Tariffs, Tugs, & Icebreakers: Surviving the Maritime Mess

Episode Transcript
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Blythe Brumleve Milliga (00:42):
Blythe, welcome into another Best of
edition of everything islogistics, a podcast for the
thinkers in freight. I am yourhost, Blythe Milligan, and we
are proudly presented by SPIlogistics. And in this final
part of our best of series, thisis actually part two of the Venn
diagram of your favorite topicsand interviews, plus my favorite

(01:04):
topics and interviews. And it'smy birthday week, so I get to
kind of had the final say onwhat episodes appeared in this
list, because it was a lot tochoose from. I am very lucky
that I get to talk to so manysmart people, and this episode
is no different, because we arestarting off strong talking
about unlocking freight capacityon our inland waterways with the

(01:27):
company open tug, which is superfascinating. I haven't heard
really any other show talk aboutthis, but the country of the
United States has this vastinland waterway system that
starts in the Gulf of America.
Don't hate me, that's the nameof what it's actually called,
but the Gulf of America allthroughout the central part of

(01:48):
the United States, and it allowsfor a tremendous amount of
freight movement through theseinland waterways. And open tug
is the first company that'strying to standardize the
tracking and the booking ofdifferent vessels along the
inland waterways. So reallysuper cool interview with that
gentleman over at open tug. Andthen next on the conversational

(02:12):
list that we have ourconversational whatever the next
step in the episodes that we aregoing to be playing is talking
about the port labor strikes,the tariffs and automation all
within the maritime sector, withmaritime law expert Lauren
biegan. Now she has her ownpodcast, and so she's knee deep

(02:33):
in all of this different typesof news that's affecting the
maritime industry, and this yearwas a lot because, like I said,
Port labor strikes, tariffs likethose. In and of itself, could
be multiple, multiple episodes,but Lauren does a fantastic job
of breaking that down for us inone episode, and then third on

(02:54):
the list of our best of series.
We're bringing gray Sharky backfor one of those segments that
we covered earlier in the year,talking about icebreakers and
these giant ships that are inthe polar regions of the planet,
and their main job is to breakup these frozen ice sheets in

(03:16):
order to allow for other shipsto make safe passage. It's
really cool to watch some ofthese ships and just learn where
the US kind of stands in regardsto the rest of the world when it
comes to icebreakers and howmany we have and how many we
really need. And so we talkabout that in one of our deep
dive sessions, and then finally,in another deep dive session

(03:39):
between Grace and I, we talkabout return logistics in
private labeling, and how thatsort of part of the supply chain
all works. And so these were,you know, some of our other, you
know, favorite episodes, some ofyour favorite episodes. And so I
hope you enjoy this final partof this series. And so as soon

(04:01):
as this is done, we're going toget going and get cracking on
the new episodes for 2026 and sowe can continue bringing you
this best of content. So thanksto all of you for tuning in and
listening along. I will link toall of the other best of
episodes in our show notes, incase you want to, you know, keep
the party going. So thanks forlistening. Cheers to 2025 and

(04:23):
let's kick off 2026 with a bang.
Today, we're talking about oneof the most underrated parts of
the US freight system, theinland waterways. You know, that
12,000 mile network of riversand canals that quietly moves
hundreds of millions of tons ofcargo every year. Yeah, that one
Joining me is Jason Aristides.
He is the CEO of open tug, acompany that's bringing modern

(04:46):
tech, think booking platforms,AI and GPS tracking to the tug
and barge world. Jason's on amission to make marine freight
more accessible, efficient and awhole lot smarter. So we're
going to be diving into how thispart of the supply chain works
and some of those interestingfactoids that surrounds the US
inland waterways system. SoJason, welcome

Unknown (05:08):
to the show. Thank you very much for having me. You
certainly know your barges, andyou know how to introduce them
as well. So yeah, honored to beon here and really looking
forward to diving in deep, butnot too deep, only to the depth
of the Mississippi River. We'renot going blue water today.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan (05:24):
Nice, awesome, awesome little segue
there, because as we before wehit recording, or before I hit
record, we were talking about aprevious episode that friend of
the show, Grace Sharkey and Ihave done an episode on sort of
the underrated modes ofshipping. Bly, and it was tugs.
It was a TUGS and barges, Folchfocus feature, and that was how

(05:44):
we got introduced. Grace Sharkeywas kind enough, you know, to
point you guys out, and we wereable to, you know, sort of
showcase the software live on onthe show. So it was really
interesting. She sent thatepisode over to you guys, over
at open tug, and now we aremaking this conversation happen.
So before we get into sort ofthe software visibility and
inland waterways issues, give usa little or maybe a background

(06:07):
of how you got into thisindustry because you were, you
were explaining how to pronounceyour last name before we hit
record. And so I'd love for youto share that with the audience.

Unknown (06:17):
Yeah, certainly. Well, my road to my river, to getting
into the barging world, isrelatively long. And I, you
know, started growing up inSeattle, and around that time, I
was really focused on, on tryingto build something really great
around helping improve the wayAmerica does business. So my

(06:40):
best friends and myself, who arenow my two co founders, we
started working on trying topredict things that were hard to
predict, one of those beingstocks. We originally started
building like trading algorithmsto try to predict the stock
market, although there was somebigger players in the game, and
we realized it was somewhat of afutile effort, so I started to
shift my focus. And my freshmanyear of college, I got an

(07:01):
opportunity to work at a greatcompany, FOSS maritime, which is
a leading tug and barge companyon the West Coast. And we'd be
moving barges to and fromAlaska, and they would always
come back one way empty. And youknow, across the board, this is
a massive problem, huge numbersof assets. They go on a one way
move, and they always come backempty because there's very

(07:23):
little information systems andvery little technology
connecting parties to theavailability of these assets.
And the CEO of the company saidto me, you should fill, build a
platform that connects cargo tothe empty space in the barges.
It's an open tug. And ultimatelythat put together the idea for

(07:44):
creating open tug. And I went tomy co founders. We couldn't
predict stock, so we thought,hey, we see this huge
opportunity where barges aremoving some of the most
important commodities across theUS, almost in a forgotten mode
of transportation. People aren'tthinking about, Hey, how can we
make this better? Because we canmove cargo 85% more like green

(08:09):
compared to trucking and rail,and significantly cheaper. But
people lack the understanding ofhow to do it efficiently, where
they can find barges. How muchdoes barges cost? And we wanted
to bring that all into asoftware platform. So I worked
on that through college. Westarted building the building
blocks behind it. And once Igraduated, I realized that I had

(08:32):
just fallen in love with thebarge industry, and I was ready
to do whatever it takes to buildthe best platform to help
America leverage barges.

So for barges in particular, what type
of commodities are mostlyshipped using barges?

Unknown (08:47):
So yeah, that's a great question. Barges move all types
of commodities, but specificallyit moves 70% of America's grain
is all moved on barges, a hugeamount of oil, liquid products,
all the chemicals that makegasoline, like Nashville,
Tennessee, 40% of their gasolineis come is shipped by barge. So

(09:09):
all of the heavy products,products that you can't count,

(10:06):
are primarily moved on barges,but you also have barges moving
like military equipment,generators, heavy over the road
like oversized cargo, becausewhen shipping a load that's too
heavy for standard road weight.
You don't need a permit to go bybarge, but you need a permit for
every state you cross via truck.

(10:27):
So anytime people can get stuffon the water, they want to do
it, I would say the largestthing that barges are primarily
not shipping on the inlandwaterways are containers,
although we hope to help changethat one day.

Oh, that's super interesting. I
would just have imagined that.
You know, most of our freightsystem, especially in the US, is
built, you know, whether it's acargo ship, intermodal or by
truck. They're all outfittedfor, you know, a container, but
not necessarily for barges, iswhat you're saying.

Unknown (10:57):
Bar so there are, there has been some grassroot
movements to start shippingbarges full of containers. New
Orleans has invested, like 80billion, I believe, to build
this new container facility atthe mouth of the Mississippi
River, which will effectivelygive it access the river system,
access to a huge volume ofcontainers that need to go
direct all the way from St Paul,Minnesota to Pittsburgh,

(11:20):
Tennessee, Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania to like Missouri,
and that potentially could kickstart a great opportunity to.
Move more containers on barges,because it goes straight through
the heartland and actuallyaligns really well with the
cargo flows. You know, we exportcommodities for the most part,

(11:41):
and those travel south on bargesloaded, and then those same
barges go north, empty, but weimport tons of finished goods,
and those could be moving onthose empty barges at
effectively half the cost oftaking the barge one one way.

And so for maybe folks who are unaware
of shipping through the inlandwaterways, it's mostly the
Mississippi River and its canalsthat are all connected through
sort of the middle of the UnitedStates. And so for a lot of
these commodity flows of whatyou're talking about, you know,
the cargo ship comes into maybethe port in New Orleans, and

(12:22):
they offload there, and then thefreight moves on a barge from
there. Is that? Is that whatyou're I guess the hypothesis,
or that's what is actuallyhappening, yeah.

Unknown (12:31):
So today, I mean, barges are receiving bulk
vessels, like, whether that'sbulk dried cargo or liquid that
comes into, say, the Port ofHouston, and then it might need
to go somewhere inland, such asSt Paul or Nashville. The barge
would go receive cargo directlyfrom the ship. It's effectively

(12:52):
a middle mile, and bring it allthe way inland, or vice versa.
If your farmers loading grain inthe bread basket of America, and
that needs to go over to Europe,it comes down, transloaded into
a ship, and then so forth. Soeffectively, you know, when it
comes to containers, the ideawould be, as those same ships
are unloading in New Orleansonto trucks, like 80 trucks.

(13:15):
Effectively, one barge would beable to carry those. There's
that equivalent of containers,and you can fit up to 40 barges
together, and which would be,you know, the equivalent of
three to 4000 truckloads?

Oh, wow. So what I'm curious, if you
I'm not sure if you know theanswer to this, but as you were
talking, I'm thinking that for alot of maybe the inland
waterways, the the water is muchsmoother. It's much more calmer
than, say, the open ocean. Soare a barge is able to travel in
the open ocean pretty easily, orthose maybe like a different

(13:52):
constructed type barge, right?
You haven't,

Unknown (13:56):
oh, go ahead. Oh, yeah, you would be using a, like an
ocean going vessel. There's asome of them. Some of them are
ocean going barges. You get themcertified to go on the ocean.
And we actually work withseveral companies that are doing
barge transportation to Alaska,Puerto Rico. Those are all an
ocean going barges. And today,those move containers already in

(14:17):
those regions, the inland side,those all say on the inland you
would have to get it certifiedif you wanted to go between
inland and ocean. So most of theinland river barges, they're all
staying on the inland rivers.

That makes sense because, because my
first thought was, why don't whydon't we just build smaller
cargo ships instead of a barge?
But I think a barge would givemuch more flexibility in the
type of freight that you canhaul, instead of just being
reliant on just containers. Isthat an accurate assumption.

Unknown (14:51):
Yeah, that's an accurate assumption, along with
a couple other benefits of thebarge. So barges, they move in
effectively these toes whereyou'll have 40 barges strapped
to one tugboat. And what thatlets you do is effectively move
10 acres worth of cargo with onefour man crew on the boat, and

(15:12):
then you you don't have to haveall that cargo for one person.
You can stop and drop one bargeat a specific terminal and keep
moving up and down the river.
And the barge effectively actsas floating the storage. It's
unmanned as well, so it's asimilar relationship between a
truck and a trailer. If therewas many more trailers attached
to that one truck. So you, ifyou were looking at it from a

(15:35):
trucking standpoint, you haveone trailer or one truck cab
pulling 40 trailers, and then itjust stops, drops them off as it
goes and continues on its route.

And so how does open tug play a role in
this definitely.

Unknown (15:53):
So one of the great things about barges is they're
significant, they're very cheapand cost of effective, but
they're rarely just in time. Andthe reason is, is because
there's lots of unpredictablefactors that occur on rivers. So
we have, and if you want, I canshare a screen and visualize
what that looks like. Let me seeif I can share a screen.

Blythe Brumleve Milli (16:19):
Hopefully you should have the option at
the bottom. There we go.

Unknown (16:21):
Let me, are you able to see my screen?

Let's see. There we go. Perfect.

Unknown (16:27):
So this is a look at the river system. It's. And
barges. While they're very costeffective, there's a lot of
uncon unpredictable things thatoccur. So we have these things
called locks and dams, and youcan see that many times there'll
be delays that occur at thelocks and dams that can

(16:48):
potentially last this one islike 20 hours. So that's a
pretty large delay. In additionto that, you'll see here there's
some flooding going on in theriver system, actually quite a
few floods right now. Here youcan see an overview of the core
inland waterways, MissouriRiver, the Mississippi River,

(17:09):
the Ohio River, Arkansasintercoastal waterways, and all
of these are affected by thingssuch as visibility, water
levels, lock delays. So opentugs goal is to help bring just
in time supply chains to bargetransportation by predicting all

(17:30):
of the conditions that willaffect the barges voyage, and
help ensure that that's knownbefore the shipment occurs, to
enable large companies to set upjust in time supply chains by
barge.

And so for folks who are just listening
and not able to see the screenright now, what we're looking at
is a, you know, a map of theUnited States, but mainly
focused on the inland waterways.
So you think of, you know,Louisiana, the Port of New
Orleans, where this, you know,these commodities are offloaded
and then added to a barge. Andthen what you're showing us now
is different filters on top ofthose inland waterway routes,

(18:04):
which are showing the differentdams that you're talking about,
potential flooding that couldimpact your shipping. And then
also, like, weather patterns, isthat what you were also the
filters on the map of what youwere showing? Yeah.

Unknown (18:19):
So when wind gets too high, like, as in all forms of
transportation, a barge may stopand wait, and that obviously
adds time and money. So one ofthe parts we do is we provide
instant quoting, so we predictthe cost of the trade or the
shipment by barge. And we'reusing all these factors. So if
you think you're shipping todayfor 10 grand, but you don't

(18:43):
realize that, say there's twodays of wind that could add,
let's say, another 20% so we'reusing all these data points to
predict. You know if you want tomove a barge like move it on
this day, because you won't besubjected to these wind delays
and or if you do have to, atleast, you know how much is
probably going to cost with thatin account. So as you can tell

(19:08):
people who are using barges,they're unlocking major value
for their company, becausethey're able to ship it at
almost 70% less price than usinganother mode. But it requires,
like, a high level of knowledgeto know how to use barges.

And what are some of those? Maybe
those little points of you knowa high level of knowledge is
that you know some of the datapoints that we were seeing on
the screen, or maybe

Unknown (19:33):
certain like, data points regarding that you know,
like, how much cargo Are youable to load in the barge when
the water level goes down, it'slike, what if water levels are
low, you can't put as much cargoin the barge. Or if you are
shipping not a specific area,and you don't pay attention to
what lock closures are going tobe, or lock delays, which is

(19:56):
like the dams I was showing you,then you could be subject to
paying a lot more money than youanticipated, if you were unaware
of like, how the locks and thewater levels occur, or if you're
unaware that when visibilitygets below a certain level, the
barge won't move. So all thesedifferent pieces of knowledge go

(20:19):
into figuring out how you canship affordably by barge, and
because a lot of it is justscattered across many different
websites, not even on websitesaltogether, it makes it daunting
for a supply chain manager tosay, hey, I want to start
looking at using barge for ourcompany like they need to come
from the barge industry to adegree, or have a mentor to can

(20:40):
teach them about it. And ourgoal is to, like, democratize
barge by putting everything intoone place where any supply chain
or logistics manager can pick upand instantly know, like, hey,
what does it look like to startleveraging barge in my supply
chain, and have a lot of theanswers.

And so essentially, if you're not in a
rush to ship, or maybe you havea couple of weeks timeline where
you don't have to worry aboutmaybe different weather
patterns, you can prioritize amore cost effective route using
a barge versus othertraditional, you know, sort of
transportation models, like overthe road or, you know,
intermodal. Is that just sort ofthe goal of open tug?

Unknown (21:19):
Yeah, that's definitely the goal of open tug. And even
if you do have time sensitivityaround products, the goal is to
enable you to plan effectively.
So like it can show. Up on time,but you just like, it's the
transit will take longer, ifthat makes sense. It does. It's
like, not a longer transit time,but if you're planning on it to

(21:40):
show up at like, ahead of time,at that end of the transit, it
can still be just in time, andwe want to bring the
predictability, but it does takea large, a longer lead time from
when you get it out the door.

What was crazy about, what you were
you were going through the demo,is that you were talking about
how one tug can have severalbarges, you know, hooked up to
it. Essentially, are most bargesthe same size. Yeah.

Unknown (22:08):
So barges are in a pretty much a common size there.
There's several types. So youcould have basically a hopper
barge, which is generally movinggrain. They're 195 feet long by
roughly 35 feet wide. Carriesabout 1500 tons of cargo, and

(22:33):
most of them will be between 200feet, 195 feet on the inland
side. Then for tank barges,which is for liquid, you have
like three standard sizes,10,000 barrel, 30,000 barrel,
and sometimes 25 on the ocean.
They're all different types ofsizes, and they don't move as
frequently in what they call atow, which is a group of barges

(22:56):
and a boat.

