You can automate all this stuff, right? You can automate the booking process. You can automate the quoting process. But you can't automate the uh oh moments, right? You can't automate, Hey, I got a problem and I gotta solve this today. That's done with people. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, where everywhere in the world. Welcome to episode 75 of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the number one show focusing exclusively on the intersection of sustainability and supply chains. I'm your host, Tom Raftery, and I'm thrilled to have you today. A huge thank you to this show's amazing supporters, Kieran Ognev and Alicia Farag. You really help to make this podcast possible. If this podcast regularly brings you value and you'd like to help me keep the podcast going, support starts at just three euros or dollars a month, which is less than the price of a cup of coffee, and you can find the link in the show notes of this or any episode or at tiny url.com/ssc pod. Now, you know how air freight is supposed to be fast, right? But in reality, it's often a mess of delays, siloed systems, missed consolidations and sky high emissions. Well, imagine someone who spent decades in the trenches of freight forwarding, got sick of the inefficiency and decided to fix it, not with yet another freight marketplace, but by building an AI powered platform that helps the little guys punch way above their weight. That's Chris Condon. He's the founder of Aircon and the creator of Captain Cargo. That's what it's called. Yeah. And he's helped small and mid-size forwarders compete with the giants by pooling cargo, predicting disruptions, and slashing both cost and carbon. In today's episode, we're talking about freight visibility, predictive analytics, sustainability, and why faster quoting matters more than faster planes. If you are trying to make your supply chain not just greener but smarter, this one's for you. Before we get into that, in the next few weeks, I'll be talking to Matt Trubow, who's the commercial director of Hidden, Erik Garcell, director of Enterprise Development for Classiq where we'll be talking about quantum computing. Ollie Carpenter, director of Environmental Risk for Risilience, and Conrad Snover, CEO of Procurability. But back to today's show, and as I said, my special guest today is Chris. Chris, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Sure. My name is Chris Condon. I'm the Founder and CEO of Aircon and one of our products is Captain Cargo. Okay, Chris, what is Aircon? Aircon is, is really a, platform that allows small to medium-sized freight forwarders to compete at scale and really connecting all the different dots around the globe so they can really meet their customers where their customers are at at that particular time. Tell me, Chris, what's the genesis story behind Aircon? What made you wake up one morning and say, I know, I think I'll start Aircon? Yeah, it, it really comes down that with my inability to compete as a small or a medium sized freight forwarder, I had a, I was running a, a forwarding company based out of the US four offices, roughly a hundred employees. And I can compete on every mode of transportation, air, ocean. I compete on customs. I can compete on, you know, the four wall environment or the fulfillment side of it. But I had a, I struggled with air freight. And air freight is, is really the mode of transportation where it's just more exciting. There's more money in it. It, it's more complex than most. And I wasn't able to compete, and I wasn't able to compete because I didn't either have the buying power, I wasn't able to consolidate, or I just didn't have the network to solve it where these customers were going, that I, and that I needed it to go. So the, the idea of Aircon was really to support and become that stop gap for, the areas where customers don't have the, either the expertise, they don't have the volume, or they just don't even know where to start to look, right. So we, we were providing that solution for them, not to replace the freight forwarder, not to remove the freight forward, but really to amplify what they're doing.'cause we truly believe that people do business with people. And if we can remove the friction we can continue to do that. Okay. And what has surprised you most in that transition from being a freight forwarder to now running Aircon? The risk reward sta standpoint would probably be the biggest one. We are very transactional type business, right? We, we focus a lot on the per shipment or per transaction versus trying to find what the solution is long term. And I, and I've said this throughout my entire career, is you know, let's chase the account. Let's not chase the shipment, right? So if we, if we, if we gotta lose here to win there overall if we're winning, who cares, right? But I found that most as a freight forwarder, that, that, treated me very well. Right, because I was, always talking about solutions and the pain point of our shipper or the consignee, like what problem am I solving? And I didn't have to make money on everything I did. I just had to make money overall. But as a, an air freight freight forwarder, it's very very similar stuff, right? It's, price, it's timing, it's it's network. And everybody is focused on, not everybody. A lot of people are focused on that transaction, right? So how do I win this particular shipment, particularly when they start getting larger, right? When you start getting into three plus tons or some specialty stuff like it's all about how much money do I make? And that, for me, that's been a struggle from a, a software provider, if you will. That they were looked at as, as a cost, not a value to the thing. So we had to, we've done some things obviously to combat that. That's how we introduced Captain Cargo is to reduce the friction in terms of getting the access to the rates and getting that knowledge. And then starting things that are new is, is really