Top 4 Favorite Episodes of 2024

Looking back at 2024, our goal was to capture some of the most fascinating stories from across the logistics industry. Before rolling into 2025, we've compiled four of our favorite episodes of the year into one.

This includes Sal Mercogliano's analysis of how global conflicts impact supply chains, plus a deep dive into the workhorses of waterways - tugboats and barges. The compilation episode also includes an exploration of Great Lakes shipping and Michigan's natural resources, alongside highlights from Manifest 2024.

LINKS:

• How War Affects Global Shipping with Sal Mercogliano
• Underrated Modes of Shipping: Tugs, Barges, and Canals
• Freight Friends: Tugboats, Barges, and Uber Freight’s Carrier Summit Recap
• Great Lakes Shipping and Michigan's Natural Resources
• The Most Interesting Things We Saw at Manifest

WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE

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Chapters

• 2:05 How War Affects Global Shipping with Sal Mercogliano
• 1:36:41 Tugboats, Barges, and Icebreakers
• 3:25:39 Great Lakes Shipping and Michigan's Natural Resources
• 4:15:56 The Most Interesting Things We Saw at Manifest

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Music.

Blythe Brumleve: 0:05

Welcome into a very special edition of everything is logistics, where we're highlighting some of your favorite podcast episodes in 2024 now, in our previous episode, we covered the best three of technology. And for this one, we're going to be talking about the overall Fab Four for the best episodes of 2024 think of it as a super episode with some of our most popular subject matter experts all in one episode. So you don't have to go digging around for the good stuff. If you don't know me. My name is Blythe, and our show covers topics for the thinkers and freight helping to tell the stories of how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Now in this episode, we're featuring, first off, how war affects global shipping with Salma cogliano. Next up, we're covering tugboats, barges and icebreakers, where myself, along with my good friend Grace Sharkey, are covering all three of those different aspects of shipping in one episode. Next we've got great lakes shipping and Michigan's natural resources, which, if you don't know, Michigan is a major hub for natural resources and different unique shipping opportunities. So that's a really fun episode to get into. And then lastly, we're going to round it out with the most interesting things we saw at manifest, the conference that covers the supply chain and logistics space. But I You, I also have this episode with Grace Sharkey, so we're talking about some of our most favorite things that we saw at that conference that brings together all aspects of the supply chain industry. All of these episodes experience the most plays overall for the podcast. So in case you missed it or simply want to refresh, I got you covered. Each episode will play after each other with a fancy little whoosh sound effect to signify the start of the next episode. I've also got timestamps in the show notes, in case you'd like to skip around. But with all that said, cheers to 2025 Thank you, the loyal listener for all the love and support this year, and I hope you all enjoy this best of Roundup. Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI logistics, and I'm your host. Blythe Brumleve, we've got an awesome guest for you today. Same is salmer cogliano. He is the host of what's going on with shipping, infamous channel now over on YouTube, where he's bringing the general public into the eyes of shipping and really responsible for, I think, spreading the general awareness of how important shipping and logistics is as an industry as a whole. But you've also your former merchant mariner, you're a firefighter, you're a professor at Campbell University. Like you've got all of these different things going on, you know we were talking before in the show. You've got a lot of plates fitting. So I'm glad you took some time out of the day to to come join us on the show. So Sal welcome in.

Sal Mercogliano: 2:55

Blythe, thanks for having me. I like the phrase infamous. I'm gonna go with that. I'm gonna stick with that. I like the title.