And so would you with open tug in
particular? Are you I noticed inone of the videos prepping for
this conversation that you guyshave GPS trackers that you're
putting on the barges? Is Isthat accurate? Yep.

Unknown (23:12):
So here's an example of one of our GPS devices, or
satellite transmitted. So one ofthe things about barges, like a
trailer or a container, is thatlike they're untracked, but they
move across different boats. Soyou'll have one boat moving a
barge, and then it'll switch offto another boat. So if you're a

(23:33):
shipper of this barge, or eventhe barge owner, you can lose
visibility of it, like you can'tjust track the boat to know
where your barge is, because itprobably it could have gotten
dropped off. And the wholeindustry prior to open tug
traditionally, was trying totrack their barge based on the
boat. Somebody tells them it'son. So one of the things you

(23:55):
want to do is bring people thatreal time visibility of where
their barges are. So we'redeploying tracking devices. It's
really easy to put it on, likewith a magnet, and we actually
work with a network ofcontractors and surveyors who
can place them for us, for ourcustomers, at any of their
facilities. So across the Inlandsystem, we already have people

(24:16):
with our inventory who can goput it on your barge.

Oh, that's super interesting. And so
you're able to provide that,that real time visibility, which
is, I think, you know, lots ofcompanies talk about visibility.
It's mostly on the cargo shipside of things. But for for
trucking, there's unless youhave, you know, sophisticated
tracking, ELD, you know, thingslike that, which some carriers
do, but majority of trucks don'thave any kind of, you know,

(24:40):
visibility, unless the driver isis being tracked. And so for
this, it sounds like it's muchmore efficient. Why do you think
that more companies, or maybemore brokers, or, you know, more
shippers don't use, you know,barge traffic, or barge
shipments. Or, well,

Unknown (24:58):
I mean, it sounds silly, but I believe it's a huge
lack of understanding of whatthe rivers have to offer. I'll
give you an example. So I was ata trade show in Houston, at a
shipping conference, and I wastalking to a major ocean line,
and I asked them, like, do youguys ship containers on barges
ever? And they respond to mewas, you can't send a barge to

(25:19):
Chicago, so No, and I know thatto be false. We're moving barges
to Chicago all the time fromHouston, and we were in Houston
at the time, so there's a largemisunderstanding of, like, where
these rivers can serve, what thedensity of is. There's like
40,000 barges moving at anygiven time on the river system.

(25:40):
And like I mentioned before,most people, they go through
like, supply chain school andthey learn about truck, rail,
ocean. But nobody's talking likepeople just don't really talk
about barges a great deal. They,just as you mentioned, are
quietly moving millions of tonsof cargo, but they're just out

(26:01):
of sight, out of mind, and yeah,historically, I feel like has
been just overlooked, although,I will say, with regard to
containers there, I think one ofthe main reasons that we're not
using tons of barges containerbarges is like there's not as

(26:22):
many terminals on the inlandside set up to handle
containers. So unlike Europe, inEurope, they use barges, and
they barge. Containers allacross Europe, and they have
basically more container readyterminals to load and unload
those along the rivers. But inAmerica, it hasn't come yet.
Like I mentioned, I believe thePort of New Orleans new

(26:44):
container investment might spurthat though. Oh, that's
interesting.

So they're the only port that is
really investing in this.

Unknown (26:51):
Well, there's quite a few more ports, but port in New
Orleans is effectively like thegateway to every part of the
river. So all you really need isNew Orleans to, like, bring the
container volume, and I thinkthe rest will follow.

Now what is, I guess, sort of the
furthest, I guess, maybe east orwest that you can go by barge,
or does it really depend on thewater flows?

Unknown (27:16):
So I am actually starting a a I'm starting an
initiative that I know will takeme years to accomplish, but I'm,
I'm looking to bridgeeffectively, the Snake River
with the Missouri River toenable you to cross the country
via water, to go from Pittsburghto the Pacific Ocean via the

(27:41):
river, it would require a 200mile canal between the Snake
River and the Missouri River,but China made a 1200 mile
canal. So I feel like we mightbe able to do it our mind to it.
But as of right now, you can goas far east as Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, as far north as StPaul, Minnesota, and as as far

(28:05):
west. It depends on which riversyou're looking at, but for the
most part, you can make it allthe way to past Omaha, Nebraska,
Sioux City, Iowa, would be thefurthest west you can go on the
Missouri River right now

and then. That's the I would imagine
for the rest of those terminals.
So that would be ideal spots forthose terminals to start to pop
up, where you can starttransloading some of those
shipments from the barge over toprobably truckload Intermodal
Freight, that kind of thing.
Yeah.

Unknown (28:42):
And, I mean, there are lots of terminals, but they just
don't all have container grains.
Like most of them don't havecontainer cranes. There's like,
tons of terminals, so they justneed to crane. But, you know, if
the volume is there, like,they'll go buy a crane. So I
think that that's kind of whatI'm I'm anticipating as New
Orleans starts to bring in morecontainers, those like that,
will open the doors for theocean lines to start having

(29:05):
those conversations, Hey, howcan you get my product, like,
all the way inland with in bulk,without having to take it off
the water. And they probably,they're more than likely. And
I've spoken to many of theterminals myself, and I know
they want to do it. So it justdepends. It depends, like, can
they find the right shipper forit?

Are?
Do you consider open tug more ofa visibility platform, or, like
a TMS platform, maybe, like a, Idon't know, BMS, like barge
management system. Like, what isthat? What is, I guess, the the
tech stack look like, and who isthe ideal user? Is it a shipper?
Is it a broker, a carrier?

Unknown (29:49):
Yeah, so I would, I would consider us an
optimization and visibilityplatform and automation
platform. Effectively, we workwith both the shippers, the
barge lines, and we work withthird parties involved in the
transaction, because on everybarge shipment, there's many
parties who are involved. Youhave two terminals on either

(30:11):
end, you have a barge line, atugboat company, a shipper and
like an inspector or a surveyor,all of those people, they need
to know when the barge willarrive in order for them to do
the job right. And everybody'ssubject to the weakest link. So
if the terminal doesn't knowthat you're showing up, even if

(30:31):
the inspector was efficient, theshiver was efficient and the
carrier was inefficient. Like,you're still stuck because the
terminal didn't know you werecoming. And that happens a ton
in the barge industry, becausethey're not tracked and people
aren't sharing information. Sowe lose barge days all the time.
Like there's lost barge daysbecause nobody told the terminal

(30:52):
that it was coming, and thebarge shows up, and the terminal
is like there. So part of whatwe're doing on the visibility
side is helping align all thestakeholders and effectively
enable them to amp it up bycreating more barge days, giving
them everybody who needs to knowthe information, the information
and a prediction of when it'llarrive, to create more barge

(31:12):
days, make more barge capacity.
And then on the optimizationside, we're effectively pulling
in all the data about like,water levels, locks, traffic,
helping recommend to shippersand operators, like if you
don't. Ship until tomorrow,you'll save, you know, X $1,000
because you won't be waiting forwind. So that is effectively

(31:35):
more on the optimization side.

Well, that's super interesting,
because I where it is. I guessthat almost sounds like a
routing guide, where you wouldneed to, you know, be included
in a shippers routing guide orin a broker is routing guys, and
then that way, they are makingsure that, depending on the
freight, that they could save abunch of money if they just move
it in a different way, versuswhat they're typically, you

(32:01):
know, using trucks for,

Unknown (32:02):
yeah, and we definitely, we definitely have,
like, route planning, and wealso have built an AI that reads
through all of the emails fromthat people are sending to each
other, and keeps the platformalways up to sync with all the
emails that are happening. Sothey may be scheduling an order
via email and a carrier issending them update via email.

(32:25):
The AI effectively, like reads,it extracts all the events to
help with like auto payment withlike demurrage claims with
general tracking, and then wetry to recommend them a way to
save in that process.

So when it comes to maybe some case
studies or like shippingstories, are there any
interesting case studies thatyou know open tug has
participated in maybe one ofyour customers has that you can
share with us.

Unknown (32:56):
Most of the stuff we do is like pretty much covered
under non disclosures for themost part. But we are working
with some of the largest oil andgas companies in the world and
some of the largest barge linesin in the system and and helping
them optimize their barge supplychains. So what does too much

(33:17):
more specific around like thosecompanies? Sure.

So, so give me, I guess, maybe some
examples of some moreinteresting freight that you've
seen hauled on a barge, maybeduring your previous days, or,
you know, current days?

Unknown (33:32):
Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, people are moving all
types of stuff on barges, likewe've helped folks move entire
trains on a barge down the riversystem, where they're
transloading, like a rail, likea train car, onto a barge and
and taking it all the way downthe rivers. That's, I mean, it's

(33:54):
in Europe, they like the guysdriving the barges there will
have their entire familiesliving on the barge. And I saw a
child's playset on top of an oilbarge, which I don't think that
would pass the mustard forregulation in America, but it's
cool that they do it out there.

Well, that brings up an interesting
thought is, does an open tugexist in, say, Europe or South
America? Or is this really likethis visibility approach into
tugs and barges? Does thatreally only exist within your
company?

Unknown (34:30):
I mean, I would say we are a very unique company
focusing on bringingpredictability to river
transportation. And they don'texist in Europe and South
America yet, but they're aboutto soon.

Yes, well, that's it's interesting.
You say that because Grace,Grace and I have done a show on
South America, South Americanlogistics, and they have the
Amazon River, right? And so fora lot of shipments, they are
hauled into, I think Peru hadjust opened up one of the
biggest mega ports in SouthAmerica. And so they're, they're

(35:06):
transloading all of that freightoff of, you know, the port in
Peru, and then they ship it overto the Amazon River, and then it
they're, you know, barges downin there. They're, they're using
different trucks and alldifferent kinds of methods of
shipments.

Unknown (35:19):
It's really quite incredible. They have a vast
river system, and one that wedefinitely want to help, help
amp up. I think that there's alot of opportunity in the South
American markets. They'restarting to become more and more
prevalent and like the graincommodity world. And I think in
order for them to fullymaximize, like their output for

(35:41):
exports, they need to likemaximize their usage of barges.
And I think barges is one of thereasons that America is the top
exporter of those sevencommodities, because we have
such great access to move hugeamounts of cargo directly from
their source out to port onbarges.

So what does, what does expansion
look like for open tug? What?
What? What's in the future?
Maybe planned that that youcould share with us?

Unknown (36:10):
Certainly so when it comes to to American barge
operations like our goal is toeffectively remove any empty
miles and unused barge days byoptimizing, like I mentioned,
the entire system of all theparties that are involved on the
barge. Transaction, and we want,as part of that, we want to

(36:33):
deploy trackers across everybarge in America. And, you know,
bring visibility to the bargemarket. As we expand there,
we're already in the process ofgetting into Europe, South
America will be next. And oncewe have brought this level to
the the our existingstakeholders, we're going to be

(36:56):
effectively automating the bargelogistics as a whole, so
recommending, once an ordercomes in, which barges are doing
this job for the most efficientprice, and helping orchestrate
which barges provide whatservice.

That's awesome. I mean, logistics has
obviously been around since the,you know, the dawn of humanity,
and so the fact that we havethis incredible system to use
and transport goods allthroughout the world, and no one
has put any kind of visibilitysolution in place until your
company, I think it's reallyfascinating. You know what you
guys are doing, and hopefully,you know, you can get into those

(37:33):
different markets and be able toshare some of that insight and
some of that data, you know,with us all, because it's truly
fascinating how we can trans thecreativity, I think, behind all
of these different shipmentoptions. So anything that you
feel, Jason, that that'simportant to mention that we
haven't already talked about,

Unknown (37:52):
well, I think we've covered a lot of great stuff. I
mean, some of the things thatare also on our roadmap is
helping bring, like, autonomousbarges into the market. So, you
know, barges they like. I thinkmoving them on a boat is great
long term. When you're doing along haul like you can put 40
barges on a boat and move themall together. But once you

(38:13):
actually get within the ports,you need, like these other shift
boats to move the barges around.
And I think bringing autonomousbarges that can shift themselves
will really speed up the entiresystem, because you don't have
to be waiting around for boatsto come and be ready to move you
to the terminal. So an area I'mreally excited about, if you
know any series B investors whowant to help us fund that have

(38:35):
them call me, I'm joking, not somuch. And then, yeah, I think
that was like, one of my finalthoughts, but one I'm really
excited about,

for sure. And then I would imagine,
you know, the unsung heroes thatthe tugboats in all of this, how
does the area? And we didn'teven get to touch on that, but I
would love to hear, you know,sort of a brief overview of how
do tugs play a role in this, oris same tracking software
utilized for those as well?

Unknown (39:04):
Yeah, everything that we're doing for barges is
applicable for the tugs, minusthe tracking devices, because
the tugs themselves have alreadyhave AIS data, but we're
providing the same technology.
They always basically movetogether until the autonomous
barges come into play. But as ofnow, anytime a barge is moving,
it's hopefully because a tug ispushing it and it's not floating

(39:27):
down the river, right? So Iwould say it's pretty much the
same for the tugs as well, for

tugs as well. That's good to know. So
I guess you know one lastquestion, where can folks follow
you? Follow more of your work.
Get in touch with open tug forsome transportation solutions
for their own company.

Unknown (39:48):
Yeah, thanks. I I'm on LinkedIn, and I'm relatively
frequent on LinkedIn. Also wecan be reached anytime via our
website, at open tug.com orpeople can call me directly too,
and I'm happy to talk with them.
Awesome.

Yeah, well, perfect. This was a
fascinating discussion. Thankyou so much for joining us, and
we'll be sure to put all ofthose links in the show notes so
folks can reach out soappreciate what you're doing and
sharing your insight here.

Unknown (40:16):
I really had a great time. Thank you for taking the
time and helping us share thewealth of barges with the world.

Heck yeah. More, more people need to
know about the unsung heroes offreight

Unknown (40:31):
doing the Lord's work there. There we go. Welcome

into another episode of everything is
logistics, a podcast for thethinkers in freight. My name is
Blythe Milligan. We wereactually just talking about this
ahead of time of trying to keepyour new last name straight
anytime you do publicappearances or podcasts or
anything like that. But now thatI got that little, I guess,
almost slip out of the way. Weare proudly presented by SPI

(40:56):
logistics, and we've got a greatepisode for y'all today, because
we are talking with Lord biegan.
She is the founder of themaritime Professor Squall
strategies, and host of by landand sea. And we are going to be
talking about all maritimetopics today, and this is,
frankly, a segment of thelogistics industry that I'm not
the strongest in, and so I lovelearning for people like Lauren.

(41:18):
And so Lauren,

Unknown (41:21):
welcome back to the show. Thank you. So happy to be
here. And you know that's whyI'm here, right to help break
all this down I'm trying tobring to bridge the gap between
surface transport. And oceantransportation, because I'm
still learning the surface side,and I'm learning from you and
all the other voices. And, youknow, that's, that's it. We're
all just working together,trying to get better educated on
what the heck's happening.

It's definitely a lot, because I
wanted to record this showactually, you know, towards, you
know, late 2024 early 2025 justbecause everything that was
going on with the porch strikes,and is there going to be one?
Isn't there going to be one? Or,you know, nobody really knows.
And so we avoided it. But arethere any sort of residual

(42:05):
effects of what has happenedsince the port strike was
avoided in January 2025

Unknown (42:11):
I mean, oh, god, yes.
And no, I we were talking aboutthis. I think I talked about
this with everybody, like theword unprecedented has taken on
a more neutral tone to me thesedays, right? Because, like,
everything is unprecedentedthese days, we are just in once
you hit a series ofunprecedented times, does it

(42:31):
just become the times like, doesit just become normal? So I
think that that's part of what'shappening. So yes, the port
strike was a big deal. We almosthad a port strike, if you
remember, on the west coast justa few years ago, and then we did
have the three day port strikeon the East Coast. I think that
there will just continue to bethe conversation of how much

(42:52):
tech and advancement can we haveat the port to make us efficient
and competitive on the globalstage, paired with the the need
and desire to keep people realpeople working at the ports,
right? I mean, it's anincredibly dangerous job, you
don't just get hurt, you getkilled. And so that's the thing

(43:13):
about working at any port, is ifwe can find tech advances that
help with safety and securityand just ways of making sure
that people don't get hurt,slash killed, that's a good
thing. But on the other hand, atsome point, you have to also be
a business, and you have to makesure that you're still being
competitive on a global stage,because every port is competing

(43:33):
against the other port next tothem, that how can you have that
competitive advantage? And someof it is through Port throughput
and efficiency. Some of that'spaired with labor, and some of
that is alternative advances. Sothat will continue to be the
conversation. And I think thatnow that there's a master
contract in place for the sixyears with some kind of

(43:53):
protections for I think there'slike a group that can review
and, quote unquote, like,approve some of the new tech
advances. There's at least somebuy in from the Labor when tech
starts coming to the ports andwhen that efficiency
conversation starts happening.