the, biggest challenges. We're, trying to be a part of something that people don't really understand yet. Whereas a freight forwarder, there's lots of history we can look at and hey, what works, what doesn't work? Who's moving this? How are they moving it? Like we can learn from other people. What we're trying to do there's just a lot of bits and pieces that we gotta try to sew together to really make it seamless. And then friction, frictionless. Okay. And what problems are you solving for your customers? Well, so be able to compete at scale or compete in general, right? So you have access to rates, which again, people lot talk about rates a lot. That is the, the main reason why people say no, right? Hey, you're too high or, or whatnot. But what we found is that rate is really secondary in air freight. So rate in ocean, rate in truck is absolutely a priority. In air freight, it's really about time and options. A lot of people believe that air freight is a function of uhoh moments, right? Hey, my line's down, or, you know, I need it here because of this. But the reality of it is there's lots of reasons why people move via air. It could be security reasons, it could be timing could be part of it, but it could be the fact that, hey, I just need it there faster than ocean can get it there for me. Like we move corrugated from the Midwest in the US to India every week. We have 26 skids twice a week from the Midwest to thing, and it's corrugated. They move via air because of the condensation and, and whatnot. So there's lots of reason why people move air, and what we found is that speed matters more in the quoting process than it does in the actual transit time. And then the knowledge and the probability of that transit time being accurate, which is really our third, bring this up a little bit.'cause that's really our third agent that we're building. So we're doing a quoting agent. We're gonna do a booking agent next, which is not that exciting to me, just 'cause there's lots of different players in that market or in that field. And so we're trying to figure out how to either partner with or JV, build, buy. We're, trying to figure that all out yet. But the third agent, which is really the, exception agent, is really the cool stuff, right? It's really the what if scenarios that happen while we're sleeping, right? So as a passenger flying on an aircraft, right? If the plane gets delayed or you miss your connection, you know, obviously you're rebooked and if it doesn't meet your requirements, you have the options to pay more on another flight. But you're really doing that in real time, right? You're doing it, you know, if you're whatever airport you're at, you're talking to someone to get that resolved. Well, cargo doesn't talk, right? So, when you're sleeping the airline will rebook it to the next available flight, but maybe that doesn't meet your need. Right? Maybe you're a manufacturer that, you need it here by tomorrow at, or the next day by noon. So a three day transit doesn't work, right? I, I can't wait three days. And you're willing to pay more to meet your need from either, again, your manufacturing or your, or your retail standpoint. So the agent will give those options or those solutions to the person that it actually re affects. And I think it's a double benefit. One is the freight forwarder doesn't have to have that difficult conversation of uh, oh, your cargo got delayed and your next option is in three days. I know that doesn't meet your need, but this is what we have. And then two, it gives the, the power of what the, options are to the buyer or the one that's spending their money. Right. So maybe, maybe three days is okay. So leave it as is and no harm, no foul. But no, I got, I gotta move it. Okay. Here's your options. Move it. Yeah. I don't care if it costs me a million dollars more 'cause it's gonna cost me 10 million if I don't have it there by this particular time. Right. So it. It removes friction in providing that service, 'cause at the end of the day forwarder's value is about having knowledge and having a solution to the buyer's problem, right?'Cause if not, you can go directly the steamship line. You can go directly with the airline or your customs broker. But the value is really giving that knowledge on all the different what ifs and, and scenarios when stuff does hit the fan. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And why? Why is it that small and medium freight forwarders often get squeezed outta the market? There's a lot of different reasons I think. Mainly because they get gobbled up. So part of the motion of, of what companies do is they grow to a certain point and then they they either can't grow any further or they just get bought up because they have a great idea or a great process. And you see that in all industries. It's not a freight forwarding specific industry, but in freight forwarding, you see it all the time. Obviously Keuhne + Nagle's bought a bunch. DSV, Maersk, they've all merged all these other companies together as their method of growing their business. But every time that happens there's a plethora of companies that start up, right? Because again, people do business with people and maybe I don't like the direction or the leadership of that particular company, so I'm gonna do it on my own, or I'm gonna go join another company that does their own. And then your customers end up don't always follow you. But if you have a solution that they trust you and they have a bad experience, they're gonna come to you. It's an interesting question because I think about this often, is how do we help ensure that our customers try to keep as many customers as they possibly can? Partly is that, is having them have the ability to meet their need where they're at. So a lot of our customers are, are truckers, right? So they're their truck people in the US right? They have assets and 99.99% of their customers ship truck. But that, that one time they needed an air freight