Blythe Brumleve: 3:01

Well, it's funny. I was just talking to Grace Sharkey of freightwaves fame, and I told her recently that I'm the president and founder of the Sal fan club. So it feels good to finally get you on an episode of everything is logistics. We've talked previously for spires, maritime means podcast. We've talked on, you know, freightwave, cyberly programming, but this is the first time you're on everything is logistics. And I really want to focus this conversation on just what the hell is going on in the rest of the world and how it relates and why people should care. Because that's a common phrase that I hear is, you know, well, why should I care? It's going on, you know, across the globe. I don't think people really understand how much it affects global shipping as a whole and affects their day to day life until the price is reflected at the grocery store. So happy to have you here and kind of break all of these complex topics down for us. Yeah, happy

Unknown: 3:54

to talk about it like you said, I think, you know, sometimes I think I need to rename my channel to what the hell is going on with shipping, because it just seems like such a mess at times. I joke all the time that we have these, you know, black swan events are supposed to be these rare things, and we just seem to have a flock flying overhead, coming down about every month or two.

Blythe Brumleve: 4:12

I know, instead of a Black Swan, it's now just vultures everywhere, just waiting to come in and clean up. Now, I wanted to, though, just to sort of give the audience a little bit of, sort of a roadmap for the show, we're going to talk about sort of global, the global history of shipping as a whole. And then we're going to get into some of the Red Sea stuff. And then we're going to get into a little bit about, like, why that matters. And you know how folks within working within logistics industry can help their own customers get educated on this topic. Hint, you can just take some of Sal's videos and just send them to them, and that would help them a ton to understand why the rates are increasing. And then we're gonna also talk about the growth of his YouTube channel. I believe you were close to 200,000 subscribers, right? Yeah, just about 180,000 right. Now, amazing, and that's so awesome to watch you. Sort of your your content flourish, because it's such a good sign to the rest of us that are creating content within the logistics industry to know that, like, hey, you know you can, you can, you can make an impact with the content that you're creating. So let's kick things off with, I guess, just sort of like, I'm going to ask a lot of dumb questions in this interview. No

Unknown: 5:20

Dumb Questions. Remember, I tell my students this all the time, there are no dumb there are dumb answers, but there are no dumb questions. So the way you prevent having dumb answers is by asking questions so you fire away. Blythe, okay,

Blythe Brumleve: 5:31

perfect. So my first I think it's dumb, but I'm just gonna ask it anyways. How did global shipping get started? Well, I think you got to

Unknown: 5:41

look at modern global shipping. I take you back to the Romans, but that's a bit far back. But, you know, post World War Two, you have this, you know, you vanquish the Germans and the Japanese, and all of a sudden you have the great kind of ocean Commons open up. It's something that we have taken for granted now. And matter of fact, what's happening in the Red Sea is a good indication of that. We're seeing it kind of challenged. But all of a sudden, the world's oceans were wide open. And matter of fact, you can sail ships everywhere. There was very few, little kind of confrontations. We had issues. There were small conflicts and wars, but for the overwhelming majority, you were able to sail across the oceans. And it didn't matter what flag you flew, it didn't matter what country you were kind of associated with, you can undertake trade. And what we saw is, because of that openness, the amount of goods that moved across the ocean increased, plus we had a huge technology change. We had a couple of closures of the Suez Canal, one in 1956 and another one again in 1968 and what you saw was the growth of like super tankers. You went to the ultra large and very large Crude Carriers. We've seen the introduction of container ships and the ability to modularize cargo so that it can move almost seamlessly from embarkation to debarkation. And what that has meant is that, you know, in 1950 we were moving half a billion tons of cargo, which is an amazing amount. It was, it was, it was unheard of to be able to move that level. Well, last year, we moved 12 billion tons of cargo. So we've increased 22 or 22 fold over the span of 74 years. And that rate of have has increased. And what we're seeing is more and more goods moving around. And so global shipping has connected us in a way that almost transportation costs from country to country almost disappears, you know, on an object like a phone, you know, you put that in a 40 foot container, the transportation cost across the ocean is is less than a penny. So there's no visible cost associated with that. And what that has done is, you know, for some industries, it's been the death knell, you know, you know, we've, we've seen the demise of certain industries at the same time, we've seen the ability to purchase goods go up for not just us in the United States, but globally. And we've seen the world, you know, kind of standard of living come up to such a level that you've actually seen, in some cases, poverty eliminated, because now you can freely move food and minerals and or grain, you name it, around the planet. So that, you know, it's not unusual to be driving a car that's built overseas. You know, you don't even think about that. You don't think about where your clothes come from. You don't think about any of that stuff because it is virtually seamless. That's what global shipping has given us. It also has been a bit of a problem when all of a sudden that system doesn't work the way it's supposed to. And