And so what were some of those things,
I guess, that were a major hangup, because for folks who, I
guess, to put it in perspective,from what I understand, the
ports are all around thecountry, not this country, but
all around the globe, I shouldsay it's almost eerie that you
can go and see a port andthere's no humans working. It's
all automated for everythingfrom the cranes to the trucks to

(44:33):
everything is automated andreally controlled by people
sitting in almost like a roomfull of video game controllers,
and they're just operating theport that way, versus an
American port where there'sprobably 1000s of workers
everywhere. And to your point,you know, sometimes very
dangerous situations. Are portworkers wanting to work in those

(44:55):
dangerous situations, or is thata situation where they would
want to have, you know,automation, takeover or
technology come in and help ordo they maybe get more money if
they work in those dangerousjobs? Like, what? What is the
incentive of, I guess, keepingsome of this tech out? Yeah, I
mean, so

Unknown (45:12):
I think there's two points that I want. That I want
to bring on. This one is fullyautomated. We right. We have
long beach container terminalout in Long Beach, so that is
pretty close to that's veryautomated port. And then we also
have another one, I believe it'sin Virginia. But in general,
across the world, we only haveabout 7% that are fully, fully,
fully automated. So we don'thave people, you know, it's a

(45:34):
little bit of a misnomer tothink that everywhere else is
fully automated, and we're not,because, for the most part,
right? 93% then the other sideof that would be, are not fully
automated. But then I think youalso start to talk about there's
probably a generational split,and maybe it's a split right
around covid pandemic, of thosewho want butts in seats, right

(45:58):
or like, want to be in person,seven to three, you know, it
matters if you show up. And thenwe kind of have this new
generation of people who wantthe flexibility and the work
from home and the, you know,they doesn't have to always be
in incredibly dangerouspositions, and there's a
camaraderie that you lose withthat. Sure, I totally agree. I
teach organizational behavior asone of my classes at

(46:19):
Massachusetts maritime Academy'smaster's program, and that's one
of the biggest things that comesup, is, what do you lose from
not being in person? Becausesome of these students that are
coming out have never had an inperson job. They've. Only had
internships that were virtual,or they've only had, now
entering the workforce, realjobs that they're still entirely
virtual. So like they may neverknow that camaraderie. And I

(46:41):
think it looks like we're havinga shift back towards in person,
right? We're five years postpandemic, or five years since
pandemic started, almost to theday. Oh, that's a little eerie,
right? I think it was Friday the13th that that New England shut
down, so right

around St Patrick's Day, we're
recording this on on March 11.
So yeah, almost five

Unknown (47:00):
years wild, but, but I think that we have a little bit
of a generational divide onpeople want a little bit more
flexibility, if it's possible,and so remote control might be
that that, like, kind of that,like, break in the chasm of of
trying to figure out, how do youin an otherwise have to be there
in person position? How do youfind a way to have a little bit

(47:22):
more flexibility? I think that'sgoing to be balanced with just
general workforce and generallabor practices that are
happening across the board. Arewe going to continue to push for
work, for work from home, or arewe going to move more toward
everybody's in the office as adefault? I think it's going to
be a balance, right?
Everything's going to be apendulum swing for a while. But
that being said, the newgeneration might not be, and I

(47:43):
don't know this for sure, butthey there might be an
opportunity where they see somebenefit to some of this tech
advancement, so that they canhave the flexibility, you know,
that otherwise wasn't there. Youhad to be there in person,
steering that wheel, perhapsnow, like you're saying, you
could be on a remote control,you know, and working from home,
at least in, like, a few of thejobs. And I don't know if that's

(48:03):
you know, that certainly wasn'tthe message coming out. But
there's something to be saidabout a generational divide.

So it's a generational divide
that's going on with a lot ofthe workers. What is sort of,
can you give us a sense of,maybe, and I don't know if you
know this, but maybe, like, theaverage age of a port worker,
because, like in trucking, it'sthat big debate that goes on
between, like, younger driversand trying to get younger
drivers to even be interested intruck driving as a profession.
But the average age of a truckdriver is like 56 years old. Are

(48:32):
we seeing some of those same Iguess discrepancies in age range
for port workers too.

Unknown (48:38):
You know, I think that we have similar I think it's a
parallel industry where you tendto have an aging workforce. We
certainly see that a maritimegenerally across the board. So I
can only imagine that it'sequally true for port workers.
But, I mean, I think that youstill have a large desire for
port orders, to enter the portfield and to enter the maritime

(48:59):
workforce, because I think thatthere's this sense of adventure
and kind of, you know, maybe thedanger is a little appealing
too, right? I mean, I can't sayit enough. It is incredibly
dangerous job. I mean, thesegiant boxes, whether they're
empty or filled, if they fall onyou like that, that's it, right?
And I have many, many friendswho have said, the first day
they started on the job,somebody died, or, you know,

(49:22):
just, it's wild, how? Andperhaps that, security, safety,
advances that have happened inthe past, you know, 2030, years,
have helped alleviate some ofthat, but it's still, I think
there's still this kind ofadventure. You're outdoors right
there. There's kind of all thosegood things that are associated
with some of those more have tobe in person positions. I think

(49:44):
that we still see a desire towork in the industry. But, yeah,
I think, I think that that'sacross the board. We're having
trouble filling all roles,right, with the younger
generation.

So where we talked a little bit
about, you know, sort of thetechnology aspect of, you know,
I guess the dispute between portworkers in, in, whoever they
were, whoever they arenegotiating with,

Unknown (50:06):
yeah, so it's the employers, so the, yeah, yep. So
basically, that's kind of howyou generally capture it us.
Maritime Alliance was the EastCoast. Pacific maritime
association was the west coast.
But you basically, kind of saythe workforce versus the
employers.

And then how did those, how did
those two associations? BecauseI heard you say on another
interview, and I know I'm kindof jumping around here a little
bit, but it just popped into myhead that there's something like
200 maritime associations withinthe maritime industry.

Unknown (50:33):
Oh, like, what kind of associations? Do you mean, like,
all

Blythe Brumleve Milli (50:36):
different kinds of associations. So you
just mentioned, like, the EastCoast and the West Coast. But I
imagine some of the otherassociations maybe aren't as
powerful as those two, and theyjust exist to, you know, sort of
be an informational resource ora networking resource, yeah?

Unknown (50:51):
So those associations, so yeah, the US maritime
Alliance, or Pacific maritimeAssociation, those are kind of
associations or alliances of ofthe employers themselves. So,
you know, that's how they'rethey're kind of the
counterbalance. But similar tosurface transport, there's
associations for all sorts ofsubcategories within the
maritime industry, right? Imean, we have ports

(51:12):
associations, we have regionalports associations. We have
commodity based associations andcouncils, right? I mean, any
just similar right to to maybetrucking associations that might
be regional or national. So youcertainly have that on the
maritime side. And I think thatit's important to have that,
because sometimes you have. Arebroad brush stroke things that

(51:32):
are happening, which is kind oftaking it a little bit away from
the US maritime Allianceconversation, but more into like
the value of associations basedon commodity or similar
workforce, because there'sissues that come up that, you
know, sometimes it takes alarger collective. I mean, you
have to be very careful, though,because at some point that turns
into collusion, that turns intomonopolistic behavior, if you

(51:55):
start to get that competitiveadvantage because you're sharing
trade secrets or some of thatconfidential business
information, not legal advice,but just be very careful, but
that, but that's where you knowthe associations do well,
because they can take some ofthose trends that are happening
across the industry, maritime,or wherever, whatever subset,
and raise those as larger issuesthat should be addressed.

And so, were there any, I guess,
permanent changes that happenedafter the negotiations outside
of technology and, you know,just, you know, maybe allowing
those that those advancements ona case by case basis. Was there
anything else that came out ofthe negotiations that now affect
the industry today?

Unknown (52:35):
I mean, the increased wages is going to have, you
know, it was. It was a veryvaluable thing for the
workforce. They haven't had anincrease in the past six years,
right? Because every thesemaster contracts are negotiated
over six years, so the theincreases are built in, but
they're kind of stagnant withinthe contract. So certainly
salary increases is good for theimmediate workforce. But then

(52:56):
also that means that that portand that workforce now is a
little bit more expensive, andso that does impact the rest of
the industry of Okay, now wehave to kind of absorb that. So
whether that's the oceancarriers or the terminals, or
even the shippers and the bcos,the Chicago owners actually
moving the goods anytime,anywhere, as you know, right in
the supply chain ecosystem,anytime anywhere, gets a little

(53:18):
bit more expensive, then thatcan have a knock on effect, and
it gets shared around. We'reprobably seeing it similarly
with with some of the tariffscares and some of the actual
tariffs going into place.

Well, speaking of tariffs, I mean,
that's a good segue into thenext question I wanted to talk
about, because you just got backfrom TPM, and TPM is from what
I've never been but I've alwaysheard that this is one of the
best conferences to go to. Youknow, we were talking before we
hit record on on all of yourvideos that you posted from it
looks like a super fun event. Sofor folks who don't know what

(53:49):
TPM is, can you kind of give usan overview, and then what your
your first time experience waslike,

Unknown (53:54):
yeah, so Trans Pacific maritime is what the the
conference is called, but TPM,everyone just calls it TPM. It's
a conference of Joc or SMPglobal. So it's an S and P
Global tends to be kind of moreshipper focused, but it's
basically all ocean shippingrelated issues. So there's some

(54:14):
surface transport, but it reallystays focused on the ocean
shipping side of things. Thisconference is so good. I'm
telling you, like, thisconference was top life
experience. While I was there, Ikept saying, this is ocean
shipping nerd camp. I never wantto leave toward the end of the
week. You know, like when youwere a kid and you were kind of
like, Oh man, I've had so muchfun at this like, sleep. This,
like, sleepway camp. That's howI felt. And I was like,

(54:36):
lamenting that it was coming toan end, and then, you know, you
kind of have like, one or twolast events. And there was a co
hosted event by the Port of LAand the dcsa Digital container
shipping Association. And itkind of felt like that last
lunch that your mom lets you goto with all of your friends from
camp and, like, it's, it's like,the best lunch. That's kind of
how that last event felt, thatit just was the best, the

(55:00):
overall best experience. I'lltell you that I got years worth
of networking done within a fewdays. That's how amazing this
conference has become. I'veheard that it's always been
amazing, but every year it getsa little bit more impactful and
really kind of dynamic, I guessis as terrible as that word is,
but it really, I mean, like thetruest sense of that word, this

(55:20):
is such an all encompassingeverybody in the industry of
ocean shipping is there, and ifthey're not, they're staying
closely engaged on LinkedIn tokind of create the illusion that
they're still there. I have somany special LinkedIn friends,
is what I was calling them, thatI was finally meeting in person,
that, you know, I had closerelationships with some of these

(55:42):
people, and I just never metthem in person. And so it was,
it was almost like, Oh, I didn'trealize they were so tall, you
know, like, because I just nevermet them, I didn't know how tall
they were.

So Steve Herrera, shout out to him.
Yeah,

Unknown (55:56):
I didn't know he was super tall, but I, but I've kept
in touch with him for the pastfour or five years. Like, I feel
like we're special, LinkedIn,friends. Yeah, it was, it was, I
mean, like, I'm not even beingoverly boastful. I am not a paid
advertiser. Like, that's justtruly my experience. It was
phenomenal.

That's it. So is it just, I don't want
to say just the US community,but it feels like it's more of a
global community, because I echoyour statements every time I
leave manifest. And like I'mwalking out of the last session,
I feel kind of sad, because it'slike all the signage and all of
the other thing you're justwalking out and you're seeing it
for the last. Last time, andit's like, oh, you have so many
good memories. So I imagine thatthat experience is the same at

(56:36):
TPM. And is it more of like aglobal audience, or is it mostly
US based,

Unknown (56:41):
yeah, global. I mean, we had, you know, some of the
ocean carriers CEOs were therein person, giving presentations
on panels. I mean, we had storeand talk to while all these, all
this tariff news, and all thisocean shipping and shipbuilding,
right? We have the joint sessionpresent speaker speaking to
Congress. When Trump went andspoke to Congress, that happened

(57:01):
in the middle of TPM that, like,the very next day, everybody was
like, did you hear there's anoffice of shipbuilding going to
be stood up? And everyone'slike, this is the most maritimes
ever been in a you know, addressto Congress, like, you know,
just like nerding out on thelittle things that. Like, had
you been back at your own house?
Like your kids, your parents,you're like your husband, wives,
they don't want to hear aboutthat. Like, they're like, oh,
cool, the ship building.

Let's talk about some of those, I
guess, bigger topics that youexperience or were discussing
with other people, Office ofshipbuilding. What exactly is
that going to be? Because I sawthe announcement too. Friend of
the show, Sal marcogliano, wasvery excited. John Conrad, of
course, as well, big movers, andI guess online with facilitating
that discussion to the forefrontof people. And so it's cool to

(57:47):
hear that it was just asexciting for the folks at TPM.
So what is the office ofshipbuilding?

Unknown (57:52):
Yeah, so it's still being stood up, so it's kind of
a little bit amorphous now onwhat it's ultimately going to
be, but, and there are peopleyou know, being stood up in the
office, but until it kind ofgets its like formal
announcement and formal here'sour mission. It's hard to
totally say, but how, I mean,the thing about maritime
shipbuilding in the US is wehave fallen so far off the map

(58:15):
on kind of a competitive playerof us built ships that we are
down to, I want to say we havemaybe 60 or less ships that are
us, flagged us, like, you know,us, built or manned, or any of
that. So, you know, we get tothis point where it's very much
like, if we don't have ships,we're not prepared. And it used

(58:39):
to be, if you ruled the seas,you ruled the world, right? And
that was kind of like all theseNetherlands at one point. They
ruled the seas because theyruled or they ruled the world
because they ruled the seas. Wejust don't have the capacity. We
do have ship building, it'sstill happening, but that's
something that we just don'thave the capacity anymore to
turn vessels around and reallyget them out there. And so

(59:01):
that's not even just from amilitary perspective, but that's
kind of the part that's beenattached to why maritime
security is national security.
Because if we don't have vesselsto either, we're still creating
and building naval vessels, andso that's happening, but we need
vessels to support that. Andthat's where you build into sea
lift operation sealedcapabilities, which is basically
the support vessels that go outand help the military vessels

(59:24):
that are out there. And so if wedon't have our own vessels to go
out and do that, then you know,we're at a at a military
competitive disadvantage. Butthen that's not even speaking
about the commercial side. Imean, the US flag fleet, we
talked about all the oceancarriers, and they have, and I
think, unfairly, been clumpedinto these foreign bad guys,
right? I mean, they're, they're,they're the only ones out there,

(59:47):
and we don't have a US presencein in a significant way for this
kind of commercial fleet. Soeverybody, of course, is going
to be a foreign guide us.
Wouldn't it be wild? And I thinkthat's part of the directive
here, is if we became not onlylike a competitor again, but
like a competitive competitor,where we had US flag vessels and

(01:00:09):
now all those foreign oceanshipping companies. Maybe it's
just all the ocean shippingcompanies in the US is one of
them, right, like so then youget, you kind of control, a
little bit of the messaginghere. And I say, I don't think
that the ocean carriers arenecessarily the bad guy. I think
there's been differences ofopinion on how, you know,
charges and surcharges andthings like that, and it's being

(01:00:30):
worked out, right? That's partof what the FMC is working
through, is making sure thatsurcharges are appropriately
assessed in a way that everybodykind of understands is the
appropriate way, right? There'sa little bit of incentive
principle and like making surethat it's for the fluidity of
the movement of the goods. Butyou could almost distill it down
that some of the disagreementsover the years have been just

(01:00:52):
differences of interpretation.
Should it be for lost business?
Should it be for, you know, ifthey still need the box, or they
still need the equipment moved,you know, if it's sitting there
with somebody else's goods init, is that a competitive
disadvantage for that oceancarrier who's trying to, you
know, continue to get businessand continue to move stuff? So,
you know, I've kind of seguedinto a little bit of the side

(01:01:14):
here, but, you know, that'swhere the alliances are
important, because they reallyare a way to monitor the
movement and creation of theocean shipments and the ocean
carriers in a way that we cansee. Because the alternative is
then they all start buying eachother up, and then that's
mergers and acquisitions. Thenyou really do have monopolistic
behavior. So But getting back toit, us being a competitive

(01:01:36):
player in that field, like weused to be, and we used to have
sea land, APL, you know, we havea certain a couple of others
that are that are in the world,but we just need more vessels.
And so where do you start? Isship building. We also need more
vessels to train more mariners,because we have a significant,
severe Mariner shortage rightnow, and but you can't really

(01:01:56):
train the the mariners unlessyou have the ships. You can't
really have the ships unless youhave the mariners. So it's kind
of a, often said, a chicken andegg problem. So just the fact
that we're taking steps forwardwith the we will have ship
building as a priority of thisWhite House is, I mean, mind
blowing, because maritime hasrarely been talked about. I
remember when Biden, under oneof his congressional addresses,

(01:02:19):
said, you know, the oceancarriers. And this is probably
why I was talking about oceancarriers so much. He said, I
want to bop in the nose. Andeverybody was like, I don't even
care what he said. He mentionedmaritime like, This is so
amazing. And so, you know, thatwas wild, and that was kind of
like a negative connotation.
Here we are moving, you know, acouple years forward, and we
have, like, something that we'rebuilding, something that we're

(01:02:41):
creating. You know, how it'sgoing to happen, all of that
still kind of being worked out,but just the intention of we
will be a shipbuilding nation.
Again, it's wild. I love it. Imean, anytime that you are
pumping money into maritime, andfor us, fleet is going to be
something that will will, in myopinion, bring dividends back to

(01:03:02):
the country.