shipment, if you can't support them, they're gonna go to somewhere else, right? Yeah. Not on any fault of their own or yours, but they're gonna go to somewhere else. Well, that's a crack, right? How, how is their service? How are their rates, right? So that customer that they went to or that forwarder that they went to, to try to do their air freight. Now it has the opportunity to pull that freight away from the trucker if you will. So part of the solution is to give everybody all the tools and whatnot that they need to try to keep their customers inside their house so they don't even have to go look outside their four walls. Mm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense. And this is the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, so what's the connection between one thing and the other? Yep. Couple things. One through consolidation and maximising the capacity of aircraft the aircraft is moving one way or the other. Obviously, most aircraft are moved through passenger going from A to B, and the cargo just happens to ride along with it. So if we can maximise that capacity, we're making sure that we're not creating more need for more planes in the air, right? Because once that plane leaves, that capacity is outta the market. You can't resell it, can't reuse it, it's gone. Right? So how do we maximise that? And our technology, part of the technology that we're doing is, is how do we maximise that across multiple airports and across multiple airlines, right? Because everybody has a master, right? When you're working, if you're an airline, your master is, your airline, your, routes, your P&L, if you will. And if you're a trucker, obviously your routes, you know, same, same. So part of the idea or solution that we have in terms of the AI predictive analytics is I have freight coming out of, let's say Wisconsin Milwaukee, Wisconsin, going to London. Most people go Milwaukee to Chicago, Chicago to London. But sometimes those, routes are full, right? Or those, the capacities are full. And so how do you predict, predict that? And then what is the probability of hey, going over Cincinnati, for example that maybe BA has two flights a week, you know, during the summer months that out of Cincinnati. So you still can meet the customer's demand by the rate and the transit time. Now we, as you book it as part of our booking agent, is we will re-quote it and re-look at the network. What is the capacity? What is the, the probability and then how does a freight forwarder make more money? Right. So in that scenario of London from Chicago over Cincinnati, that rate may be 50 cents less a kilo, right? So. If that's the case, if you still meet the customer's demands, now you have an opportunity to make more money.'cause you know what the customer is. You know what the transit time is requirement and now you just gotta find a the best way to to do it for you to make money. Again, adding value to the freight forwarder. And then if you can consolidate. Which is really our, our long-term play, and why we started Aircon in the first place was now we can go to these five or six freight forwarders and says, Hey, every Thursday you guys are shipping to London outta Chicago. What if I can reduce your rate by 30%? Same transit time less damage. And now we're maximising the space in the actual aircraft, and there's nothing left behind, right? It's not getting bumped to the next, flight.'cause if it's overage, the tech says, okay, instead of American, put this on BA instead of BA put this on Qatar or Virgin, whatever, whatever the, the scenario is. But again, the intent is to maximise the capacity which will reduce in theory. The rate to the freight forwarder, which in theory then reduces that rate back to the, the shipper and buyer, which ultimately affects the consumer us buying it. And you mentioned AI. How is that useful in air freight today? Lot of different ways. We're using it today in our Captain Cargo. We're using the LLM, which is a large language modeling, which basically allows email to be kind of the down and dirty, if you will, of API or, or EDI from back in the day. Right. It allows us to structure the data in a manner that we can digest it. We can run different analytics behind that in terms of again, capacity rates and on time probability. So that's one way. The other way that we're using is to predict future rates and predict future capacity. Right? A lot of people think that air freight is so complex, which it is like there's 12 to 15 people that touch each freight from quoting to, delivery, right? From the warehouse, the trucking, it is complex that there's no doubt about it. But it is very predictable, right? There's variables that we can see and patterns that we've seen from a predictability standpoint. And so as we connect all these dots, that data from AI becomes more predictable right? And more accurate, the more data we have. And to be fair, there's very little data on air freight. If you we're VC backed, right? I pitch to investors saying, Hey, give us money cause we wanna build this really cool thing. Which is true, but it's difficult to, to share the story on how big air freight is, right? The data's just not out there. Like, you can look at IATA, which at best is probably 30% accurate at best. There's prepaid there's CAST like IATA will show you that out of the US for cargo Anchorage, Alaska is the, is the number one airport. Well, we all know most of the freight doesn't start and or finish in, in Alaska, right? It's a landing spot for many airlines, particularly in this case, FedEx where cargo, starts and stops outta there. Right? The other issue, I I with data is that people hold onto it like it's their pride and joy. Like, so, so CAST data or the IATA data will tell you airport to airport, but it won't tell you that, hey, this came out of Juarez, Mexico going to London. Right? 