacity and regional port investment, this analysis provides the expert perspective you need on where the money is going and why. This is a clip from the full episode of The Freight Buyers' Club. Check us out on YouTube and all podcast platforms. Thanks to Dimerco Express Group (https://dimerco.com/) for sponsoring the show.

#StraitOfHormuz #PortInvestment #ContainerShipping #SupplyChain #FreightBuyersClub

Nada Sanders, Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University and author of The Human/Machine, has spent decades studying how businesses forecast risk, and years serving as an expert witness in cases involving AI vendors. In this clip she explains what that experience has taught her, and it isn't flattering to the industry. Her clearest warning is about hidden costs. She says she can "almost guarantee" that any company buying an AI package will hit costs it didn't see coming, sometimes for things as basic as querying the algorithm a different way.

Before that, she lays out concrete practices for moving from reacting to risk to actually anticipating it. That means looking past transactional data like past orders and shipments, which only tell you what already happened, and tracking external signals instead, supplier behaviour, port congestion, weather, geopolitical events. It means building a handful of plausible future scenarios rather than betting on one forecast. And it means predefining trigger points in advance, so that when lead times jump or a supplier's reliability drops past a set threshold, the response is automatic rather than argued over after the fact.

She also walks through what her book's central argument, that this was never a contest between humans and machines, looks like in practice. At Unilever, AI handles high volume, early stage hiring screens while humans keep the final call. At Maersk and Amazon, AI tracks far more shipments, demand shifts and supplier issues than any person could process, flags anomalies and possible bottlenecks, then hands the decision, reroute or don't, to the human who understands the customer relationship.

The harder question, she says, is what changes with agentic AI, where the system doesn't just recommend, it acts. That means deciding in advance where humans still need to check in, what level of uncertainty is acceptable before escalating to a person, and just as importantly, when the AI should stop acting altogether. Watch the full episode of The Freight Buyers' Club for more from Nada Sanders, alongside Andre Simha (former digital transformation chief at MSC) and Pawan Joshi (Chief Strategy Officer, e2open), on forecasting, resilience and the future of human and AI collaboration in supply chains.

In this clip from The Freight Buyers' Club, Andre Simha, who chaired the Digital Container Shipping Association for seven years, explains why container shipping's real problem isn't technology. It's trust.

Andre explains that getting fiercely competitive shipping lines to agree on basic data standards was hard, but achievable. Getting the industry to actually adopt those standards afterward has been much harder. He calls it a vicious circle. Everyone wants visibility, but sharing information means trusting other companies with it.

He also compares today's AI evangelists to the blockchain evangelists who pitched him the same ideas a decade ago, in some cases the same people. His test for any new technology is simple. Does it remove a real, specific manual task. If not, he's not interested. Andre closes with the electronic bill of lading as proof of the problem. Years after the pandemic pushed hard for it, adoption still sits at only 10 to 20 percent. Andre Simha spent nearly 39 years at MSC, the world's largest container shipping line, the last five and a half as its digital transformation chief, before stepping down this spring.

#ContainerShipping #ShippingIndustry #Logistics

Reporting live from the EU Cross-Border E-commerce Forum in Liège this month, Mike King and Neel Jones Shah break down why EU e-commerce demand has stalled following new de minimis rules, drawing on conversations with regulators and industry figures at the forum, plus fresh data from Rotate.

They also cover a new US Customs and Border Protection disclosure proposal and a companion trade crimes bill working through Congress, a fresh wave of freighter orders from Ethiopian Airlines, Afcom and MSC Air Cargo, and the runway accident involving an Amazon Prime Air flight at Miami International.

Neil Wilson of TAC Index, calculating agent for the Baltic Air Freight Indices, joins with his monthly rates analysis and peak season outlook.

In the second half, Mike Duggan, Head of Cargo at Oman Air, joins to talk through rebuilding Oman Air's cargo business after a turbulent year in the Gulf, Muscat's rise as a logistics hub, and his read on where the market goes next.

Comes packed with new graphics, maps and animations to help make sense of it all.

#SupplyChain #Logistics #AirCargo #AirFreight #OmanAir

Disruption is now the baseline for global trade, not the exception. This episode looks at what real resilience takes on the ground, how technology fits in as decision infrastructure, and covers agentic AI, including who's accountable when it gets the call wrong. Mike King speaks with three guests who bring experience and insight from different perspectives across the industry.