Blythe Brumleve Milligan (01:03:03):
And that's such a great point to
bring up, especially among therelationships, because it's
completely opposite of what sortof trucking is in the US, where
there are so it's, I think it's93% of the carriers in this
country have seven trucks orless. And so it's very few
companies that control a lot ofthe trucks on the road, where

(01:03:24):
it's the inverse, on ocean, onthe ocean carrier side, where
it's a handful of companies thatcontrol all of the ships. And so
I'm curious, Why would, whywould the United States ever
like, I guess, look away fromthat strategic advantage? Why
did they let the time programand ship building kind of fall
to the wayside over the last, Iguess, few decades? Yeah.

Unknown (01:03:46):
I mean, there's a lot of different reasons, but I
would say part of it is it wascheaper labor, less stringent
workforce requirements, right? Imean, there was probably some,
some bottom line decisions beingmade around there, and there's
other reasons too, but, I mean,that was part of it as everybody
was moving toward this, like,cheaper, faster, you know,

(01:04:08):
model. Part of that becameoffshoring, and then moving it
faster and cheaper, and it justkind of all snowballed into it
became more expensive to have,you know, good paying jobs, or
American, you know, Americanlevels of wages, American levels
of workers. And you know, that'swhere the Jones Act sometimes

(01:04:31):
comes into the conversation ofwhere it's it falls on both
sides, right? I think there'sarguments against it, there's
arguments for it, but reallywhat it does is it ensures that
we have this American workforceon American vessels. But in
order for the Jones Act toreally be successful, you have
to also fund it. You have toalso have the industry funded
behind it. And so as fundingkind of dried up for

(01:04:54):
shipbuilding programs, and, youknow, kind of that long term
viability, I think that theJones Act kind of suffered
through that. But, and, youknow, I think that we're going
to see, we're going to see thiscontinue to move forward. And I
think that the shipbuildinginitiative is, is really such a
significant and successful stepone. The only

thing that worries me, I guess, about
it, though, is that is this justgoing to be a priority for four
years, and is the nextadministration going to come in
and, you know, completely guttedagain, because it takes a while
to build these ships, right?

Unknown (01:05:26):
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, we're not going to have
100 vessels in four years,right? So, but then having CMA
CGM come out the other day andsay that they're investing $20
billion through kind ofdifferent initiatives of
investing in the US flag fleetand shipbuilding and kind of
different areas that is moneythat they're not soon going to
be turning away from in fouryears, right? So I think that

(01:05:47):
there's, it's It's everybody'slike, Why is everything moving
so quickly. And I think, to me,that's part of the the theme,
right? I see, when we changeadministrations, you know, I try
not to get too worked up about,okay, what is the change?
Because, look, it's theadministration like we're moving
forward. Let's, let's see what'sgoing on. When we switched from
to Biden last administration, itwas okay, so what's the new

(01:06:09):
theme that's happening here? Itwas going to be diversity. It
was going to be environment.
We're environment. Now we'reswitching over to Trump. And
okay, what's the new theme here?
What's going to be appealing,kind of, what's the theme that
you want to tag on to seems likeit's if it makes business sense,
it makes overall sense to him,right? Like creating the
business case, and that USAfirst seemed to be the kind of
two major themes that I'mseeing. And so. Bringing it back

(01:06:31):
around. I think that that's partof it is, okay. So CMA CGM is,
is investing $20 billion intothis USA I don't want to say USA
first, because they're, they'rea foreign company, but like this
USA initiative, and so ifthere's going to be a further
increase in the USA flag fleet,now they're part of it, right?

(01:06:51):
And now they can continue to bepart of it. And so I don't think
we're going to end the at theend of this four years. I don't
think we're going to end at this60 vessels only. I think we'll
have kind of sufficientcontracts in place so that those
vessels, once they're built,have a place to go, have things
to do, and have kind of a smartbusiness case associated with

(01:07:13):
them so that they can sustain

and who is this company, I guess,
what country are they from?

Unknown (01:07:20):
Yep, CG CMA, CGM.
They're out of France. Sothey're out of Marseille. Yeah,
so there's a few different,yeah, like, MSC is Swiss. Yeah,
there's, there's a fewdifferent. If you look at these
ocean carriers, I mean, they're,yeah, they're Costcos from
China. They're, they're kind ofassociated with with countries.
They're not only that country,right? But, you know, I mean,
but wouldn't that be wild if theUS can now be like, Oh well, you

(01:07:41):
know, I don't know if we'regoing to continue to call it sea
land, because sea land actuallygot bought by Mayor square back
when, but maybe we'll kind ofcome around to like, I mean,
let's be silly here. Maybe it'sthe the Gold Group. I feel like
everything Trump's creating islike gold. So maybe it'll be
like the gold fleet. Oh, they'rebased in the US, you know, like,

(01:08:02):
red, white and blue fleet. Or,you know, something red, white
and blue fleet, yeah, but, Imean, but that's it. Like, it
we've gotten so far away fromthat. And I think that's why Sal
really kind of digs in on this.
Is like he even said it theother day. It's been outside of
his lifetime that we've been acompetitive force in
shipbuilding or just sailing onhigh seas. And so to be able to

(01:08:23):
get back to that just creates somany more opportunities. And
when things go real wild in theindustry, you can still, I mean,
you have to be careful, becauseyou're not going to the FMC is
flag neutral. So that'simportant to note. So the
federal Maritime Commission thatI often talk about, who's really
kind of the competitionauthority for ocean shipping,
they're flag neutral. So evenflag neutral to us, flag they're

(01:08:44):
just looking for competitionthings. And so they are for the
promotion, or they're for thebenefit of the US, importer,
exporter and consumer. So that'sreally who they're focused on,
who they're trying to protect,but that's flag neutral. So, you
know, I just say that because Ithink that we still need to,
even if the US were to becomebecome a competitive player in

(01:09:04):
this field, it wouldn't be ableto now all of a sudden, be like,
Oh, rates are high. We're onlytaking us cargo and we're going
to just protect our like youstill have to be careful there.

And so if you if everything goes to
plan, and I guess tentativelyright now, what is a realistic
expectation of how many ships wecould see from this
administration at the end ofyear four?

Unknown (01:09:28):
Hard to say, because I also, I'm waiting for,
potentially, a conversationabout tech advances, because
I've also heard that he doesn'tjust want paperweight vessels,
right? Like he doesn't justwant, like the big steel hold. I
think that there's a push forresearch and development for
tech advanced vessels, so thatit's kind of like the coolest

(01:09:48):
ships out there. And obviouslythose are going to be more
expensive and take more time,but maybe they won't, right,
like, maybe there's somethingthat we're not even really
talking about on a larger scalethat could make this faster. I I
don't know, right? I don't know.
I mean, he's got some big technames associated with him these
days, and they make things. Imean, Elon makes spaceships. So,
you know, a spaceship layingdown is kind of like a vessel in

(01:10:11):
water. I I don't know, but Imean all that to say I wouldn't
be surprised if we heard somesome announcements or something
along the lines of, like, there,there's also, as we're doing the
ship building, we're going torecreating some of the regular
vessels that we've come to knowand love. But then there might
also be some advanced vesselsthat I don't know, I don't know.

Blythe Brumleve Milli (01:10:36):
Hopefully it's a good variety, you know,
of the big vessels the smallervessels you know, to be able to
compete with all the differentports, because not every port
can take you know, some of thegiant vessels that you know have
been created in the last coupleof years, but, but then some of
them are, you know, cater tosmaller ships. I think we, we
saw a lot of that during, youknow, just that all the shipping
drama that's happened in thelast like five years,

Unknown (01:10:58):
yeah, well, and that was part of the diversification
of entry, right? And being ableto go to, instead of just
shipping all of your goods outof the largest ports in the
country, going and finding someof the smaller to medium port
size ports, so that way, you cancontrol a little bit of that
backlog, if there's, if there'scongestion, or, you know, they
may be those smaller or mediumports might be less likely to

(01:11:18):
feel the congestion when it hitsbig time. You know, the other
thing that this administrationkeeps talking about is
icebreakers, and I know that youand Grace are particularly,
particularly. Interested in theice breaking. Actually, I am
too. I used to work a little biton extended continental shelf
project of the Arctic, and thatis something that we desperately

(01:11:39):
need, right? Because there'sonly the two icebreakers, large
icebreakers, and really one, andshe's often in and out of dry
dock getting fixed up anyway, solike, we have a desperate need
for icebreaking and shipbuilding in the icebreaking
category. And I don't think thathe said specifically. I maybe he
said 30 very large icebreakers.
It was, it was a little bit ofkind of a general statement.

(01:12:02):
But, yeah, I know that there'san intention for icebreaking
capability as well.

Well, you, because you worked on, I
think mapping like the Arcticshipping lanes, is that? Am I
getting that right?

Unknown (01:12:14):
No, yeah, that's yeah.
So it wasn't the shipping lanes,but it was so I actually teach
law of the sea at Roger WilliamsSchool of Law. So that's partly
why the maritime professor camein, because I'm, like, teaching
all these courses anyways. Butyeah, I used to work on the US
extended continental shelfproject, and so it was a
contracted position, but whatthat position was, was looking
at the underwater. So like, youhave the water, and you have the

(01:12:35):
land, and then you have thecontinent, basically dips under,
and that's where the sand is,and then it keeps going out, and
then at a certain point, itdives even further out, and
that's the extent. So you gotthe continental shelf, and then
beyond that, it's the extendedcontinental shelf, and there's
some numbers associated with howfar out, 200 nautical miles, and
then up to 350 nautical miles,but like, really far offshore.

(01:12:58):
But in those areas, that's wherethey're finding manganese
nodules, that's where they'refinding diamonds. In some
respect, that's where they'refinding some of those,
potentially oil and gasdeposits, all sorts of things
that we don't even know what'sout there. But that was part of
the project was kind of mappingwhat we have, the hydrography,
the geological sediment that'sunder there, kind of making the

(01:13:19):
case for how far out. And itwasn't just in the Arctic. It
was basically anywhere we have acontinental shelf. So us, East
Coast, West Coast. I mean,everywhere, Hawaii, so yeah. So
it was, but it was the Arcticthat was, like, I was
particularly interested in, butso, yeah, I got to know kind of
the the the world of Arctic andicebreaking and the need for it.

(01:13:40):
Oh, my God. And that was 1015,years ago, and I'm like, we
still need to be having theseconversations, right? Like we
still need these icebreakers,like we needed them yesterday,
but also today.

And that's because, I guess, for
folks who may not understand, alot of the Arctic ISIS melting,
so it's opening up new tradelanes that could drastically
reduce the shipping time from,especially from East Asia and
Russia over to the United Statesand vice versa. Do I have that
kind of, right?

Unknown (01:14:12):
Yeah, but the trouble is, there isn't a lot of search
and rescue operations that areavailable up there. But then
also, you know, if, if you havean oil spill, it's a different
salinity, it's a differentdensity. You know, just the
environment that you're in upthere is a lot harsher. So the
commercial viability of newshipping routes is probably not

(01:14:34):
quite there yet, mostly becauseI think you have to really be
careful of, like, Well, whathappens if, and you know,
anywhere, right? You don't wantoil to go anywhere, but it's
they kind of has thisconnotation of pristine up in
the Arctic, right? And so youdon't necessarily want that's
just a concern. But then also, Imean, if you get stuck right,
like, if, if something happens,there's not a lot of options for

(01:14:56):
being able to just, kind of,like helicopter you in and out,
like medi vacuum. So that'salso, it's, it's incredibly
dangerous without the supportthat you might need. So there
are, I've been hearing of,there's here, and there cruise
ships that are going through,but I think they're kind of on a
limited basis, and there'sinterest in it certainly,

(01:15:18):
because it would cut down time.
But I don't know, I don't knowthe viability of, like tomorrow,
all of this just switching over,but it's certainly something
that people are looking at,

and especially from the, I guess,
the Greenland aspect, to whichobviously, we were recording
this in the middle of March. Sowho knows, you know what, what
has happened by the time thatyou listen to this? But there's
also the, I guess, the Greenlandargument too, that kind of ties
into, you know, the Arcticshipping lanes, and wanting to
secure those natural resources,and, I guess, more solid land.

(01:15:48):
Because, to your point, ifsomething does happen in the
Arctic, you can't get a truck upthere because the roads are,
roads are too sloshy, and thenthe closest thing that you can
get is another ship. And if youdon't have any icebreakers, and
you're stuck in the ice, like,what are you going to do? So
it's kind of this, you know, Iguess, combination of a bunch of
different terrible things thatcould go on. But hey, there's,
there's tourists that are payinga lot of money, you know, to, I

(01:16:11):
guess, to go on one of theseicebreakers and to get off and
kind of walk on the ice for alittle bit.

Unknown (01:16:16):
Yeah, yeah. They call it the God was it's something
like the polar bear walk, orsomething like to be able to get
out, yeah? I mean, that's thething is. So, you know, the
Greenland conversation is sointeresting, because when that
was first. Presented, maybe alot of people thought about
Greenland, is maybe this, like,Okay, what do we need about
Greenland, right? There's nomajor cities. Like, what are we

(01:16:38):
talking about Greenland for?
Because of my, I guess, exposureto the Arctic and the vastness
of the of the resources. I mean,my instant thought was, oh, my
God. Like, that's, I mean, ifthat happens, that's wild, like
there's so much opportunity andavailability. I'm not getting
into the geopolitics, right?
Like, I don't you know thatthat's for everybody else to

(01:16:59):
figure out whether Greenlandwants to or doesn't want to, and
you know, all all of that kindof how that politically works
out. But just from a land massperspective, there is so much
that Greenland has available toit in natural resources, and
there's, like, politicalpositioning and all of that.
But, I mean, like, we're sayinganything that's up in the Arctic

(01:17:21):
is really kind of this untappedresource, and I think it feels
like we're moving closer andcloser to the Arctic becoming
more of a central playing zonethan we ever had in the past. I
mean, it's still permafrost,right? I mean, it's still going
to be significantly ice laden.
But wouldn't you rather have allthe preparations made, right?
Like going back to theicebreaker conversation,

(01:17:43):
wouldn't you rather have allthose kind of pieces laid out in
advance before we need them? AndI think that's part of the
conversation for whyShipbuilding is so important in
general, right? If we ever needmore vessels across the world,
that might be something that,let's make sure that we have
those vessels now and they'reready to go, then when we need
them, and they take, you know,couple years, five to 10 years,

(01:18:05):
to get the fleet going. So yeah,I mean, all of this is, it's
just so exciting to havemaritime in so many large
conversations. And I'll tellyou, I have not talked about
maritime more with my familythan I have in the past year or
so. It's making national news,which it never used to do that
before. I mean, even the porchstrike, it took until one or two

(01:18:27):
days before the actual strike,and everybody in the industry
was like, Oh, my God, I think, Ithink we're going to have a
strike on the first time.