29% of all air freight goes to London out of the US which is also kind of interesting for me to, to look at. But we all know it doesn't stay in London. Right. Now Brexit obviously affected some of this stuff, but the passengers go to London out of the US, 29% of the passengers transit through London, right? So the cargo just follows that flow. Which is, interesting to understand, but a lot of people outside the industry don't get that. Right. They don't understand like, oh, well it's just, just three lanes, right? US to London, US to South Africa, US to Australia, you got it covered. Well, US to China, you got it covered, but it's much more nuanced than that in terms of wide body, narrow body. Do you build it up? And then you add screening to it, right? It's like all the TSA requirements post 9/11, just adds complexity and we're trying to solve that and remove that friction so people can compete. Good thing there's not a lot of changes in things like tariffs to complicate things even further. Yeah, it's a, you, you know, it's kind of funny 'cause I, I anytime there's chaos in the world covid to tariffs, to whatever the freight forwarder win. Logistics folks just win, right? And they win. Be they win because. It's not normalised, Yeah. So they have to be creative on how to build things or how to move things.'cause at the end of the day, we still need, we still need our stuff, right? At the end of the day, we still need to eat. We still need to cut our hair. Those type of things, right? So I think the, the tariffs actually, what we've seen is, is buyers have added more quoting to their process. So as they're, trying to reduce their rate because of tariffs. Now they're trying to reduce you know, get some money outta the freight forwarder. Which again, if we all have the same knowledge, that's kind of hard to do. All you can play with with margin, right? In the ocean world, that's all you really can do is play with margin a little bit. But in air freight you can do a lot of cool things. So again, you can consolidate, reduce your total, cost. You can go over different ports that may add two days transit. But reduces your cost for X. You might be able to use a parcel carrier like a UPS, DHL, or FedEx that packages takes priority. So it may be a seven a day transit versus a two day transit. So again, other options to give that power back to the buyer, which is why I think Aircon is, is, is so special, is that we're, we're trying to give you that knowledge so you can meet your customer where they're, where they're at. Okay. And do you think sustainability mandates are driving innovation in freight, or are you finding yourself having to drag the industry along? That's a tough question. So in some ways I think it is, in some ways I think it's not. At the end of the day it's gonna come down to cost, right? And what people are willing to pay for it. And the governments need to get involved and either mandate it from the airlines. In this particular case, either mandate from the airlines or mandated from the truckers no different from the steamship line as they mandated, you know, the bunker fuel and, and whatnot. The government starts mandating it to where it's not a unfair advantage for these airlines, then I think it'll drive so, or drive it to, to, to sustainability. But until then I, it's gonna be more of a how important it is to the buyer. Right. So again, it always goes back to the buyer who's willing to pay. If the cost from Dallas to London is, let's say a dollar, but the fuel cost for sub, you know, is higher. So now I gotta charge a dollar 10 because that's important to me. You gotta sell it for a dollar 10. But the buyer, if it's not important to them, they're gonna go, you know, instead of American, they're gonna go with British Airways'cause it's 10 cents cheaper a kilo. Right? So we gotta level the playing field in my mind. And the way, only way to do that is, is through regulations. Which, you know, there's pros and cons to that as well, right? So just like everything else, there's a, there's a ying and a yang and a positive and negative, everything. So, I believe we will get there, but it will get there because of the, the people in general will force them to say, Hey, I'm willing to pay more for it today to do that. And then the prices will come down at scale Okay. That's kinda how I look at it. Fair enough. And how do you see the role of freight forwarders evolving over the next five, 10 years? Yeah, that's an interesting question too. I, I think that they're in a lot of ways, depending on how you look at it, I, I, you'll see them kind of dissipate in terms of size. When I say size number of people. But I see them creating more value. Right. So a more customer oriented versus transactional oriented. Right. So back to my point where people do business with people. You can automate all this stuff, right? You can automate the booking process. You can automate the quoting process. But you can't automate the uh oh moments, right? You can't automate, Hey, I got a problem and I gotta solve this today. That's done with people. The automation is stuff that's done that is things that are done on a consistent basis or repetition. So again, how, how do we all book an airway bill? It's all pretty standard, right? We, we do whatever, whatever, right? How do we quote, it's all, we all think we have a special sauce, right? In terms of how to win business. But at the end of the day. It's all about the same. So the problem comes in, or the solution is, is is when things do hit the fan or things go wrong, how do you adapt and, and make the customer feel, and have the ability to meet their need. Right? And that's how customers become loyal to you. Right? It's also a problem. I see how in today's world of all these different freight forwarders, the airline reps have reduced their number of touch points, if you will. So like a lot of these small freight forwarders, they don't even know who to call. Right. If it gets stuck in London, and I use London a lot because just again, it's 29% of the freight that goes