Blythe Brumleve: 8:34

so when you talk about what doesn't work, I think a lot of that discussion kind of centers around like the established trade lanes. And I've always wondered, you know, I imagine ocean currents have a lot to do with this, but I is it geopolitical as well as to how these trade lanes are established all across the globe?

Unknown: 8:52

It is, a matter of fact, if you look at ancient trade lanes and you superimpose the modern map today, it's kind of the same way. It's kind of the same way. If you look at like Roman roads during the Roman Empire. Then you put the European highway system on they're identical, you know, because, you know, you kind of go the same route. So the big difference is the addition of, like, the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. But basically, trade routes follow where people are. And I saw a map just the other day was really interesting, where it looked at where wealth is concentrated in the in the world. And it's, you know, it's eastern United States, it's Europe and it's eastern Asia. And in truth, those trade lines kind of marry up almost exactly where you see everything go. And it is geopolitical. I mean, when you're talking about something like the Red Sea, for example, one of the reason why the British crab Gibraltar, the Suez Aden Hormuz and Singapore isn't because they're beautiful spots. They are, but they're stride, these key choke points, these key maritime lanes, and so, you know, controlling them. It's the same reason why you see rest stops where two highways come together, you know, it's, it's, it's you getting the business. This is where the trades coming. This is where everything is. It's why. Cities develop on key, you know, geographic areas. Why Chicago is where it is at the bottom of Lake Michigan, because it's railways and canals. It's the same way with trade lanes. You know, you see it, there's a global highway commons that ships pass. And

Blythe Brumleve: 10:15

so really, like, no matter if it's the ocean or if it's land, or does this exist in air as well where certain trade lanes are established?

Unknown: 10:24

Oh, yeah, it's one of the reasons why you see Ted Stevens airport in Alaska is one of the busiest airports in the world, is because people aren't flying into Alaska to fly to Alaska. They're flying there because when you look at the world as a globe, this is where you know trade intersects from America, Europe and Asia. It's a good spot. And so you have a big airport there to do a lot of trade. So airports work in that same way. Shipping works in that same way. And you can see that on, you know, if you pull up a marine traffic map and you look at where ships are sailing, you can see those big arcs going across. That's because the world's not flat, it's a big ground thing. And so, you know, that's the way the trade moves. And when you have issues at those spots, they can create a lot of problems. And it's one of the reasons why the Red Sea raises issues. It's why when you have low water in the Panama Canal, that raises issue, when you have pirates in the Straits of Malacca, that creates issues. And so you know it's very important to be conscious, and when you hear about disruptions in those areas understand this is coming your way. It's only a matter of time, but you'll eventually see it manifest itself in either something you're shipping or something you're buying. So if

Blythe Brumleve: 11:29

there's issues in So say, for you know, example, the Suez Canal, where, you know, historically there, there have been issues. There's been an area of conflict for a very long time. How difficult is it to just build like a Panama Canal all over the world, like different Panama canals? I imagine that's a huge undertaking, but it is, if that's such a security threat, I you know, why is it their investment in in these other lanes and these other areas?