Guests
Pawan Joshi is Chief Strategy Officer at e2open, which became part of the $2 billion WiseTech Global group last year, after more than two decades building the company's supply chain platform.
Nada Sanders is Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at Northeastern University's D'Amore-McKim School of Business, ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide by Stanford, and author of The Humachine.
Andre Simha spent nearly 39 years at MSC, the world's largest shipping line, the last five and a half as its digital transformation chief, and chaired the Digital Container Shipping Association for seven years.

0:00 Why Disruption Is Now the Baseline for Trade
2:02 Meet the Panel
4:35 Firefighting vs Preventing Supply Chain Risk
7:05 Planning for a Range of Futures, Not One Plan
9:20 Inside the Ocean Shipping Index
11:15 The COVID Lead Time Failure
14:05 Supply Chain Visibility vs Early Warning
17:00 Three Practices for Earlier Risk Detection
19:05 The Human Machine and the Unilever Example
23:30 AI Vendor Promises and Where the Human Role Shifts
28:35 Supply Chains Built for a 50 to 70 Year Old World
32:10 The Cold Chain Example and Closing the Loop
36:50 Why e2open and CargoWise Came Together
44:30 Trust, Not Standards, Is the Real Barrier
47:10 Digital Supply Chain Standards and the Adoption Problem
52:00 Agentic AI vs the Blockchain Evangelists
56:00 Agentic AI and the Football Match Maturity Question
62:00 Who's Accountable When Agentic AI Gets It Wrong
69:00 What's Not Being Taken Seriously
73:10 Closing Predictions, Reasons for Optimism

#SupplyChain #Resilience #Logistics #GlobalTrade #Disruption #SupplyChainManagement #DigitalTransformation #FreightBuyersClub #AgenticAI #ArtificialIntelligence #ContainerShipping

Maersk CEO Vincent Clerc says ports are to blame for the congestion hitting shippers this year. But ocean carriers now control nearly half the world's marine terminals, so how much of this is really down to a lack of port investment, and how much comes back to the carriers themselves?

Mike is joined by Eleanor Hadland, who leads Drewry's ports and terminals research and runs her own advisory practice, Hadland Maritime. They get into whether Vincent Clerc's numbers on port underinvestment stack up, why carrier terminal ownership is only going to grow, and why congestion is arguably a supply chain problem, not just a port one.

They then take a tour of the world's most disrupted trades: chronic congestion in Shanghai and Ningbo, low water and strikes hitting Europe's biggest hubs, the $15 billion scramble to build ports around the Strait of Hormuz after the closure that took Jebel Ali out of the world's top 30 ports, the Panama Canal's own water problems, and West Africa's paradox of huge investment alongside rising delays.

Guest: Eleanor Hadland, Senior Analyst, Ports and Terminals, Drewry Maritime Research, and Director, Hadland Maritime.

Thanks to Dimerco Express Group for supporting this episode. They are the best partner if you need a shipping or air cargo solution on the transpacific trades and beyond.

Topics covered:
Why Vincent Clerc blames a lack of port investment for global congestion. Whether carrier terminal ownership, now nearly 45 percent of global capacity, is part of the problem. Why Chinese ports are running at 85 percent stack utilisation with almost no buffer. Europe's low water, strikes and labour shortages. The Hormuz closure and the four country, fifteen billion dollar scramble to route around it. Panama Canal water levels and what they mean for routing decisions. Why West Africa keeps getting investment and still sees rising delays. What shippers should actually be watching over the next two years.

0:00 Maersk's Vincent Clerc blames ports for the shipping delays and congestion
1:00 Eleanor Hadland on Drewry's ports and terminals research and her career at Associated British Ports
3:00 Does Vincent Clerc's claim about 15 years of port underinvestment stack up
8:00 Ocean carriers own 45% of global marine terminals, are carriers profiting from the congestion they blame on ports
12:00 Port congestion in Shanghai, Ningbo and Southeast Asia, new terminals at Tuas, Port Klang and Pasir Panjang
14:00 Port congestion in Rotterdam, Antwerp and Europe, low water on the Rhine and labour shortages
18:00 Jebel Ali and the Strait of Hormuz closure, can Dubai's ports ever fully recover
19:00 The $15 billion race to build ports at Khorfakkan, Fujairah, Jeddah and Oman
26:00 US port investment at Savannah, Baltimore and Long Beach, plus Mexico's Lazaro Cardenas and Manzanillo
27:00 Panama Canal low water and how it is shifting container routing to the US East Coast
31:00 Port congestion in West Africa, Tema, Lome and the Durban Gateway Terminal in South Africa
34:00 Eleanor Hadland's three things shippers should watch over the next two years
35:00 Does chronic port underinvestment actually make Maersk more money