Yeah, I think it was like, even, like,
a poly market bet as well, whereyou could bet on if the port
workers were going to strike ornot. And so I think a lot of
people lost money if they votedin favor of a strike. But I mean
that, you know, teach their ownso we Okay. So we've talked
about, we talked about TPM.
We've talked about Greenland. Wetalked about ship building, um,
icebreakers, uh, for the fifth,I guess, sort of, um,

(01:18:58):
complicated topic. Let's talkabout tariffs. Who knows what's
going to happen by the time thatyou actually like listen to this
conversation, the tariffs arevery much like, on and off
again, versus Canada versus theMexico versus the rest of the
world. How are you helping? Iguess maybe your clients
navigate some of these, justconfusion and just Yeah, I think

(01:19:20):
confusion is probably the best

Unknown (01:19:25):
word for it, yeah. I mean, right now is a very sticky
time. Right there's a lot goingon, and I think there's a lot of
political posturing that'shappening from tariffs. And I
think that we're seeing thatplay out, right? I mean, one day
we have tariffs, the next day,you know, there's been a new
political positioning taken fromthe administration because of
the tariffs. So, you know,getting into the actual
specifics of what's good andwhat's bad, I tend not to do

(01:19:47):
that, what I do. And I think Ikind of mentioned this when
administrations come in, Ialways kind of advise my clients
to look for the themes, right.
Look for the themes. And insteadof pushing against what's
happening, find opportunitieswith those new themes. And so,
like I said, it was, it waspreviously, it was environment,
it was diversity. Was very muchthe theme of how you can, you
know, kind of create businessopportunities under the Biden

(01:20:11):
administration. Now the businessopportunities are going to be
coming in the form of makingbusiness cases, right, like
running things true tobusinesses, running the what
we're seeing it looks like isthe United States being turned
into a business and kind ofrunning it so that it no longer
runs at a deficit. And so, youknow, the argument is, okay, so
the tariffs are going to bedoing that. I'm not saying

(01:20:32):
whether that's good or bad, theright decision or not, but what
I'm advising my clients is tryto find those themes and try to
find ways to parallel with them,because you'll find less
resistance. You'll find,hopefully, opportunities in
those areas. In the meantime,though, like, what do you do
tomorrow? It makes it reallytough because there's a lot of
uncertainty. We saidunprecedented times are now just

(01:20:54):
becoming precedented times. Andso what does that mean? I mean,
in general, right? The way yourun a business during
unprecedented times oruncertainty, diversification,
that's that's always right? Wewere saying diversification of
incomes. You can't always dothat with with a business, but
sometimes when the portcongestion was happening, maybe
diversification of the ports ofentry might be one way to start

(01:21:15):
looking. So that way, if oneport has something that gets
impacted, you have otheroptions. Or East Coast versus
West Coast, right when you'rehaving the labor discussions
trying to diversify some ofthose ports of entry to either
side of the US might be a.
Avenue. It might be moreexpensive one side or the other,
but if one side goes down with aport strike, you have the other

(01:21:37):
side to kind of rely on. We'reat least four years away from
the next conversation about portstrikes, but now might be the
time to start having thoseconversations about
diversification of how you kindof approach that, you know. But
the other thing is, it's easy tosay diversification of ports of
entry, but some of thesecommodities need certain
warehouses or need certainsystems around the port that

(01:21:58):
they only get in certain areas.
And so maybe now part of theconversation is increasing
engagement with some of theother areas that you might want
to diversify your ports of entryto, and saying, Hey, what do you
have to offer this industry?
Right? This is an area that wewould like to diversify where we
come in. You know, are there anyopportunities to do that? We
have a lot of infrastructuredevelopment happening around the

(01:22:19):
ports in general. So I thinkthat we're still going to see
port infrastructure developmenthappening with this
administration. I think thatwe're probably going to see
perhaps a little bit moretowards strategic ports, which
is money, funding toward portsthat they can be turned into
military or military helpfulports. That's something that
strategic ports is kind of aterm of art. So that's something

(01:22:41):
that's already available. Notevery port out there has the
strategic ports, but there mightbe some funds available along
those lines. One thing that wesaw there's the ships for
America Act that came out. Itwas the Kelly waltz bill.
Previously it, but it turnedinto the ship's act. So that was
Mark Kelly, Democrat senatorfrom Arizona, and Mike waltz, a

(01:23:01):
Republican congressman fromFlorida. Ultimately, when the
bill was presented, Mike waltzhad turned into the National
Security Advisor to the Trumpadministration. But it also says
to me, when he was working as acongressman on this bill, it was
a lot of push toward militaryreadiness. Military security is
national security, right? That'sone of the themes that I keep

(01:23:21):
seeing, that if you're movingtoward military assistance or
military promotion within theindustry, that's going to be
supported, it seems like by thisadministration, especially
because he became the nationalsecurity advisor. So at the
time, I was like, well, at leastwe know maritime will come up in
the conversation. Now we have,you know, now we have the
maritime I think there's anactual maritime person in the

(01:23:44):
national security advisory area.
Then you also have this off theship building. You have so much
maritime so just a few weeks,but all that to say. So what do
you do with the tariffs? I mean,obviously, continue to watch
them, but it's going to be, itfeels like it's going to be a
little bit of a wild ride forthe time being. Maybe some of
the best things that you can dois, like I said, I mean, you

(01:24:05):
don't want to overreact rightthere. And I say that very
cautiously and carefully,because I don't want to say that
reacting at all is overreacting,because some of these things are
might put people out ofbusiness, right? I mean, that's
that's part of the if youweren't able to sustain some of
this movement, then some ofthese are going to have some

(01:24:25):
major impact. It feels like inthe short term, though, it feels
like the conversation keepscoming back to this is going to
be a short term thing for a longterm gain. So what do you do?
Find ways of aligning with thetheme, right? Find ways of, kind
of creating new businessopportunities where you can
align with what's going on, sothat you know if, if and when. I

(01:24:46):
mean when, right. We can't havepresidents that stay forever. So
when we have the nextadministration change same
thing. Don't fight against thegrain there, right? Go with the
theme that's developing, andfind ways of really, kind of
aligning and finding businessopportunities there. I mean,
it's, it's gonna, it's gonnafeel a little wishy washy,
right? It's gonna feel a littlependulum really swinging. And so

(01:25:07):
maybe you just kind of stay inthe middle of it all and keep
your head down. I mean, maybe,if it's not affecting you
directly, maybe just kind ofcontinue business as is, and
then hopefully you find morebusiness opportunities when the
dust settles a bit. I'm, youknow, I'm not saying anything
people don't know, right? It's,it's, it feels like a wild time.
But you also want to assume thatthe administration that's in is

(01:25:31):
doing the best they can andtrying to help the overall
American people. And so whetherthat was the Biden
administration or now the Trumpadministration, you know, maybe
it's looking at it with, Okay,what does success look like to
them? What does winning looklike to them as the
administration and finding waysof meeting them at the finish
line there. I don't know, justdifferent ways of looking at it.

Well, I think it kind of all sounds
like, whenever shit hits the fanlike this, that it really comes
down to finding really great,maybe consultants, really great
internal, you know, experiencedemployees, probably also
technology and combining all ofthose to, you know, try to stay
ahead and and create contingencyplans. Is all of that sort of

(01:26:17):
playing a role when, when stufflike this happens like because I
would imagine this is a perfectuse case for AI to, you know,
find different sourcing of yourmaterials, find the ports with
the warehouses that are close bythat can store those. Goods
trying to avoid as many tariffsas possible. Is that, does that
solution exist on the market, oris it really just combining,

(01:26:39):
like the consultants with thesubject matter experts and
technology?

Unknown (01:26:42):
I think it's all right.
I think it's all of it. I mean,obviously AI feels like it
certainly, I mean, significantlyspeeds things up. But on the
other hand, you have to knowwhat you're talking about,
because it could be speeding upbad data, right? I mean, I've,
I've looked through and, youknow, I'll admit to it, I when
I'm doing some of my podcasting,if I'm kind of struggling with
how I want to word things, I'llthrow it into AI, see what it

(01:27:04):
comes up with. And thensometimes, I mean, it even just
the other day said, well, theFMC, Dan, Chairman, Dan mafet.
And I was like, that's badinformation. Like it's, it's Lou
sola. He's been the chairman fora while now, you know. So it's
if you didn't know that, youwould have just taken that as
truth. And so creating abusiness based on AI outputs is
a dangerous game if you don'tknow the game. And so that's

(01:27:28):
where having the consultants ifyou don't know the game
yourself, bringing consultantsin to help augment your your
expertise in the game, becauseyou can make pretty bad mistakes
by just not quite knowing whatthe heck's going on. And you
have to follow it prettydiligently and obsessively,
almost to really kind of knowwhat's happening. And that's

(01:27:50):
where you know even, even me asan ocean shipping consultant,
and really kind of helping, Ihelp my my clients, kind of
navigate global ocean shippingregs. That's not tariffs, right?
That's not necessarily customs,that's not all these other
places that feel like they'reall part of the same thing. And
I kind of obsessively watchocean shipping, and that's why I
love TPM last week, but that'sit, is finding people who are, I

(01:28:12):
mean, pretty connected to what'shappening, pretty clued in to
what's happening. Maybeconnected is not the right word,
really clued into what'shappening and watching it,
almost in this obsessive sense,so that you can have the best
information around you for youto make that business decision.
Because the consultants don'tmake the business decisions for
you. They just give you a largerlike coloring of the of the

(01:28:34):
coloring book so that you canfully understand, okay, I know
that Santa's belt is black. Youmight not have known that had
you not known. Maybe it's red.
No, his jackets red, right?
Like, that's kind of theconsultants help you find out
what you firm up, what you mayor may not know, so that you can
make a business decision insomewhere that like might not be

(01:28:55):
totally clear.

That makes a ton of sense. And I feel
like that's such a greatsoundbite, like waiting to
happen. You see me like ridingoff to the side. I'm writing
down timestamps of every timeyou said something good. And
we're running out of room overhere on on the post it note.
Okay, last couple questionshere. Is there anything else
that it was a, I guess, animportant topic to your clients,

(01:29:20):
also at TPM. Is there anythingelse that is going on in
maritime right now that otherfactors of the logistics
audience or segments shouldknow, whether it's warehousing
or trucking, because they all,you know, intertwine and play a
role together. But was there anyother themes or takeaways that
you thought were important?
Yeah.

Unknown (01:29:39):
I mean, I think every obviously, everything, right,
everything that's happening outthere, I think the biggest thing
that anybody can do is justeducate themselves on what's
going on. So whether that'shiring consultant or, you know,
maybe shameless plug here, butI'm going to have E courses
coming out on just generalinformation about what I do. So
my consultancy is really thedirect application, right? It's

(01:30:02):
that. That's where you bring thelawyer in the direct application
of what the ocean shipping regsare doing and how that relates
to the specific environment thatyour company is going through.
But then sometimes you just wantto know, like, Who the heck is
the federal American commissionanyways, right? Like, who might
have just started in theindustry? And you're like, there
is no reliable one on one. Like,what are alliances? Why are they

(01:30:23):
better than the alternative? Soyou know that that's part of the
classes that I'm going to bepushing out with the maritime
professor. I do live webinars onthat, and that's just so that
you can kind of have a firststop approach. Of, I want to
know a little bit about oceanshipping. I don't necessarily
need to hire somebody directly,but I do need to stay informed
on what's happening out there.
And so that's where I, you know,I've kind of found a an opening

(01:30:43):
where there really wasn't thatavailable, and we have surface
transport, kind of, but there'sthis world of, I just want good
information, and I need it tostill down so that I don't have
to listen to somebody, you know,ramble on about a topic for four
hours in a class. I just want,like, half hour, 45 minutes of
what's going on. What do I needto know? And so that's part of

(01:31:06):
what I do with the maritimeprofessor, is finding those
trends and help saying, Hey, payattention to this case, right?
Holidays and weekends is onething that's happening at the
FMC right now. They've beenworking through whether or not
you should be charging fordemurrage or detention. There's
a case TCW versus evergreen.
It's still very much fluid. Itwent out to US Court of Appeals

(01:31:29):
for the DC Circuit. So. It'scome back to FMC. Now, FMC just
recently put out a decisionsaying that they kind of double
down saying, you know, if you'reclosed, it's, it's, it's not
aligned with the incentiveprinciple. And that's one thing
that the FMC has been saying,is, look, fluid, fluidity of
movement is the incentiveprinciple. You should not be

(01:31:49):
charging. This is what the FMCkind of is arguing you should
not be charging for detention.
For detention and demurrageunless it's actually providing
that incentivization of themovement of goods, like so if
your box is sitting there, and,I mean, the assumption is you
don't care about it, unless youstart getting charged for it.
Now, all of a sudden it becomestop of mind, and you're like,
Oh, I got to get that out. I youknow, I'm getting charged. But
like the FMCS argument here is,if the port is closed on a

(01:32:12):
holiday or weekend, you can'tget it anyway. So no amount of
of demurrage or detention isgoing to actually get you to
move it, because you're like,dang it, it's a Saturday. I want
to move my stuff, but I can't.
So that's the FMC side of it,the other side of it. The the
argument on the other side isthat, well, isn't that an
incentive itself? Because nowyou know, if it's a weekend plus

(01:32:35):
a Monday Holiday, if you don'tget it out on that Friday,
you're going to have three daysof charges that you really don't
want, and so it makes you moveeven faster to get it out on
Friday. So that's the crux ofwhat's going on with this
holidays and weekends case worthpaying attention to. That's
something that I think willreally have some strong
operational impacts. Of, are yougoing to be charged the

(01:32:56):
detention demurrage? Becausethat's been one of the biggest
issues since covid congestion,of, how do I mitigate or how do
I plan for detention anddemurrage? Or how do I get out
so that I'm not part of thedetention and demurrage world?
Because it adds up quickly. Andif you have more than 10 boxes,
and then per box every day, Imean, those are big charges, and

(01:33:17):
at some point you come to apoint of, well, the merge, or
the detention is more than thecontents of the box itself, and
so you might have abandonment.
That's the balance effect ofdetention merge. But that's
something definitely worthwatching. It wasn't totally
talked about at TPM, but also,there was a lot going on at TPM.
There's just in general, youknow, I think there was some

(01:33:38):
talk about the new alliances andhow those are structured. The
Gemini cooperation has more of ahub and spoke model. That's kind
of a newer is it? You know, thequestion is, is it more of a
marketing thing, or is it anactual new operational you know,
the idea is they come to, kindof the hub ports, and then they
transload and move it around.

(01:33:59):
From there, they're saying thatthey have 90% 90% reliability in
their schedule because of thehub and spoke model. And that
was the whole promotional pieceof trying out the Hub and Spoke
bottle, they were saying, wewill have significantly
increased reliability in rivalsand your goods moving. So that
was a big conversation. Pieceis, is this Gemini cooperation,

(01:34:22):
you know, working the new kindof reshuffling of some of the
alliances? What that means, whatthose Alliance reshuffles mean?
I think one of the biggestthings over the past few years
for ocean shipping and thealliances, though, is the
realization that, and it's notalways clear, not all of those
companies fleets are part ofthese vessel sharing agreements.
And that's what these alliancesare, is they're vessel sharing

(01:34:44):
agreements. So like MSC cameout, I think there was a report
saying that they have 900vessels. Not all 900 vessels
were part of that 2m alliancethat they were part of and that,
because you kind of see, okay,well, they're 40% or 50% market
like that. You know, as acompany, they had a large
significant portion of the ofthe market share, but it wasn't,

(01:35:04):
it didn't go into the wholeAlliance. And so that's why that
alliance probably isn't asnefarious as people were saying,
right? Like, oh, they're justguys. Like, they're all just
combining. And this is justanother name for a monopoly. It
really wasn't. It was really theintention was that they were
trying to get better serviceavailability. You know, instead

(01:35:26):
of five vessels going across thesame route, now you have two
vessels going across the sameroute with some of their
competitors cargo on it. They'rejust sharing vessel space, so
that you have two full vesselsinstead of five, not as full
vessels, and then the otherthree can now go to smaller
ports. And there you have it,some of that diversification of
ports of entry or availabilityof ports. So that might be great

(01:35:47):
for companies too, because itmight be closer to their
warehouses, you know, if they'reable to go to these smaller,
medium ports abroad.

And I think it just speaks to your
your earlier point about theimportance of diversification,
and, you know, protecting yourown business. And you know, if
you got cargo waiting around fora while, plus tariffs, plus, you
know, all of these otherdifferent, you know, things that
are impacting, you know, globalshipping, it can get expensive
really quick, and then who paysfor those things at the end of

(01:36:13):
the day? It's the US consumer,or maybe it's the carrier. You
know, probably not the carrier.
It's probably going to be theconsumer at some point or
another. Lauren, this has beenan incredible discussion, and I
think it just sort of reallyrings home true of, you know,
paying attention to consultantslike yourself, professionals.
Like yourself. I'm curious, aswe kind of round out the this
conversation, you know, arethere any besides yourself, of

(01:36:35):
course, which we'll put links inthe show notes to where you can
watch all of your content andsign up for the maritime
Professor all that. But I'mcurious, are there any other, I
guess, sort of sources that youpay attention to as well, or
other, you know, creators thatcan explain things in a way that
you do, which is, you know, aneasier way to understand it, and
also, you know, make thebusiness case too, yeah.