Unknown: 12:00

Yeah. I mean, you hear that now there, you know, the people are talking about the, what's called the Ben Gurion canal, this parallel canal through Israel. You hear about a Nicaragua canal. You're hearing about the building of a craw, the craw Peninsula canal across Thailand. So there's always interest in it. The problem is, economics is, are you going to be able to justify the economics for it. Suez was a very tough prospect. It took a lot of money. It took the combined effort of Britain in the United Kingdom to do that. It was a 10 year project. A lot of people died creating the Suez Canal. Same thing with the Panama Canal. The British and French tried to create that. They failed at doing it. It took the Americans to do it. And most recently, the probably the best example of this is in 2016 when you open the new lane of the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal was constrained for 100 years by the size of the locks. So, you know, that was it. You had to fit the locks to go through. And the problem is, by the early 2000s ships are getting bigger. They're much bigger. They're, you know, and there was a big issue, and China was talking about building a kind of a canal through Nicaragua, which would allow larger ships to go through. It's what convinced the Panamanians, like we have to update our canal, and so they they undertook it, that it was a big program to do it. There were a lot of problems, because they kind of rushed it. So there was some issues with cement and some of the locks mechanisms. And you can see it kind of manifest itself today with water issues, because the new locks use a lot of water, a lot more than they expected, they're not recycling as much as they hope to. And now we're being kind of, you know that rush to develop the new lane of the Panama Canal is having the issue that now you're only getting two thirds of the ships through the canal that you normally do in a given year. And so

Blythe Brumleve: 13:40

I guess staying on that, on the Panama Canal situation for a minute, is that something that is solvable, or they're just sort of waiting at the, you know, I guess waiting for mother nature to sort of, you know, dump a bunch of rain.

Unknown: 13:51

Well, every member of the Panama Canal association is out every day doing a rain dance, I guarantee you that. So they're all, they're all doing whatever they can to get rain into the Panama Canal. Understand, right now you're hitting in the dry season, and the lake, the catoon lake, and it's a freshwater canal. Most people are sitting there going, well, you know, you know, ocean rise, like ocean rise, has nothing to do with this a freshwater canal. You got to get up over a hill. It's got to get over an 85 foot hill. And so that that's what you need to keep the lake going. When they built a new lane of the canal. They had actually thought about this. They actually knew that, okay, these locks are going to be huge. We're going to dump a lot of fresh water into the ocean. And so they built these were called reclamation ponds. They were going to recycle water, and they envisioned they would recycle about 80% of the water. You can't just dump the water back into the lake because of the salt water and issues. But what happened is the reclamation isn't working as efficiently. They're only getting 50% but the other half of the water they're losing is from the old blocks, and they haven't done anything with the old blocks. And so now Panama is looking at a couple of things. Number one, improving the reclamation process, maybe reclaiming the water from the old blocks, and, more importantly, building some more dams and retention to build up the water. Is reservoir on good tune Lake. All of that is great for the future. It does nothing right now for the next six months. And so what they have had to do is is number one, cut back on the number of ships going through, and they've had to lighten the load of the big ships coming through. Understand, the new locks were tremendous influence, tremendous change prior to 2016 the biggest container ship you could bring through was about 4500 boxes. Now you can BRING through 16,000 so it's one of those things that happened was after the supply chain crisis of the 2020s in LA and Long Beach backed up, a lot of shipping companies sat there and said, Well, I'll go through the Panama Canal and we'll go directly to the east coast and the Gulf Coast, right where the population is. Cuts out warehousing in the Inland Empire cuts out drayage, cuts out class one, cuts out California, which a lot of people like. So you go right into some environments, and then when you had the issue with the Panama Canal, they said, Well, no worries. We'll just go west. We'll go through the Suez, because the distance is almost the same. And they started doing that until the Red Sea blew up in their face. And now we find ourselves in this kind of global, kind of maritime choke point disaster. Do

Blythe Brumleve: 16:13

any of these maritime choke points exist elsewhere in the world besides these two locations? Oh

