The Freight Buyers' Club

Recorded at Air Cargo China in Shanghai, Mike sits down with Cédric Millet, President of CargoTech, for an exclusive look at how one company is pulling air cargo's software under a single roof. CargoTech is a holding company, backed by the same owner as ECS Group, the world's largest cargo GSA. It brings together specialist software companies, each focused on its own domain. Millet's pitch is a si...

Mike King is in Shanghai for Air Cargo China, and he sat down with Kathy Liu, VP global sales and marketing at Dimerco Express Group, for a fast read on what is really moving across ocean and air. Container rates have climbed since March, and Kathy explains the mix behind it: vessels tied up by Middle East disruption, a shortage of empty boxes at key Asian origins, and shippers front-loading ahead...

Trade wars used to be something economists told you to avoid. Nobody wins one, so you don't fight. That argument is over. In this episode of The Freight Buyers' Club, Mike King talks to trade economist Chad Bown about why the old rules-based system has gone, and what that means for anyone who sources, ships or moves cargo for a living. Chad Bown is the Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson...

Richard Broekman, Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Sustainability at Atlas Air, joins Mike King and Neel Jones Shah for the June episode of Air Cargo Unpacked. Atlas flies 113 widebody freighters, around 13% of the world's widebody freighter fleet, so few people have a better view of where this market is heading. Richard gives a first-hand account of how Atlas managed the US de minimis shock i...

China's exports to the US have fallen, but China hasn't slowed down. It has redirected. In this clip from the latest episode of The Freight Buyers' Club, Nigel Pusey, CEO of Container Trades Statistics, walks through where the cargo is going now: Sub-Saharan Africa up 33% in Q1 2026, South and Central America up 17%, India up 17%. He explains why this started before the latest round of tariffs, an...

The first episode of FBC Opinion, a new series from The Freight Buyers' Club. One expert, one argument, straight to camera, no host. In 2019, Akhil Nair wrote that container shipping would consolidate from 22 carriers to 12 within four years. Not through mergers. Through game theory. Seven years later, the count is exactly twelve. In this opinion piece, Akhil audits his own 2019 thesis. What he go...

Forget Trump's tariffs. The biggest story in container shipping isn't what's happening at America's ports. It's what's happening everywhere else. In the first quarter of 2026, the global container market grew 4.4% despite the Strait of Hormuz being shut, fresh war in the Middle East, and Cape of Good Hope sailings now stretching east-west trade to breaking point. But underneath the headlines, the...

In this clip from The Freight Buyers' Club, three of the sharpest minds in logistics technology give three very different answers to the same question: in three years, which type of company wins? Zubin Appoo, CEO of WiseTech Global, says integrated platforms with AI at the core displace everything else. Wolfgang Lehmacher, former Head of Supply Chain at the World Economic Forum, backs the ecosyste...

Is Amazon replacing the 3PL? In this episode of Air Cargo Unpacked, Mike King and co-host Neel Jones Shah dig into Amazon Supply Chain Services and what it really means for third party logistics providers, freight forwarders and the air cargo market. Is this a genuine supply chain management revolution or just a repackaging of existing services? Also in this May episode: the Middle East capacity r...

The Trump administration’s tariff programme has suffered another legal defeat. The US Court of International Trade ruled 2-1 against the 10% Section 122 global surcharge, the replacement for the IEEPA reciprocal tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court in February. So which tariffs are actually still standing, and what comes next?  Mike King is joined by Karen Kenney, founder and president of K2 T...

In this clip from The Freight Buyers' Club's latest AI and logtech special, Eric Johnson, Senior Technology Editor at the Journal of Commerce, gives freight buyers and logistics operators a practical framework for cutting through the AI vendor noise. He covers how he evaluates vendor claims as a journalist, why the compulsion to understand how AI works is the wrong instinct, what blockchain taught...

On April 7th this year, Anthropic released an AI model called Claude Mythos. It was so capable at finding vulnerabilities in software that the company restricted access to around fifty organisations. The US Treasury summoned the biggest banks. The Pentagon had already stepped in. The Economist called it a watershed moment. In this episode of The Freight Buyers' Club, Mike King uses the Mythos mome...

When markets break, most industries struggle. Freight forwarders? They often make more. In this episode of the Freight Buyers’ Club, Oliver Gritz (former CFO of DHL Express and Founder & CEO of Ontegos Cloud) explains why crisis creates opportunity in freight—and why some forwarders thrive while others fall behind. From war-driven disruption and supply chain chaos to liquidity stress and misse...