#FreightBuyersClub #SupplyChain #Shipping #Ports #Maersk #Drewry #Logistics #ContainerShipping #Hormuz #OceanFreight

Mike King and Neel Jones Shah are joined for the whole episode by Brandon Fried, Executive Director of the Airforwarders Association, who has announced his retirement after two decades leading the organisation.

This month: how the AI data centre build-out is reshaping air cargo demand, and the fallout from the EU's de minimis change on volumes through Liège. Cargo theft losses hit $725 million last year across US and Canadian freight, and an Airforwarders Association survey found 83% of forwarders reporting reduced shipping volumes due to tariffs. We also dig into the fight over IATA's revised Direct Air Waybill framework, the rules governing who's liable when cargo is misdeclared or mishandled, which forwarders say could shift liability onto them.

Plus the best rates analysis in the business from Neil Wilson at TAC Index, a tribute to Jan Krems as he steps down as President of United Cargo, and a look back at Brandon Fried's nearly 25 years leading the Airforwarders Association as he hands over the reins.

Many thanks to Brandon Fried for joining us for the whole episode, to Neil Wilson for his rates analysis, and to TAC Index and the Baltic Exchange for their continued support of Air Cargo Unpacked.

For more from the Freight Buyers' Club, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube.

Container carriers are pulling sailings on purpose, missing their own reliability targets, and posting some of their strongest profits in years. Mike King is joined by Nils Roche, Founder of Solvens Advisory and a former liner executive with senior roles at CMA CGM, Maersk and PIL, and Mark Chadwick, President of the Global Shippers' Association, representing some of the world's biggest cargo owners. He's one of the largest buyers in the industry, purchasing shipping capacity from both forwarders and carriers on behalf of his members.

Topics include: carrier Q2 results, the gap between carrier reliability data and what shippers are actually experiencing, a 215% rise in blank sailings on some Asia lanes, the latest on Hormuz and Red Sea routing, a forecast "Godzilla" El Niño, record-low Rhine water levels, Panama Canal draft restrictions, and the current US tariff picture.

This episode is sponsored by Dimerco Express Group (https://dimerco.com/), your trading partner connecting Asia with the US and beyond.

Big thanks to Xeneta for sharing their exclusive reliability data.

Notes

Links to Nils Roche, 2025 prediction on The Freight Buyers’ Club: https://youtube.com/shorts/-xxM1JS3mOU

Link Hapag-Lloyd Vs US Retailers: Container Rates, Tariffs, ZIM And What Happens Next featuring Torsten Hartmann from Hapag-Lloyd and Jon Gold is VP for Supply Chain and Customs Policy at the National Retail Federation.

https://youtu.be/HAeb1TjRupE

Articles:

Asian port congestion forcing container lines back to the Red Sea

https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/containers/asian-port-congestion-forcing-container-lines-back-to-the-red-sea

Rhine cut in two as European drought cripples inland shipping

https://splash247.com/rhine-cut-in-two-as-european-drought-cripples-inland-shipping/

#ContainerShipping #SupplyChain #FreightBuyersClub #OceanFreight #Logistics #PeakSeason #Reliability #RedSea #ElNino #Tariffs

Mike King speaks with Adrien Thominet, Chairman and Founder of AERION, about why the GSSA model at the heart of air cargo is being reinvented from the ground up.

Thominet explains how AERION has moved beyond the classic GSSA structure, building out dedicated arms for pharma (Healthcare), e-commerce (Mail & More), total cargo management (TCE) and digital transformation (CargoTech), all under one corporate umbrella. He makes the case that airlines are increasingly comfortable outsourcing more of their commercial and operational activity, and why AERION believes there's a limited window to lead that shift before the air cargo industry consolidates around a smaller number of players.