Unknown: 16:19

yeah. I mean straight sproulter, you have one. You can see it in the Malacca Straits, and down in Singapore, you can see it in the English Channel coming in the Baltic. The Black Sea is the other big one, obviously, where the Turks have the control over the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, which has been significant because of Russia, Ukraine, going on since 2022 there's the Bering Sea. As the Arctic becomes much more open and used, you get the Bering Sea between Russia and the United States. There's other small ones around the world. You know, on the Great Lakes, we saw a strike by the Canadian dot lock workers. So all of a sudden, ships couldn't get off the Great Lakes because the Sioux locks were closed and and so you have a lot of little choke points around. But for big ones, I mean, it's Panama, it's Suez, it's Gibraltar, it is Malacca Straits. Those tend to be the really big ones. And of course, the Taiwan Straits is another one that has a lot of issues between China and Taiwan. Now,

Blythe Brumleve: 17:16

I've heard you mention the word locks a few times. Now, what is that in reference to the

Grace Sharkey: 17:22

two

Unknown: 17:22

canals are different. So Suez Canal is a straight shot. You sail into Suez and you come out in Port. Said, in the north, you just sail straight. It's 100 kilometers. It's the ditch. It's what that's referred to. You sail through the ditch. In Panama, you got to go in locks. And what locks are a series of gates. So you bring your ship into the first gate, and you pump it up with water, and you get up to the second gate, you get up to the third one, and now you're up on the you're up on the lake, and then the same thing, you get a stagger down. And so locks change your elevation. They lift you up or lower you down. And you see that in multiple places. So for example, if you're coming off the Great Lakes into the Atlantic, because you can do that, you come off the Great Lakes, go through the locks and go all the way out into the Atlantic. You're coming up from a huge distance. I forget what it is, several 100 feet up off the Great Lakes. And so you got to stage down that entire path. And so we see these, these processes to do this, to bring them in. And even some ports around the world have gates and locks to keep the water up because of the tide. And, you know, Liverpool is one of the most famous ones. You come into Liverpool, you come in behind the gates and the locks and the water will just empty out.

Blythe Brumleve: 18:30

So I was getting into the Red Sea. Part of this conversation, which I imagine will is something that feels really complicated to me. You know, I think a lot of this news started breaking around, you know, the holidays. And it was one of those things where it's like, I know I should pay attention to this, but also I need a break. So can you kind of catch us up on what the hell is going on in the Suez Canal? So