Unknown (01:36:55):
I mean, obviously all your stuff, right? I mean,
you're, you're right on theheart of it, and you're helping
me to learn a lot more about thesurface transportation side,
which I totally appreciate.
Grace Sharkey, right? Obviously,she does a great job with the
tech side of things. And anyfreight waves is wonderful. Joc
is wonderful, any of those majorpublications, but Sal
marcogliano. We've talked abouthim a few times. He does such a
good job, and he's a professorhimself too, that he does such a

(01:37:18):
good job of just distilling downwhat's going on, and he's a
maritime historian, so he reallykind of increases the
understanding by coloring therest of why is this important?
What happened in the past. Howdoes this all relate now, you
know, he's much more precise onsome of those numbers. Of you
know why we had vessel fleets inthe certain number before, and

(01:37:38):
now what they look like andwhere things have gone. So he is
a phenomenal source to followhimself so, but there's all
sorts. Matt Leffler does areally good job. He's often
talking about chassis andtrailer maintenance and surface
transport and tech. And, youknow, we actually used to talk
quite a bit. My podcast iscalled by land and by sea. At

(01:38:00):
one point he was helping tobring in some of that by land
conversation. So that was kindof the intention of bringing
over that podcast really doesmean I, obviously, I focus a lot
on federal Maritime Commission,but part of the podcast is
really kind of helping, as Isaid at the outset, bridging
that gap between surfacetransport and ocean transport, I
was getting a lot of questionsright around that pandemic of
what happens on the other sideof the gate, right? You're

(01:38:23):
either on one side of the gateor the other, and so what
happens on the other side? Andso I'm still learning the
surface side, although I have amuch larger appreciation for the
warehousing and the rail and thedrainage providers and
everything that happens on theother side of the gate, and that
was kind of my personal interestin learning more there, but on
the ocean side of things, whathappens inside the port, what
happens on the other side onceit gets on the vessel? How does

(01:38:44):
all of that work together?
Because it was kind of thisblack hole, but as long as it
showed over the port, peopledidn't really care once covid
congestion happened, and we weregetting detention, demurrage,
all these different things. Andwait a second, I want to know
more. And they kept peeling backthe onion. You know, it was, it
was this, how do I learn more?
What? What is there to learn?
How do I become a bettereducated just user of the

(01:39:07):
industry, and really, that's thename of the game. Is educating
yourself on as you can so thatyou're in the best position to
make decisions when you need to.

Oh, perfectly said, What mic drop
moment like? That's such a greatpoint to end this conversation,
because I feel like I could talkto you, you know, for hours and
hours more, but you know, I wantto be respectful of your time.
And Lauren, where can folks, youknow, follow the podcast I
mentioned? I'll leave it in theshow notes, but, but go ahead
and tell us anyway,

Unknown (01:39:34):
yeah, so go ahead and look at the maritime
professor.com that's where youcan find the podcast on there.
That's where you can find the Ecourses, all of the the live
webinars, all the differentcontent that's purely based on
creating open and accessiblesupply chain knowledge for all.
But then, if you do have a legalquestion, if you would like to
hire, you know, for legalpurposes, not necessarily
litigation, but kind ofnavigating, how to do B to B,

(01:39:57):
and kind of pre litigation sideof things, or how all of the
global ocean shipping regs worktoward you. I have client based
navigation of those global oceanshipping and it's through small
strategies. Amazing.

Blythe Brumleve Milliga (01:40:08):
Lauren, this was an incredible
conversation. I think we bothshould start maybe a fan club
for Sal marcogliano, so we can,you know, just, just continue,
like, pumping up his his histires, for the content that he
puts out, because I think hemakes all of us smarter. And
then, obviously, with you andall of your content, you make
all of us smarter. And thisindustry is just like you said,

(01:40:29):
it's an onion. Every time youpeel back a layer. There's
several more layers to go. Soappreciate your time, appreciate
your insight, and we lookforward to having you back on
again in the future. Thanks somuch. Let's go ahead and get
started on icebreaker ships,because this is a very it's one
of those things that you hear inshipping, and I don't know that

(01:40:52):
I have the had the full grasp onit, on why people even want to
establish this shipping lane.
Did you? Did you know aboutthis? I guess shipping lane, or
shipping story, before you know,we were doing research for this.

Grace Sharkey (01:41:09):
I guess, no, not in particular. I mean, I know of
icebreakers clearly, just likebeing where I'm from, and have
seen them before. But no, not inparticular.

No, well, I think for the first I
want to play this. I want tostart off this section with why
this sea route is important.
Important, because essentiallywhat we have throughout the
world is that we have theseshipping lanes, these big trade
lanes, which are safe passages,or somewhat safe passages, that
giant cargo ships, oil tankers,fishing vessels, that they can

(01:41:42):
travel through and end up attheir destination in the
quickest, most efficient timeperiod. And with this new route
that is opening up, largely inpart because of the ice melting
in the Arctic region. So that'sthe North Pole. We're not
talking about Antarctica, whichis the south pole. So the North
Pole is where a lot of this iceis melting, and it's starting to

(01:42:04):
open up faster and moreefficient shipping lanes. But
that brings a whole lot of sortof discussion, geopolitical,
natural resources. It brings upa whole lot of discussions. But
first, before we get into someof our favorite takeaways about
learning about this topic, Iwant to play this video that
will kind of give like a good, Ithink, overall, arching,

(01:42:25):
overarching view of what this isand why it's important. So let's
play the clip.

Unknown (01:42:33):
This is the North West Passage. It's a sea passage that
spans 900 miles and joins theAtlantic and Pacific Oceans
through the Arctic archipelago.
It may look insignificant, butthe truth is, this passage has
the potential to changeeverything. The only problem is
that it doesn't exist yet. Well,sort of you see, we've known
about this passage forcenturies, but it's always too

(01:42:53):
covered in sea ice to be usedfor regular marine shipping
during most of the year. But nowthis is all potentially
changing. Since 1979 the Arcticsea ice has declined by 40% with
NASA saying it's currentlydisappearing at a rate of 13%
per decade. Put simply, theArctic sea ice is melting and
also being replaced with thinnerseasonal ice due to climate

(01:43:14):
change. And this means thateventually, whether it be by
2050, 2100, or somewhere inbetween, the Northwest Passage
will become fully navigable formega container ships for at
least a few months out of theyear. The importance and
geopolitical ramifications ofthis cannot be understated. In
fact, the reason we've known ofthis passage for centuries is
because of how transformative itwould be. Even back then,

(01:43:37):
European explorers, beginningwith Christopher Columbus in
1492 searched for a direct traderoute from Western Europe to
East Asia, but they never foundone. It took until 1850 for the
first icy northern passage to bediscovered or while technically
invented, and until 1906 when itwas finally traversed by the
legendary Roald Amundsen. Sincethat first crossing, there have

(01:43:59):
been at least 320 transits upuntil 2021 with 38 of them being
from 2019 to 2021 showing it'sstill a pretty challenging
passage to traverse. So I'm

going to stop it right there, because
that's a really good point to, Iguess, Intro This discussion of
what exactly like icebreakerships are. Now you kind of have
a a general overview of what'shappening in that region and why
these ships are starting to beneeded. Basically, with
icebreakers, there's two typesof icebreakers where one has a

(01:44:33):
bow that sticks out much furtherthan, I guess, sort of the top
of a traditional ship. Of whatyou can see, it has an
underneath that sort of, youknow, can bust through the ice,
up to six feet of ice that itcan bust through before the
actual, I guess, sort of realpart of the bow that you see on
a traditional ship makes it hasto, you know, sort of slosh

(01:44:56):
through it. So there's thatmethod of it. And then there's
another method of a icebreakership that they almost try to go
as fast as possible, so they canget up on the ice and then come
down and crack it that way. Andso there's a bunch of different
like, videos where they can seelike, especially in this region
of cargo ships and or mostlylike oil and gas ships that are

(01:45:18):
being caught in this ice upnorth in the Arctic, and these
icebreaker ships have to gothrough and do one of those two
methods in order to carve out apath for those ships to make it
through. So it's all, I'll stopright there, since we, you know,
had the the video and explainedit a little more. But what, I
guess, what are your firstthoughts when you know about

(01:45:40):
that, when you learn about thishistory, when you in the region
that you're in, what are, sortof your, I guess, favorite
takeaways about icebreakerships?

Well, in general, I think it's, it's interesting
for just trade domestically, inthe US, how much of it is
dependent on this as well, letalone what we'll see in the
future. I think the stat Ipulled for this lane in
particular was by 2050 I believethis will be the primary point

(01:46:10):
of transit between Europe and inAsia. So clearly, huge impact
it's going to have on on globaltrade, let alone what we see
just domestically as well. Iwant to, I'm trying to look at
the stat right now. I think itwas around, yeah, just in Great
Lakes, icebreaking alone. So.
Towards over 90 million tons ofcargo annually. So imagine what

(01:46:32):
that number is going to looklike, especially once it becomes
such a mean trade line. I mean,here it's, it's interesting kind
of, I wish I would have pulledsome soda charts from this, and
might be able to send you somelater. But Well, theoretically,
we don't really have much rightfor this lane, but it's, you
know, one of my favorite things,favorite sonar charts we do at

(01:46:53):
freight waves, is the PanamaCanal index. It's not exactly
what it's called, what's kind ofwhat we call internally, and it
helps you kind of see right therates between going to LA ports
compared to going to someonelike Houston based on the
availability of going throughthe pan like canal at that time,

(01:47:14):
right? So it gives you like thisflux of a different option that
that's why we see so muchinvestment in Dallas and Houston
etcetera, because of that path,because at the Panama Canal, of
course, was widened, which ledfor more of that option. So I
get really excited, just fromlike, a data standpoint, to see,
like, how that would affectoverall, like, what we see on

(01:47:35):
trade lanes right now, eventhrough the United States and
and so on. So, yeah, I get, Ithink it's really cool to like,
consider and think, right, like,just because of these
icebreakers, the the globalramifications of it. I think I
wonder if you're going to get toit. But, I mean, we have a whole
pack, right, based on this lane.

(01:47:59):
It's called the ice pack, andit's between, I believe, the US,
Russia,

in us,

it's, I believe, no, sorry, United States, Canada
and Finland and so they, yeah,the between the three of us,
there's the US Coast Guard hastwo main icebreakers that
they're starting to use as ofJuly of this year to start
cutting that ice that you justwent over, right?

Well, so it's a little complicated in
that regard, because we've onlyhad two of icebreaker ships, and
they're decades old. Someanwhile, like Russia, has more
than 50, and a few of them arenuclear. One of them in the
Arctica, I believe, is the nameof the ship, and it's nuclear
powered, so it doesn't have togo back to port. Yeah, it can

(01:48:50):
just patrol, it can traverse.
And so what's happening with alot of this polar or Arctic ice
melt is that it's exposing more,you know, shoreline and more
land, especially like Canada,for example. And So Russia has
essentially, you know, claimed alot of this, these passageways,
and this, these routes, and arelike, No, you have to pay a fee.

(01:49:11):
And Canada's like, No, you aregoing to there, because this is
all like,

go talk to NATO.
Yeah.

Like, we're going to friends. And,
yeah, this and,

but, you know, a big, a big issue that we do have
outside of this slate inparticular, is there's not many
United States owned cargocarriers, right as part of so
it's, it's interesting, like,Could this be a lane that
finally gives the United Statesan option to to gain some

(01:49:43):
traction on that fact right toto have more carriers under the
United States sale. And I thinkthat also could be interesting,
right? The politicalramifications are something that
clearly is going to have to bediscussed at some point. But
it's, it's almost like, ifyou've played not war, what's
the game if you haven't playedit so long, we're going to

(01:50:05):
different countries now, all ofa sudden, there's just a
different path for you to take.
How much that could change, liketrade relationships, right?
Like, maybe talk about Russia. Imean, maybe that is a
relationship we grow even moreso just knowing that the
economic ramifications ofignoring that relationship,
right? So, I mean, it's that'sthis, it sounds like we'll

(01:50:26):
probably air after the election,but like, whoo. Like, it's crazy
to think like that could be anelection topic, right?

Yeah, couple years. Well, it's, uh,
it's to your, your earlier pointabout the Panama Canal, and for
cargo companies, or for cargoship companies, carriers, the
route from San Francisco toRotterdam, Netherlands via the
Arctic route would take about7000 nautical miles, while San
Fran to Rotterdam via the PanamaCanal is about 9000 miles.

(01:50:58):
That's about a 40% difference innautical miles by taking the
Arctic route versus taking thePanama Canal canal route. And
you can have more weight if youtake the Arctic route, because
you're limited when you gothrough the Panama Canal, you
have to have certain weightrestrictions, yeah. And then
there's also this initiative,because I'm sure most people
have heard about the, you know,the China Belt and Road

(01:51:21):
Initiative. They have anotherinitiative called the polar Silk
Road. And so if you know yourhistory, you know that Silk Road
was this, you know, major, youknow, I guess trend. Road from
the East Asian countries over toover to Europe. And, you know,
Western Asian, Asian countriesthat are, you know, partaking in

(01:51:42):
trade. It was one of the first,I guess, human civilization. I
guess not tactics. Maybe tacticsis the right word for here. But
it was mostly human trade wasset up in a variety of ways.
Human trade and commoditytrading was set up through this
Silk Road. And so they'recalling this the polar Silk

(01:52:02):
Road. And so it's because of norestrictions. You can get there
faster. So it brings up a lotof, I guess, sort of
environmental debate too, like,because of global warming,
because of, you know, everythingthat's going on in the Arctic
with this ice melting, youalmost have to ask yourself too,
like, are we even going to needicebreakers in the next couple

(01:52:24):
decades? Because you have Russiathat has more than 50 of these
icebreakers. You have Chinathat's building out a ton of
icebreakers, and they're doingit to, you know, take advantage
of this new trade route that isstarting to open up. And they
believe that they will, thatit's estimated by like 2035 that
we're going to have just a hugesection of this Northwest

(01:52:46):
Passage route that's going to becompletely open for anyone to
use. And so now, from ageopolitical standpoint, you
have Canada that's like, No,we're going to start charging
fees, sort of like Panama orEgypt. You know, they're
charging fees to go through theSuez Canal, to go through the
Panama Canal. Canada wants to dothe same thing, because there's

(01:53:06):
not that much economic activitygoing on up there, which is
another sort of, I guess anegative aspect of this polar
trade route is that there aren'tmany ports, and that a lot of
for the Inuit people that havebeen there for they're called,
like the first, Canada's firstpeoples, and there's so many
like livelihoods that are set upin these northern Like regions,

(01:53:30):
and their way of life is meltingaway before their eyes. And so
it brings up like theseconversations of, okay, if
you're going to establish thesetrade routes, and you're going
to maybe start building portsalong these trade routes,
because right now, there arehardly any ports along this
trade route, like you should beinvolving these people who are

(01:53:50):
already having their livesimpacted. And then also think
about it from the lens of, ifone of like, an oil taker goes
down in the Arctic like that isdevastating to these
communities, because you can'teven clean up the oil because
it's the ice makes it incrediblydifficult to be able to use, you
know, sort of modern we had aspill in the Gulf. What like

(01:54:13):
horizon, Deep Water Horizon, orsomething like that, I think.
But they can use these largesort of nets in the ocean to
scoop up all of that oil. Youcan't do that in the Arctic,
because there's, you've gotfreaking floating ice going on
up there. So it has, like, allof these different
ramifications. And I justthought that was

even to that point, like, I'm thinking about,
like, again funny or in yourelection season, but the
migration that would need to,like, happen up there to to back
a port, you know, like, do Iknow right now there's a number
of really great like, flatbedtrucking jobs in Canada and

(01:54:56):
towards the Arctic and Alaska aswell, just because it's, you
know, they're growingcommunities and things need to
get up there, and it's a toughdrive, right? But now it's like,
when you sit here and you talkabout, like, putting ports in
some of these areas too. It'slike, they don't have, I mean, I
don't know if you've ever seenlike, the most northern town,

(01:55:16):
but it's like, everyone thereworks for the oil company, and
there's, there's kind of agrocery store, you know, it's
like, and so think about the jobcreation needed to, like,
support a true port community

Blythe Brumleve Milli (01:55:33):
supplies.
Like, yeah,

there was even just to live, like, putting a
grocery store in there. Nowyou're talking about
construction jobs and, like,just development of that type of
infrastructure is, like, justreally interesting to kind of
consider, right of like, all themoves I would have to make to
make sure that this investment,you could say now is really pays

(01:55:56):
off.