Gulf air cargo hubs have taken a serious hit since the Middle East war began. The world's most strategically positioned freight network is under pressure - and the industry wants to know if it comes back. In this segment from the latest Air Cargo Unpacked, Mike King and Neel Jones Shah sit down with Ram Menen - the man who spent nearly 28 years building Emirates SkyCargo and helped make Dubai one...

The Middle East war that began on February 28th has sent shockwaves through global air cargo. Jet fuel has nearly doubled. Gulf hub capacity is still less than 60% of normal. And a fragile ceasefire has done little to restore confidence in the region's critical air corridors. In this episode of Air Cargo Unpacked, Mike King and Neel Jones Shah are joined by air cargo legend Ram Menen, who spent ne...

The Strait of Hormuz has been closed to commercial shipping since the end of February. One month on, the world is still counting the cost. Freight rates are rising, bunkers and jet fuel are running short, and the risk of escalation into the Red Sea and beyond is growing. In this episode of The Freight Buyers' Club, Mike King is joined by two of the most respected voices in the industry: Lars Jense...

Recorded live at the IATA World Cargo Symposium in Lima, Peru, Mike King sits down with Andres Bianchi, CEO of LATAM Cargo, the cargo arm of the largest airline group in South America. Andres breaks down LATAM Cargo's network across North America, Europe and intra-South America, their fleet of 19 Boeing 767 freighters, and why 65% of their cargo is special cargo, dominated by perishables like Chil...

Logistics technology promises a lot. But how do you know if a vendor is selling you reality or a roadmap? In this Freight Buyers' Club interview from TPM26 in Long Beach, Mike King sits down with independent logistics technology consultant Mike DeAngelis, who has worked across Maersk, INTTRA, WiseTech Global, project44 and FourKites, to get the questions every freight buyer and shipper should be a...

Everyone's talking about AI. Peter Creeden thinks we're building on sand. Peter Creeden, MD of MPC International and advisor to the IMO's Port Call Optimization task force, joined Mike King at TPM26 in Long Beach to make the case that shipping's data foundations need to come before any AI investment. From the IMO's new PCO Guide to e-bills of lading, smart contracts, and scope three emissions repo...

Air cargo doesn't stop for war. It reroutes. Jan Krems, President of United Cargo, joins Mike King at the IATA World Cargo Symposium in Lima, Peru, for one of the most candid conversations in recent air freight memory. With Middle East airspace closed, fuel prices up sixty to seventy percent, and tariff policy shifting overnight, Jan explains how United keeps cargo moving when the world keeps thro...

The Middle East war sent shockwaves through global air cargo markets almost overnight. 18% of global capacity disappeared within 48 hours. Mike King sits down with Ray Zedov, Commercial Director at Rotate, at IATA World Cargo Symposium in Lima to break down what the data actually shows - from grounded Gulf carriers and rerouted integrators to Vietnam's supply chain surge and what shippers should b...

Recorded live at the IATA World Cargo Symposium in Lima, Air Cargo Unpacked brings together host Mike King, United Cargo President Jan Krems, TAC Index Founder Peyton Burnett and co-host Neel Jones Shah for the definitive air cargo briefing on the Middle East war. Capacity on the Asia-Europe corridor has collapsed by more than 40% on some routes. Charter prices have tripled. Jet fuel has hit level...

In this exclusive interview at TPM26 in Long Beach, Mike King is talking to Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd, to discuss three of the biggest stories shaping container shipping right now. Rolf gives his take on the proposed Zim acquisition and what it means for freight buyers, the impact of US and Israeli strikes on Iran and what that means for ships currently stuck in the Persian Gulf, and...

The US and Israel have struck Iran. The Supreme Court has struck down the IEEPA tariffs. And every freight buyer is asking the same question: what do we actually plan for now? Mike King sits down with Paul Bingham, Director of Transportation Consulting, Economics and Country Risk at S&P Global Market Intelligence, at TPM26 in Long Beach to make sense of it all. They cover: The Iran strikes and...

Freight buying strategy is being tested like never before. Tariff whiplash, carrier consolidation, AI adoption and nobody quite knows what comes next. Mark McCullough, CEO of Gebrüder Weiss North America, joins Mike King for a frank conversation about how one of the world's leading freight forwarders is navigating the uncertainty and what it means for shippers. They cover the proposed Hapag-Lloyd/...