Unknown: 18:53

the Red Sea actually isn't very complicated. And that's the thing about this, is it's very straightforward. So you have this conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. So this is, this is the old Middle East. This is, this is the two state solution. You had a very ruthless attack by a terrorist group named Hamas out of Gaza. This is an area that's inhabited by the Palestinians. And Israel has, in turn, basically attacked the Hamas, and they've invaded Gaza and the Israeli attack on Gaza has been very polarizing because of the scale the deaths of innocent people, and is polarized the region in multiple ways. The Houthi, who are a faction in the civil war that's been going on now for over a decade. So you got a three way civil war in Yemen. Houthi owned the western part of Yemen, and this is the part right along the Red Sea. The Red Sea is the connector between the Mediterranean through the Suez out into the Indian Ocean. So the Red Sea is 1000 mile long, skinny, little body of water. And at the end you have these two choke points. You have the Suez in the north, and then you get something called the Bab El mandab, the gate of tears in the southern end. That's right, where the Houthi are. So all the ships come down to this narrow little gate. Well, the Houthi, who have done this in the past, started to target ships. Now they've done this periodically. They have targeted ships. They'll throw a missile or a boat or something at it to get attention. What they announced was, in solidarity with Hamas, we're going to attack Israeli owned Israeli flag ships. And what happened was they, in a very dramatic fashion, they staged a helicopter assault onto a car carrier. When has seen that kind of video on the Galaxy leader, they seized this ship, and then they started launching missiles and a variety of drones and guided missiles and ballistic missiles. But what has happened is the Houthi have kind of ramped up their attacks. So initially it was against Israeli ships. Then they started hitting other ships. And then they said, Well, we're going to hit any ship that's connected to Israel. And then they started hitting ships that have nothing to do with Israel. Then they started saying, Well, we're going to look at any connection in the past and and basically they're not that very good at shooting at things, and so they're just hitting ships. And what happened was, one of the leading container liners in the world, Maersk, said, Okay, this is dangerous. We're going to pull our ships back. So when you sail through a war zone, you have to have something called war risk insurance. So just like you know, if you drive your car, you're covered for everything you normally do if someone you know, if you decide to drive your car through a war zone, it gets blown up, the insurance company is not going to cover that. They're going to sit there and say, you probably shouldn't have done that. But you can get war risk. And war risk insurance is this kind of almost like flood insurance on a house and an extra thing, initially it was very low. It's like point zero, 2% of the value of a ship, which was a couple of million dollars. But then as the attacks increased, the rate increased, and it got up to about point 7% now we're at a we're at 1% which isn't a lot. If you have a ship, like I can, like a tanker or a bulk ship carrying oil, you're talking about maybe 10s of millions of dollars worth of value. So 1% you're talking about $100,000 that's still economically feasible to sail through. When you have a container ship carrying 20,000 boxes, you're talking about anywhere from 100 million to a quarter of a billion dollars worth of cargo on board. And now you're talking about a million to $2.5 million in insurance, if you can get the insurance. And so what we saw happen was the big container line started backing off, and then there were efforts to restart the trade. The attacks escalated. The US decided to counter that by striking it at the Houthi they have since expanded their strikes backwards. And now what you have is a situation where about half the normal tonnage that would go through the Suez Canal is not going through. Instead, they're heading around Africa. And what most people don't realize because they look at flat maps, is Africa is a big honking continent. It's massive. It's tremendous. It's 3500 miles around Africa. And you know, Greenland, which looks really big on a map, actually like a 14th the size of Africa. It's tiny, but Africa, it takes you seven to 10 extra days to go around, and that's an extra million dollars, at least in fuel, Port costs, brew costs, charter rates, you name it. It's really expensive. And what this is doing is displacing trade. And now ships that were supposed to be arriving on schedule in Europe or heading back to Asia aren't, because they're still transiting. And what this does is it creates a butterfly effect throughout the supply chain, because now what you're seeing is Argo is delayed getting into Europe. So, for example, a very, very high biz story was Tesla had to shut down operations in several German plants because the parts they needed are on a ship going around Africa. So that's creating a problem. So that's creating a big problem for them. So what you have to do now is delay, and what we're seeing is escalating freight rates. So go back to 2020 when we saw what was happening in LA and Long Beach? Well, we just saw in the past week, the fastest escalation of freight rates ever. Now we're not up to 2020 levels by any means, but if you look at a chart showing those those freight rates, it looks like it's like a rocket going off right now, and what that means is you're going to see higher costs in Europe. We're going to start seeing it in America very soon, because 30% of that cargo that's going from Asia to Europe gets put on different ships and sailed across to us. And then we're going to see it on the backside, because empty containers aren't getting back to Asia on time, which means that those containers aren't being packed. They're not going to get out before the Chinese New Year. So we're going to see delays hitting the west coast. So all of this, you know? And again, this all stems from Israel Gaza.

Blythe Brumleve: 24:54

So I have so many questions, okay, but first I want to ask for the. Houthis. Why now, if this war has been going on for a decade in Yemen, the Civil War, why now are they choosing to start just attacking any, I guess, any ships that aren't Russian or Chinese, the