through London. And there's a lot of automation in London. Right. So BA has a, a basically an automated warehouse. And so if something goes wrong in that warehouse, that freight could be lost for six months. Right? And so you need, people to be able to solve that problem.'cause it's not a, not a normal problem. It doesn't happen every day or even every month, but when it does happen, it's very painful. So I think people become more of a problem solver than a doer, if you will as a freight forwarder. You've said you've been in logistics now for around, I think you said 30 years or so, so. Too long. What, what's, what's one myth around the industry that you wish you could bust for good? One myth that I could that we're all rich that it doesn't matter, right? I guess I'm not sure if I put a lot of thought into that concept or that that question. But I do realise that there's value in logistics, and the myth that anybody can do it is just not true, right? It is much more complex or as complex as most businesses or most processes. And it works and it works well because of the people that are doing it. So you may think it's easy because they make it look easy. Doesn't make it easy. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. If you could give your 1990 self one bit of advice from 2025, what would it be? I. 1990. Oh, wow. Man, there are a lot of mistakes between then and now. Trust the process. Right. I hear that a lot, particularly now in raising money through VCs is trust the process. Trust that it's, you know, it only takes one, and have patience. Patience is one of those things where. I don't mean don't, don't have a sense of urgency, but enjoy the moment. Right. Enjoy the, the, that process of this is part of the game. It's not about the finish line. It is about the process. And, and I think that the reason I say that now is really more about, you know, my kids are now older. Right. So my kids are, I have grandkids. My youngest is 23. He's getting married. And you look back as, as a kid, it's like, you know, all those pain that we had raising kids, right of. You know, the late nights or the, the, the struggles of, of paying for stuff or whatever. You look back at it, it's like, man, I should have spent more time and enjoyed that. Right? I should enjoyed the, the struggles we had because you look back at it and it's really the joyful time in our life, right? So I think that with my career as well, it's like I, I look back at some of the things I've done at from building, you know, vendor managed inventory in El Paso and, and becoming the number one in the company worldwide and, and watching. You know, a lot of my peers that are now, you know, senior VPs of that corporation, it, it gives me a lot of joy to understand or to, to see that and how I was a part of their success. And we don't always notice that at the time, I guess is the, i my long-winded story and I can get pretty deep on that. So I'm gonna quiet that now. Okay. Are there any books or films or documentaries or anything like that that you found particularly inspiring when thinking about sustainability or leadership? Leadership, I would say Freakonomics. It's an old book Freakonomics and Good To Great are probably my two kind of leadership books that I, watch. And then from a sustainability standpoint is a Give To Grow. A book by Mo Mo Burnell, I think is his last name. And it, you may not think that it, it is tied to sustainability, but it, it's, it's how do we give to get back, right? So how do we give to for our, our environment? How do we give to, to be sustainable? And we know that we're gonna get something back in return. Like we don't do it because we're gonna get something back. But you do it because it's the right thing to do. Okay. Fair enough. Left field question, if you could have any person or character, alive or dead, real or fictional as a champion for sustainable air freight, who would it be and why? Huh, That is an off the wall question. For me, it'd be someone in the, probably someone in football. You know, if could have like a, you know, a packer, I'm a Green Bay Packer fan slash owner. So, if you could have one of my, my, my beloved you know, Donald Driver or Brett Favre type guys, that would be fantastic. but the reality of it is, it, it, you know, you really have to get the why behind it. Right. I, I tell my salespeople all the time, nobody likes to be told that they're dumb. Right. Or they're stupid. Right. So you can't tell 'em exactly why this is the issue. Right. And if you don't believe it, you're just dumb. Right. Nobody likes that. Right. So you have, we have to figure out a better way, in my opinion to weave it into economics, right? To weave it into the value of their life today, not a thousand years from now or, or 10 years from now, whatever, whatever math you want to use there, but how is it important to today and champion that, right? And how can people be again, remove the friction, right? We're coming towards the end of the podcast now Chris, is there any question I did not ask that you wish I did, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about? I don't necessarily have a question. I do have a it's more of a statement we're better together, right? If we can figure out our ways to communicate. If we could really have honest conversations or honest debate on what the issues are I think we'll be better off. Alright, Chris, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? They can go to our website, which is Aircon ai.com. They can also email me at at sales@Airconai.com. We will, will get to me. Obviously LinkedIn. We have all the different channels that people can, can reach out to me. But love to chat love to love to help. And if we can help you in any way, we, we are absolutely here to do that. Fantastic. Chris, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. All right, Tom, I appreciate you and I appreciate the time today. Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.