Well there, there was another video.
It was like a CNBC video thatwas talking about Arctic
shipping, and it was publishedabout a year ago, and there was
a gentleman that was on theretalking about, he was like a
captain. He was talking about,you know, the, I guess, the
intricacies of sailing throughsome of these different issues.
But he mentioned that during thetime of that recording, that
only 300 ships have made itthrough the Arctic since it was

(01:56:20):
that the passage has beendiscovered, 300 ships. And so
it's so new, it's so fresh, andit's so really like actively
developing and. A or erasing, orkind of, maybe, like going on at
the same time, and it's just, Iit's very interesting to sort of
watch that geopolitical,strategic chess pieces being

(01:56:44):
made, because that's, it'ssomething that for a lot of our
borders and a lot of our, Iguess, countries, and the way
things have been, you know, thisis a new area, much like how
we've talked about, you know,sort of the the colonization
that's going on with the moon.
We talked about that in one ofour space episodes, yeah. And
that is now it. You could startto see the chess pieces being

(01:57:04):
made by China, by Russia, andthen some of the other NATO
countries, and, you know, likeFinland, Norway, Denmark, all of
these huge ports. And what'scrazy is that you watch a lot of
this stuff, and you forget howclose these countries are to
each other. I think we're soused to seeing the regular map
where it's like the US is on theleft, and, you know, Russia and

(01:57:28):
China's on the right, and itlooks so far away, but, you
know, sorry to the Flat Earthersout there, but with the
circulation, you can look at theArctic and just see how close
Canada, Russia, like China,considers them an Arctic
country, like they mentionedthat in one of their I'm sure

(01:57:49):
they did it for, you know,economic and political reasons,
but they are, they want to bementioned among some of these
Arctic countries, which is alsosuper interesting because their
Belt and Road Initiative, which,for folks who may not know,
that's China's initiative, tosort of have soft power
throughout the rest of The globeby building ports and roads and

(01:58:10):
just like logisticsinfrastructure in all of these
different countries, and they'lldo it, and they'll pay for it,
but if you don't pay them backin, you know, a set amount of
time for these loans, then theyget to seize those ports. They
seize the that infrastructure,which is happening in some
African countries, it's probablygoing to happen in some South

(01:58:31):
American countries. So it's avery it's an interesting thing
to watch play out that willlikely be decided in our
lifetime, that this Arctic icewill largely not exist in the
next 30 years, it's going to bea lot of it's going to be melted
away and for the majority of theyear. Because right now, it's

(01:58:53):
only a few months out of theyear that these icebreakers are
largely being used for theseroutes. But it starts melting
away and you have less need foricebreakers then, you know, I
guess maybe the US is playingthe long game. And in regards to
shipbuilding, much to a grin orchagrin of you know, friend of
the show, John Conrad of Gcaptain. Yeah, if you follow him

(01:59:14):
on X, he's always talking aboutshipbuilding, and China is
pretty much kicking our ass inthat regard of shipbuilding, and
a good portion of theirShipbuilding is for icebreakers.
So maybe that's a good thing forthe US. In the end, there's also
a tourism that's kind of takenoff for that region too. You

(01:59:35):
have icebreakers, I think, fromNorway, that will go into the
ice you can pay, you know, 1000sof dollars and go on this ship,
and then you can get off theship and go just walk around on,
like, the different ice sheets.
And I watched this video of thisfamily. They, this guy put on a
suit that's, like, meant to helpyou if you fall into, like,

(01:59:58):
prevent, you know, hypothermia,yeah. And he can they let people
wear these suits and jump intothe Arctic if you want to. And I
thought that was pretty cool,too. So there's some tourism
aspect that's going on there aswell. But I just that the idea
that it's called, like, thepolar Silk Road, I think it's
crazy and it's not crazyfascinating, I guess not like

(02:00:20):
crazy and like, ah, like, youknow, I'm gonna pull my hair out
kind of way. But, like you said

in our lifetime, that stat said by 2050 I mean,
that's not incredibly far away.
Like that could be a main, themain line between, you know, US
and in Europe. That's crazy kindof consider so again. And just
like, I mean, I'd love to, like,have Lauren on this show, to be

(02:00:46):
the maritime professor, Laurenbiegun and like, the alliances
have already changed withcarriers. Just like, how would
that change carrier alliances?
And how would that shape justglobal pricing and add the
security level to it all too. Itgets, like, super interesting

if you're if you're watching the
video version of this, I justpulled up the graphic that shows
what I was referring to, as faras, like, map purposes wise,
like, how close all of thesecountries are for this one trade
lane area. And you can see,like, it's gonna pull like a
Sarah Palin, like, I can seeRussia in my backyard, which the

(02:01:28):
United States is literallyright. There, right next to
fucking Russia or freakingRussia. It probably shouldn't
cuss like that on the show, butyeah, close. It's close. But you
can see on this map all of thedifferent trade lanes that have
been established, the traderoutes, and then all of the
yellow dots are ports that arecurrently already existing in

(02:01:50):
this area. And so as this icemelts more and more, you're
going to see more ports pop up,especially on the Russian side
of things, because this was amajor initiative, a major focus
of the country, from what Iunderstand, before the Ukraine
invasion. And so since then,their supplies and their budgets
and their focus have been onthat, less on this. And so this,

(02:02:16):
arguably, I guess, depending onwhich way the war goes in the
future, this is going to be afocus again for Russia. Another
graphic that I wanted to bringup, too is the economic
exclusive economic zone. And sothis is an area of that same map
I just showed you, of which theUS has rights to from an

(02:02:38):
economic perspective. And sothat's more along the lines of
just, I guess they can drillfor, like natural resources,
natural gas, oil, things likethat. And so that is, yeah,
that's another concern, I guess,is the economic zone, and who
controls these different areasand who doesn't? And it sort of

(02:03:01):
brings up the earlier point of,like Canada, like some of this
shoreline, or is starting toeven emerge for them. And so
that's a territory that theyhave to claim. And, you know,
very like it's with Antarcticaat the South Pole. All of the
world's nations kind of have apact. Have an agreement. They
have their own little sectionsof Antarctica, where the Arctic,

(02:03:25):
it's still very much like up init's it's up for debate, I
guess, and where those wherethose borders are, and where
it's being contested, and somecountries recognize certain
borders, and then othercountries don't recognize those
borders. And so it's just, Ithink it's just a really
fascinating topic that I'm gladwe got to cover in this show. I

(02:03:49):
do wonder, though, is there anydifference between some of these
Arctic, I guess, icebreakers in,I guess, strategy versus the
Great Lakes area. Like, is itlargely the same? Is it maybe
just the Great Lakes shipperskind of all stay within the
Great Lakes. Or what is, do youknow any of I guess that routing

(02:04:13):
that goes on up there, like, arethese Chinese companies coming
in?

Or it doesn't? I don't think so. I know most of
them are ran by the US CoastGuard. There's I want to see. I
was just looking at the numberof them here in the United
States, most of them are used soof all the ships, icebreakers

(02:04:36):
that the United States own, mostof them, which I had that
number. Where did it?

We only had two. Maybe it's just
two Arctic.

We have two that, that was, that was the point I
was gonna make. We only have twothat. We have 12 total, only two
are functional for the Arctic,where as Russia has 41 in
particular, Finland, it lookslike 11. Canada has 20. Again,
not all of those are for theArctic, though it sounds like

(02:05:07):
some of that's for, I think, theHudson Bay up there and but they
are. They're building more outof Canada and then China has
just five. But again, they're soclose to Russia to say that they
would never work together onthat it's, it's silly. So
they're, they're building, itlooks it sounds like two more
here in the United States.
Current or no, sorry, they'rebuilding more. The number's not

(02:05:31):
on here right now of how manythey're looking to build, but
yeah, the ones that are are inthe Great Lakes. Are just like
nowhere near the the type oficebreaker that you would need
for that type of ice inparticular. But it does make me
wonder with but they aren't likethey are. I will say they are

(02:05:51):
Coast Guard run. So there's nolike entity

that commercial operation, yes, yeah.

Well, they're technically a navy ran, I guess,
if you looked at it that way.

Blythe Brumleve Milliga (02:06:04):
Because the reason I asked about that is
because my brain goes to, well,China's kind of doing the same
thing with Mexico right now,where they're just sending a lot
of freight into Mexico and thenjust trucking it in, like, would
they do the same thing withCanada, and then just truck it
in on the other side? So I wasjust curious about that, which
I'm sure would especially thatwas rail lines.

I think the big problem there would be, yes, you
have rail lines, but. Butthey're like, how covered in
snow are they at different thereare certain times of the year, I
think the infrastructure isnowhere near that of Mexico. So,
but like, again, it depends onif you, I'm sure if you built a

(02:06:47):
port somewhere between, likeAlaska and so, like, a Canadian
port, right? Like that could bean option, depending on the
times of the year, but I know,again, ice road trucking, it's
really dangerous up there. So Iwould a lot of times there's
just there. Those guys are justdriving that ice right? So I
would just, if anything, though,I don't think you're wrong. I

(02:07:09):
think again, goes back to mystatement. On like, this lane,
like, think of the tricklingeffect of the economy it could
do. I mean, there would need tobe more truckers up there. They
would need to be more towns andsettle settlements, right for
for those people that arehelping move any of those goods.
So again, I don't think out ofthe question, especially because

(02:07:31):
if we're losing that much ice, Iwould assume at some point we're
going to see less snow in someof those areas too. So a lot of
a lot of what ifs right,

and there's, as I was watching a lot
of these videos too, justbreaking down, like what
icebreakers are, what why thisNorthwest Passage is, is so
important, and why it couldchange things from a
geopolitical perspective. And alot of the videos were showing
like these, you know, chips thatare coming from China and
leaving the East Coast, andthey're going all the way up to

(02:08:02):
the Northwest Passage, orthey're going all the way
through, like, the Panama Canal.
Like, why don't they just go toLA like, why are you going all
the way around? And apparently,it's the from what I understand,
the Malacca Strait is where alot of the Chinese ports are
located. And if the ships comeout of those areas, that's where
there's a lot of geopoliticaltension, because of Taiwan,

(02:08:23):
because of Japan, like thePhilippines, and that's a lot of
contested waters there. And sothat's why these other routes
where China either goes north orthey go through the Panama
Canal. That's why it makes muchmore sense for them to avoid the
drama in the Malacca Strait, orthe potential of drama in the
Malacca Strait, and take theseroutes to the US instead. So it
also has some US implicationstoo, like, you know, is the Port

(02:08:47):
of LA is Long Beach? Are thosegoing to, you know, be impacted
by the Northwest Passage aswell. And so lot of these
questions we can't answer today,but fascinating discussion
regardless.

You know, I do want to throw out some numbers
on here, though, because it is,like, kind of crazy. Like, what
this would cost when we talkabout, like, where is this money
going to come from, too? Solooks like the Coast Guard has
they call a PSC program rightnow, a polar security cutter
program that would aims toacquire four or five new heavy

(02:09:22):
polar icebreakers and anacquisition of a new Arctic
security cutter. So a mediumpolar icebreaker

Is that what you're saying a
cutter, like they cut throughthe ice, I guess? Yep.

So, like price breaker. That's basically like a
heavy duty one and a mediumsized one, or a medium effort, I
would assume. I mean, and itlooks like estimated cost for
the big one is so one is, Igotta move things over $1.2
billion for the first ship, 921million for the second ship, and

(02:10:03):
$1.1 billion for the third ship.
So again, it's just, it's justso crazy, right? Another,
another thing we're going tohave to figure out taxpayer
wise, right? But it's just themoney behind it. It's crazy.
There's, like, a whole report,I'm sure you probably have some
of the data from that too.

On your there's so many, like,
just, it's untouched land too.
So it's the minerals, thenatural resources, I'm sure,
like lithium deposits and thingslike that, that, you know, wars
are being fought all over theworld for, and so it's just an
unfortunate reality that that'sgoing to be something that they
fight over next, and how arethey going to pay for it? Well,
probably through some of thosenatural resources, I would

(02:10:49):
imagine or securities budgets,I'm sure they can justify a lot
of things for securing that oil.

There's there's oil somewhere, you know, oil pay
for

it.
All right, let's move into ournext topic. Blake Milligan, here
with grace. Sharkey, this iseverything. Is logistics,
presented by SPI logistics, andwe're going to get into a little
bit of drama around the privatelabel paradox. And the reason I
wanted to bring this

up, yes, and that's because a strong word,
maybe we shouldn't say hateright now, but. It we
fascinated. We're fascinated.
Yes, we're we're negativelyfascinated.

And so when the reports came out. Now,
for those of you who may beliving under a rock, Megan is
technically a duchess of Sussex,which is a part of England that
she no longer lives in, that shesaid goodbye to with her
spineless husband, Harry, andthen they moved to the United
States under the guise ofwanting a private life, and has

(02:12:01):
since launched several differenthigh profile Netflix shows,
Oprah specials, Spotifypodcasts, and then now a
company. So she's gone through alittle trouble as an
entrepreneur. An entrepreneur.
She tried to, you know, getThat's the American dream. Well,
speaking of American dream, shetried to trademark American
Riviera orchard, I think is theexact phrase. But according to

(02:12:23):
trademark law, you cannottrademark a specific place. So
her trademark was rejected. Shecan't, you know, be two and, oh,
for trademarks on like me, likeyour girl over here, she doesn't
have the staff to do it. She'sprobably too mean to them and
bullying them. So she started upanother company called as ever.
And as ever is essentiallyunlike what she builds herself

(02:12:44):
on this Netflix cooking showthat's filmed not in her house.
She doesn't she doesn't live inthat house. It's not her garden,
it's not her honey bees. Butyet, she's portraying that.
She's selling all of theseproducts, her raspberry jam and
her honey and flower sprinkles,as if they come out of her
garden. None of that is true,because she's using a private

(02:13:07):
label company, probably Netflix,but Netflix doesn't want to
promote her brand on theirwebsite. I checked last night
that I find that veryinteresting Netflix.

You think it's Netflix jam. So

the way it works is that for their
popular franchises, Netflixoffers a store, a brand, that
you go and you can sell somebranded merch for, like,
Stranger Things, for example,like a perfect example, yeah,
where they have all of theStranger Things, merch that
they've created, the rumors arethat the people on the show get
a get a kickback. You know, someof those products that are sold,

(02:13:47):
what is streamer, and they offerthis as an additional, an
additional, how do I want to saythis additional perk of hosting
a show that is successful ontheir platform, since it's not
that successful of a show,

yeah, how do we milk this?

So the route that she took for her
business is going the privatelabel route. And the private
label route is very common amongmajor retailers who will partner
with so say, like great valuewith Walmart. I believe you have
some information on TraderJoe's, costco's, Kirkland brand.
These are all very successfulprivate label companies that

(02:14:34):
source their products from a comanufacturer, and that person or
that business, that manufactureris making the same products.
Let's use like Kleenex. Forexample. Kleenex is going to
make their product, and thenCostco will come in and say,
Okay, we want you to make thesame product for us, and you
were just going to do a smallmarkup on it, and you're going

(02:14:56):
to put the Kirkland brand on it,and so they'll work out a
partnership deal where theythere's a lot of this stuff is
hidden. So a lot of theseretailers don't even reveal on
who their manufacturing partneris. There's been a long standing
rumor that gray goose, thefamous vodka maker makes the
Kirkland brand vodka, eventhough gray goose has denied it

(02:15:16):
in reports, they're under nolegal obligation to admit it.
But I've always, I was formercashier at Costco, but that's
always what I heard is that theKirkland brand of vodka is made
by allegedly gray goose. So thatis sort of the private label
paradox of, you know how toposition how these companies,

(02:15:38):
especially like celebrities,when they're pitching like, I
think it's Kendall Jenner thatand the rock as well. Like, they
pitch themselves as being liketequila company owner, but all
they're doing is going down, ifthey are even doing this much,
but going down and finding afarmer who's already growing the
agave, who's already has, youknow, some kind of tequila

(02:15:58):
manufacturing that he's doingfor some kind of companies, and
then they just partner with themand slap their own label on it.
That's essentially what MeghanMarkle has done with her as ever
brand. And one of the quotesthat I wanted to bring up, which
is a little spicy, and I think Itagged you in it on Twitter, is
that the reason her company, herrebranded company, is failing is

(02:16:19):
because the quote was, is thatshe spent millions on PR instead
of supply chains. And so when Isee that, I say, this is a gold
mine. We got to cover this inthe future show. So that's how
we arrived here. Sure. Now we'regoing to tell you some of the
success stories of some of thethe the more popular private
label brands, and what makesthem popular. And so I think you

(02:16:41):
have Trader Joe's as an example.
So tell us why Trader Joe's andtheir private label has been so
successful.

Well, I do want to say too I got a nice list of
some, some private label behindthe scenes for you, too. So you
brought up Costco, right? Theydo private label a bunch of
other stuff. So one is theircoffee is actually from the
Starbucks manufacturer. Duracelldoes the Costco brand batteries?

(02:17:10):
Bumblebee does the tuna forKirkland or Costco? Walmart's
known for doing this too. TysonFoods is most of their chickens.
So if you're buying Tysonchicken, it's the same as your
Walmart chicken. Now, the reasonI brought up Trader Joe's is
because Trader Joe's everythingis private label. That's what

(02:17:30):
they that's what they're builtupon. So pretty much all of
Trader Joe's food comes from theactual like focus product. If
you've been to Trader Joe's,even, I think they, they have
pretty close to the Girl Scoutcookies too, because they're
buying those directly from thesame manufacturers that make the
Girl Scout cookies. So you seethis all over, but yes, Trader

(02:17:55):
Joe's does this as their actuallike, you know, I guess strategy
to to existing today. 80% oftheir products are private
labeled. A lot of it is likeFrito Lay does those? Does their
pita chips? And so when you goand you see these better prices,

(02:18:17):
know that they're coming.
They're because they aretechnically some of the regular
items that you're actuallybuying. And what I think is
interesting is I've always,like, heard this, and I've
thought to myself, like, Well,why would, for example, like,
why would Duracell do that? Whywould Duracell also put their
same batteries on a shelf nextto them that they know is

(02:18:41):
probably going to sell for less,right? It doesn't seem odd,
right? And, and the reason forit, though, is, if you like,
mathematically, think about it.
For them, it's about being ableto produce higher volumes and
bring those margins down no

matter what. And it's also an
additional revenue stream forthem, exactly.