Unknown: 25:14

houthier are literally appalled by what's happening in Israel. They see the destruction of Gaza and the deaths of 1000s of Palestinians as something they associate with. They're in solidarity. They actually have a fairly, I don't want to say noble cause, but you know, they have a justification for wanting to be on the side of the Palestinians. I think their actions are uncalled for, because what they're targeting is innocent ships, innocent ships and mariners. And and what they're basically doing is, okay, how do we how do we express our solidarity? We can, you know, you know, we can get a GoFundMe page. We can do that. You know, what are we going to do? It's not going to get a lot of attention. What gets a lot of attention is when you start disrupting global trade. And what's scary about this scenario, and why it should be higher on everyone's radar is the houthier a faction. They're a faction in a three way civil war. They are not a powerful entity at all, yet, with a handful of drones, guided missiles and ballistic missiles, a lot of these are hand me downs from Iran. They have now interdicted 11% of the world trade. They are causing Egypt to go through a financial bankruptcy, potentially because half of the normal toll that the Egypt Egyptians will get in a year aren't going through this represents about five out of ten billion that the Egyptians get every year through the Suez Canal that goes into their operating fund for their country. Their budget is only$100 billion so they're talking about losing 5% of their budget, not alone in the fact, that we're seeing freight rates increase, inflation, poor congestion. You know, the Houthi, for getting attention, are getting a great return on investment for several $1,000 drone. I am causing billions of dollars worth of headache for the West, which, by the way, so openly support Israel in this bombing attack, while at the same time decry Russia for doing a similar thing in Ukraine. And so if you're the Houthi, you're doing this. And what should really be of concern for everybody is, if the Houthi can do this, who else can do this? And what happens when a true nation state who has resources and material and capability decide to interdict trade, and that's one of the reasons why you saw the United States and several other nations decide we got to get in there and try to diffuse this. I think it's

Blythe Brumleve: 27:31

also, from what I understand, it's a economic imbalance as well, because the Houthi drones and the missiles are very cost effective, like a sometimes as low as a few $100 couple $1,000 even, whereas, like the US, when they're battling against them or using like $2 million missiles, so that doesn't seem like they're seeing it seems like something is gonna gonna break and bend. Yeah. I

Unknown: 27:56

mean, the Houthis have realized that, you know what they can use now. We haven't had any casualties yet. We've had ships hit, but nothing serious yet. I mean, they've been damaged the ships, but nothing serious yet. But again, it's they're using weapons that, for you know, for a long time, you would heard people say, Well, you can't use ballistic missiles, these high trajectory missiles, against ships, unless they're very sophisticated. There's a big debate whether the Chinese have the capability to hit a ship moving at sea with these things, while the Houthi are doing it, and they're doing it in a way that works. They send drones over to spot. They have people in boats and on small islands. They have the Iranians helping them out in the area, and so they're able to do this. And you're right every time, you know, we shoot a standard missile, which is a two to $4 million missile, to shoot down a $200,000 drone. You know, in terms of investment, it's the houthier winning, but the Houthi are winning because they're causing billions of dollars of economic displacement right now. And you know, their argument is, you want this to end, then tell Israel to back out of Gaza. And you know, if you create enough economic hardship, then maybe that works. I don't know what. I don't know if people are going to back off on this, but that's what the Houthi logic is. And you know, it's very hard now to go to the Houthi and negotiate with them. They're not doing this for monetary reasons. They're doing it for ideological reasons, and ideology is tough. The only way you can push the buttons on the Houthi is their backers, and that's Iran. And but the problem is Iran has ramped up attacks too. We've just seen Iran attack targets in Iraq. They just attacked targets in Pakistan, which is unheard of. And so this is, this is really escalating in a way that most people are getting a little concerned about. As a historian, I get little World War One vibes, you know, little, tiny, little small, little regional conflicts that morph into a larger, big one.

Blythe Brumleve: 29:47

Now, a couple questions here. Why? Why would Iran attack Pakistan related to this issue? And then, why isn't, if Egypt stands to lose, you know, 5% of their annual budget, why aren't they doing.