The conversation covers:

• Why AERION thinks the GSSA concept needs to evolve into something closer to a "general logistics agent"
• How network scale let AERION pivot capacity from Dubai to Lebanon within weeks during regional disruption
• Where air cargo trade lanes are shifting, from China-to-Brazil e-commerce growth to hyperscaler demand out of Asia
• Dynamic pricing, shrinking planning windows, and why shippers are being pushed toward shorter-term commitments
• Which region Thominet flags as air cargo's most fragile market right now
• A hint at two acquisitions AERION plans to announce in the coming months

This episode is brought to you by Dimerco Express Group, connecting Asia with the world: https://www.dimerco.com/

Guest: Adrien Thominet, Chairman & Founder, AERION
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrien-thominet-48585371/
Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/we-are-aerion/

#AirCargo #FreightForwarding #GSSA #Logistics #SupplyChain #AERION #AirFreight #GlobalTrade #Aviation #CargoIndustry

Aytekin Saray, CEO of Global GSA Group, joins The Freight Buyers Club at Air Cargo China in Shanghai to explain where he sees air cargo's next growth, and why much of it sits in markets the GSA sector has underserved.

Saray describes Africa as a major gap, with the Indian subcontinent, South America and the Middle East close behind, and says even competitors are thin on the ground in some of these regions. He talks through the group's moves into Egypt and Pakistan, an imminent Pakistan announcement, and his interest in Saudi Arabia. He argues that political tension, which he sees as more US and Western in origin, keeps re-engineering trade routes, and that the cargo industry feels the impact first.

The conversation also covers the case for consolidation among GSAs, Saray's warning that too many unregulated players are undercutting rates, the shift from selling capacity to total corridor management, the role of CargoTech and automation in a more integrated GSA model, and what Amazon, UPS and e-commerce mean for the business. Saray predicts most of the market will still rely on GSAs.

Guest: Aytekin Saray, CEO, Global GSA Group. Recorded at Air Cargo China, Shanghai.

This episode is brought to you by Dimerco Express Group, your freight forwarder for connections from Asia to the rest of the world: https://dimerco.com/

#AirCargo #AirFreight #GSA #Logistics #SupplyChain #FreightForwarding #Cargo #AirCargoChina #GlobalGSAGroup #CargoTech #Ecommerce #Africa #India #MiddleEast #TheFreightBuyersClub #Dimerco

Anchorage keeps growing while air cargo from Asia to Europe falls away. Same freight, opposite directions. Mike King and Neel Jones Shah unpack a freight market pulling apart, with Sean Dolan of NorthLink Aviation on why Ted Stevens Anchorage is booming, and Neil Wilson of TAC Index, calculating agent for the Baltic Air Freight Indices, on rates and jet fuel.

Also this month: war and tariffs reshaping the map, the end of EU de minimis, the AI and semiconductor boom filling Asian carriers, Farnborough's order book, Dimerco's survey of 57 Asia-Pacific shippers, and Glyn Hughes handing over the top job at TIACA to Mammen Tharakan.

Produced with the support of Dimerco Express Group, your partner for Asia sourcing, manufacturing and China-plus-one supply chains. https://dimerco.com/

00:00 Welcome and coming up this month
01:00 Two disruptions: war and tariffs
02:00 Houthis blockade Saudi Arabia, Red Sea at risk
04:00 Neel on the Middle East and the tariff scramble
08:00 Asia-Europe volumes collapse after de minimis
11:00 Anchorage: the world's third-busiest cargo hub
12:00 Sean Dolan: what's driving Anchorage's growth
13:00 Sean Dolan: the route picture and peak season
14:00 Neel: e-commerce, AI, and the transpacific boom
16:00 Neel: the debt behind the AI cargo boom
18:00 Rates: Neil Wilson, TAC Index
22:00 Seoul and Taiwan: the semiconductor lanes
24:00 Jet fuel: why it's not feeding through yet
29:00 Farnborough: MSC's order and DHL's converted freighter
32:00 Dimerco's shipper survey and ocean volatility
36:00 TIACA: Glyn Hughes hands over to Mammen Tharakan

#AirCargo #Logistics #SupplyChain #Freight #AirCargoUnpacked