It's a way for them to basically compete with
themselves on a shelf, and atthe same time I can do that,
because likely that pricedifference between the Duracell
battery and the Walmart batteryis still more than what you get
from producing a larger scale.
But I think it's interesting,like I always when I really

(02:19:27):
started learning about privatebrands, and specifically started
learning about Trader Joe's, Iwould tell you to like, go to
because they do hide it, buthonestly, a lot of them do put
it on their packaging at the endof it. So I would really push
you to like, I do this withpretty much all foods I buy now

(02:19:47):
is if they're pretty close, ifI'm looking at a regular brand
and a private label, why notlook at the well, first off,
I'll look and see if itshowcases where it's coming
from. If it's in the same city,it's likely the same
manufacturer. If it doesn't havethat information on there, I go
immediately to the ingredients,because the ingredients will
read exactly the same. And ifthose ingredients read exactly

(02:20:10):
the same, honey, save $1 get theWalmart brand. And so I, when I
first started, I think I saw avideo on Trader Joe's, like,
over a couple years ago, and itand one reason I started looking
into it was because it was like,Well, why would you do that?
Right? You're competing withyourself that same stuff. But
then I started learning aboutthat, and now as a consumer,

(02:20:32):
it's like, I will gladly buy aprivate label, especially if
things are looking the same ingeneral. So yeah, that's why I
think people love Trader Joe'sso much. They love the one.
You're getting things a littlebit cheaper, but you're also
getting the things you'realready planning on buying at a
little bit cheaper as well. So,yeah, so,

well, there's even, like, the the
Costco route, where I waswatching this, this video on,
like, the history of, like, theKirkland brand, and at first, so
to back it up, a little bit likeretailers like Amazon, and I
know target in particular, theyhave multiple private label
brands inside of their own, youknow, sort of digital, whether

(02:21:14):
Amazon, digital e commercestores or within target itself,
and you would never know thatthat brand is owned by target,
because it looks completelydifferent their packaging and
all of that stuff. So Costcofollowed a very similar route in
their early days. Or they had abunch of different private
labels, but quality controlbecame a concern. And so what

(02:21:37):
they did is they created theofficial, like Kirkland brand,
because it was based in the thetown that they had their home
offices in, and so they calledit Kirkland, and then they
developed these relationshipswith these different suppliers
that were already in theirstores. And so they'd created,
like, a pricing structure wherethey agreed that, first of all,
it's quality plus pricing. Andso for the pricing there, these

(02:22:02):
brands that they partner withare not allowed to sell it for
like a, you know, a certainpercentage above, like, I think,
10% so they have to keep theirpricing pretty stable, and then
the Kirkland brand will alwaysbe cheaper and but also with the
Kirkland brand, they theypartner individually for each of

(02:22:23):
their their like coffee. Forexample, they partner with one
company for coffee, whereas, youknow, maybe Amazon is partnering
with several different companiesfor their battery production. So
there's a level of like youscratch my back, I scratch yours
with the Kirkland brand forsomeone, maybe like a Duracell
to create like a and I don'tknow if they have like Kirkland

(02:22:45):
batteries, but them just goingwith that example. But also,
they have an additional layer ofquality control, where no
Kirkland brand is approved for anew product unless the CEO is
actually testing it. And so theyhave this, like several layers
of quality control that willalways, you know, sort of
permeate throughout the company.
And so I think that that's whereyou know everything from what

(02:23:08):
you said to the success of theKirkland brand, because I have a
couple graphics here that it isjust it's ginormous of how much
this brand has grown, theKirkland brand in general, like,
look at these numbers. SoCampbell's, Hershey, Kellogg's,
McDonald's, Nike, Kirkland hasmore revenue. And this is a

(02:23:31):
chart from 2021 but you couldargue that a lot of these
numbers have stayed the same, ifnot, maybe Kirkland has grown
more market share because, youknow, obviously McDonald's has
struggled in the last couple ofyears, Nike has struggled
famously in the last couple ofyears, but they have more
revenue than all of the rest ofthe companies combined.

Yeah, which is crazy, yeah. And you know, the
fun one for you personally, Iactually learned it's kind of
the same thing. Do you know whothe Try Guys are? The name
sounds familiar? Yeah, they'rethe well, they try,

go figure, yeah.

So they're, like, it's a really popular YouTube
channel. They try a bunch ofthings. And I like watching
there, of course. Like, they goto, like, Disney World, you
know, and like, try all the funfoods and stuff like that. One
of the episodes Keith goes intobecause, just because he's tried
food at so many locations, he'she's starting to figure out,
like, all of the Disney food isjust craft, interesting, yeah.

(02:24:34):
So it's like, I think some ofit's grown right, and you can
usually tell, but it's like,like, universal uses the same
stuff, like, in, you know, I'mtrying to think of what the food
is that he usually gets thathe's like, I know how this is
going to taste, because it'scraft. But, you know, amusement
parks are doing this all thesame thing too, right? It's

(02:24:56):
like, there's only he bringsthis up, and one of the
episodes, there's only truly, interms of, like, like eating at
schools, eating at amusementparks, eating at, like, public
places, like three manufacturersof wholesale for this, and like,
the whole United States. So it'slike, if it's not craft, I think
he said it was like GFS orsomeone else, but it's the same

(02:25:18):
thing. Like, a lot of that foodyou're eating is like the same
in all those places. So have

you ever seen that image of all of
the businesses that and I'mgoing to share it, yeah, really
quick. But if you're justlistening, I'm sorry, but it's
like this giant web of we have123456789, about 10 companies,
but all of these differentbrands that are under those 10

(02:25:45):
companies is just astounding.
Like, I can't even like, zoom inenough on this photo for you to
be able to see all of the labelsthat are associated with these
10 big companies are probablyall using the same that's why
our food system is shit, becausethey're all using the same BS,
allegedly, and they're in all oftheir products, and then they

(02:26:06):
feed them to us. And you know,we're all have gut health issues
because of it, yeah,

except for, like, we love you, Coca

Cola, some brands in there that I do,
like I do, and I'll get moreinto this, you know, a little
bit in in our last segment. ButI'm on, like, a big, like,
health revitalization journey. Imean, you know, I'll talk more
about that here in a bit, butit's just the more with our food
system, the more layers you peelback. It's like, wow, everybody

(02:26:39):
is really, like, full of shit,except for Kirkland and Aldis
and Trader Joe's. Like, that'swhat it feels like, is that all
of these companies are just outhere, you know, trying to kill
us. But then on, I think to kindof, you know, bring it full
circle. The shop, the modernshopper is savvier, and they can

(02:27:00):
see right through the bullshit.
And I think that that's where,you know, companies like Costco,
with their Kirkland brand, aresucceeding, versus like, the
Meghan Markle like as everbrand, where, you know, she's
launching like a new bottle ofwine on Princess Diana's
birthday. No lie, what?

Yes, wow. She just loves to piss us off,
doesn't she?

You know, it's at that weird moment
where, like, you know, she'spissed off everybody in her
personal, like family, closecircle life, because none of
them come to the wedding,besides her mother. She disowns
her father, who she still hasn'tspoken to. She forced Harry to
disown his entire family and allof his traditions. And you know
all of that, and you know now,bringing it sort of full circle,

(02:27:50):
it's like, you're not a stay athome mom, you're not a stay at
home wife. Yeah, you're kind ofa fraud. Because she's picking
all of these products that she'sshe's portraying herself as
almost like a Trad wife, and sheis none of those things. And
she's filming a reality showinside of a house she doesn't

(02:28:11):
own from a garden that's nothers. Honey bees that are not
none of this is hers.

He's not touching people. My best friend is a B
gal. Shout out to Bellwetherbees. If you need honey, go to
their website. But she ain't,she ain't touching no bees.

That's the thing, like shoppers can
sniff this kind of stuff out. Soshe's kind of like 510, years
too late on being like thePinterest food influencer vibe,
yeah. Why she even needs to dothis career path is beyond me,
but it's the the privatelabeling of her brand is never

(02:28:52):
going to work, because shoppersare much more savvy now, yeah,
and they can seek out the brandsthat they truly resonate with or
that they truly find value in.
Yeah, and that's the TraderJoe's, that's the Kirkland
brands, maybe not so much aslike, you know, great value, or
even, like, Amazon Basics,because there's some
questionable things going onwith Amazon Basics that I don't
necessarily agree with, withtheir private labeling, where

(02:29:15):
they essentially, you know,there was, like, there was this
bag manufacturer that spentlike, I think it's called like
Peak Design or something likethat. But they make, like,
travel camera bags, and they'vebeen spent 10 years developing
the concept around this bag. Andthen they want to add another

(02:29:36):
revenue stream. They want to addanother outlet. Where are people
shopping? Of course, on Amazon.
So they start selling theirproducts on Amazon. Well, what
does Amazon do? They completelyrip off his design that he spent
10 years getting all of the, youknow, the due diligence and the
product testing and the customerfeedback, and tweaking all of

(02:29:56):
the things and supply, and doingall of the things to get a
successful product to market.
And they rip off his design. Andif it wasn't for and he says it
in the CSC NBC video, that if itwas early on in their business,
they would have been crushed.
And so now what they do is theymake sure that they have a
design patent on everything, sothat Amazon can't come in.

(02:30:20):
Because what happens is that ifAmazon has all of this data, and
allegedly, they can go and seecertain products that are
selling very high, that have alow return rate, kind of bring
it all full circle with thisepisode, and they could use that
data to then go and make theirown products and then shove your
product way down on the searchresult rankings and push their

(02:30:42):
product to the top. And if itwasn't for him going to the
media about this, about whatAmazon was doing to him, then he
says that his company would havebeen wiped out. Luckily, his fan
base was built up and that itwas stronger, so they a lot of
these users went and left badreviews on that Amazon product,

(02:31:02):
and Amazon stopped making it. Sothat is a minor like success
story, and sort of a Davidversus a Goliath kind of battle
like that. But there arecountless other people. My uncle
was a victim of this. He wasselling office products. He had
the full like, you know, inperson, store that people would
go to. Obviously, when timeshifted, he moved his business
online. Time shifted again, sohe started selling his products

(02:31:25):
that he was sourcing, that werereally good sellers, that his
customers loved. Started sellingthem on eight. Amazon. And there
was one, like ladder inparticular, that was, like,
their number one seller. Andthen one day, that business just
gets cut off, and Amazon'sladder from Amazon Basics is
shot to the top of the rankings,and his is nowhere to be found.

(02:31:46):
And so that is a major he pulledall of his business off of
Amazon because of it, because itwas so pissed off and like,
rightfully so. But that's kindof shady practices, like
consumers are getting wiser tothese things. Hopefully will
spend unless they need it. Youknow, in two days, hopefully
you're making smarter shoppingdecisions because of all of the

(02:32:06):
information that we have at ourfingertips. Of the brands that
do it right, like, yeah, goes inKirkland versus laziness or the
outright theft, yeah, what someof these other companies are
doing,

it's almost like, back to what I was saying about
the AI stuff. It's like, I thinkhow much AI has grown, we've
quickly started to realize,like, what's real and what's
not. And I think, as much as youknow, I don't want to make it
like a political thing, butlike, I think we're seeing the
same thing with our food aswell, right? It's like, okay,
we're understanding labels. Wehave the internet. We can easily

(02:32:41):
look up what these ingredientsare. The other thing too about
it as well, and because we usedto talk about this on
Freightways, stock out. Show is,it's not hard for a lot of these
companies to switch, becausethey're already making these
products and for Europe, right?
So it's like, what

you're talking about, like the red dye,
yeah, things like that that arebeing that are in our food
system for who knows?

Yeah, they're always just kind of taking
advantage of maybe the ignoranceof America Americans and the
lack of regulation in thatspace. So it's like, I think the
same thing is happening, right?
Like with our food, where it'slike, no, we we're going to
figure out kind of what you'redoing, and we're we're going to
make better decisions asconsumers as well because of

(02:33:31):
that, right and more. So we knowthat you can pivot, if you need
to, and still make a healthymargin because of our abilities
to get our hands on thosedocuments to know that the
ingredients are different andyou're still able to be a
profitable at the end of theday, right? So I like, I like

(02:33:53):
it. We're almost, like, goingthrough this, like, like
intelligence, maybe, likerevolution, where it's, I mean,
we see a bullshit detector isgetting better, exactly, but I
think that that's because we'regetting smarter in a way, right?
So longer that we have bullshitdetectors, we just know it's not

(02:34:13):
true, and, and, and so, yeah,it's fun to, like, see how
that's going to affectconsumerism throughout the next
couple of years.

Yeah, because, I mean, I'll definitely
say, like, after like, all ofthe sort of the the tariff
drama, it's, I've cut back on alot of my just, I guess, dumb
spending, like that level oflike consumerism, where it's
like, you know, I'll buy, youknow, spend 100 bucks at temu,
and I'll get 100 products. And,you know, who cares? I'll just,

(02:34:44):
you know, throw it away if Idon't need it. You know, it
doesn't matter and doesn't wantit back. And so they're willing
to let me keep it if I don'twant it, and or the product
breaks within a, you know, twomonths, and it's like, who
cares? I'll just get another onefor $6 like, it's that kind of
mindset that I think is shiftingin larger scale. And I, you

(02:35:04):
know, I don't know. I think forsome of this stuff, if I would,
if someone would have told mesome of the things that are
coming out of my mouth, even,like, five, six years ago, I
would have rolled my eyes atmyself, like, who cares? Like,
go save the planet, you know,whatever kind of like, I guess,
sarcastic remark. But I thinkthat a lot of these like, we

(02:35:28):
just to bring it back, like,we're just getting more savvy as
a customer, and we're able to bemaybe more intentional about
where we spend our money. Is it,you know, with small businesses,
or is it something that's moreof a quality item that's been
handcrafted? Is it something youknow? Is it, you know, honey
from a local you know, bee farmlike that, feels better to spend

(02:35:51):
your money there. And I thinkwhere, you know, I I kind of
still have to make improvements,is, like the convenience factor,
and, you know, some of theseitems, I just need it in two
days, like, you know, and I'mwilling to, you know, look the
other way of some of thesepractices based on needs, but I
am trying to shift my consumerbehavior into healthier options,

(02:36:16):
more sustainable options, andjust trying to be a better
person. I guess overall,

the one thing I will say to that though, and
this is why I've always beenbullish on more of like micro
fulfillment and more. Of, like,how close are we to? Kind of,
the things that we want is, is,can, what they say, convenience
is the price of community,right? So, you know, consider

(02:36:43):
that aspect Right? Like, thefact that if we can actually get
to a point where we feel likewe're buying more community
like, basically, can we get to apoint where we're ending that,
where it's not a price right,where we can create fulfillment
centers in a way that we can buyclothes? We don't have to worry
about shipping our clothes fromfor $12 across the United

(02:37:06):
States, but there's just, youknow, a short distance for that
return. And so I think thatthat's probably, that is
probably what more the reverselogistics, right is trying to do
is like, well, can we figure outa way to make this all right,
sustainable, in a realistic,more modern setting?

So yeah, and if you're just
listening to the the isolatedsegment, because what you know,
sort of peek behind the curtaina little bit we are, yeah, it's
in the it should be a link inthe show notes for you to be
able to listen to that otherconversation. And so on YouTube,
we are still uploading this showin full to both the podcast and
then also as a live video toYouTube. But then YouTube, the

(02:37:47):
algorithm just likes it more.
Likes it better if some of thesesegments are split up, and so if
you missed any part of thatreturn versus reverse logistics
that is in another show, itshould hopefully be, you know,
recommended to you algorithmwise, but if not, just check out
the playlist over on YouTube.

(02:38:08):
Thanks for tuning in to anotherepisode of everything is
logistics, where we talk allthings supply chain. For the
thinkers in freight, if you likethis episode, there's plenty
more where that came from. Besure to follow or subscribe on
your favorite podcast app so younever miss a conversation. The
show is also available in videoformat over on YouTube, just by
searching, everything islogistics. And if you're working

(02:38:29):
in freight, logistics or supplychain marketing. Check out. My
company, digital dispatch, wehelp you build smarter websites
and marketing systems thatactually drive results, not just
vanity metrics. Additionally, ifyou're trying to find the right
freight tech tools or partnerswithout getting buried in
buzzwords, head on over tocargorex.io where we're building
the largest database oflogistics services and

(02:38:52):
solutions, all the links youneed are in the show notes. I'll
catch you in the Next episode ingo jags. You you.

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