Unknown: 30:00

More. So Egypt is the easiest one to answer, because Egypt has got a problem. Because if Egypt goes down and smashes the Houthi, the fear is they're seen then to be pro Israeli. And you know, Egypt has got a lot of problems with the previous political party, the most brotherhood within Egypt, plus Egypt shares a border with Gaza. And so the fear they have is, if they anger the Hamas, then Hamas turns their missiles from bombing Israel to bombing the Suez Canal, and which case they lose everything from the Suez Canal. And so the Egyptians have got to play a very delicate role. The Pakistanis and Indians in particularly too, have really reacted to several attacks by Iran on shipping in the northern Arabian Sea. There been two ship attacks perpetrated by Iran, and both the Indian Navy has come out in force. The reason the Indian Navy is out in force is because Indian crew members make up a lot of mariners out there. So they're coming out to protect their crew members. Pakistan is targeting what they see as insurgents in their country being being funded by Iran, and so you have this and so what you, you know, if you got a map of this region, and you start making arrows, who's involved, it's going to look like, you know, a five year old, you know, doing finger painting, because it's going to involve everybody in some way. And

Blythe Brumleve: 31:15

another aspect that I heard is, you know, and I correct me if I'm wrong, but like the French, are the only European country that are helping out as far as protecting some of these ships, because there are still ships going through the Suez Canal. They're just doing so with protection. Yeah.

Unknown: 31:30

So this is where you get this weird other element here. So the US, you know us, does what US does. It announces an operation, Operation prosperity guardian, which tells me that the Pentagon uses chappy GBT to come up with code names. But, you know, they announced this, this operation where we're going to protect shipping, and they say, Hey, we're going to get all these nations involved. And so they got nations to sign on, but it was very slow in getting up and running. And so several countries, France, particularly, sat there and said, Well, we're going to start escorting our ships. France has a huge container line, CMA CGM, which operates at a more say. CMA CGM said, listen, we're not connected to Israel at all. Some other container liners were connected. So for example, the Houthi targeted Mediterranean shipping MSC, the wife of the owner of MSC has dual citizenship in Switzerland and Israel. So that was enough for the Houthi, so they targeted them. Maersk has an alliance with Zim, so they targeted Maersk. But CMA CGM was was wanted to keep their ships going through, and so the French have a frigate down there. They did the escorting going down there. But it changed when the US initiated the attack. Now the American commander down there, an admiral by the name of Brad Cooper, who's the commander of the Fifth Fleet said, okay, the defensive operation is separate from the offensive operation, but that, that's kind of a hard line to draw when the same ships are involved in the in the operation. And so now you're what you're seeing is you still have the Americans and the British guarding vessels in the Red Sea, but the French, the Italians, the Japanese, they're helping when they can, but their focus is to escort their own ships through and so they're doing a lot of of individual escorts. The strange part about all this is that the largest reinsurer for war risk announced the other day that they may no longer issue war risk insurance for US and British owned ships, which means that you may no longer see US and British owned ships going through the Red Sea, which means that the US Navy and the British Navy are going to be guarding ships that are not their own. And the ships that are going through in large numbers now are Russian and Chinese vessels. The strangest thing is that Chinese are providing perhaps the best protection for vessels, because all you got to do is on your AIS is sit there and say, I'm a Chinese company, or I'm a Chinese ship, or have a Chinese crew on board, or I don't know I'm eating Chinese. I don't know enough. If you put something Chinese in there, you can get protection, because the Houthi don't want to anger the Chinese, and so they're able to get through and same thing with the Russians. Now, I think, behind the scenes, the Russians and the Chinese are playing with the Iranians to, you know, give the Houthi information, so not as attack ships, because initially there were some Chinese and Russian ships hit. They're getting a little better at that now. But I definitely do think that there's a lot behind the scenes that we're not seeing. Why?

Blythe Brumleve: 34:17

Why wouldn't the Houthis want to attack any any Why wouldn't they want to anger the Chinese. Is it strictly because of the, I guess, the Russia, Iran Alliance? I think, I

Unknown: 34:25

think it's because of alliances that are going on, the fact that there's a lot of oil trade from Iran to China right now, and China is a big geopolitical player. They like the application of soft power. They're not the Americans who like to shoot a missile here. They like to apply kind of pressure, you know, below the scenes. So China has a big influence in the region. Through their Belt and Road Initiative, they're doing a lot of infrastructure and building in the area. The only Chinese overseas naval base in the entire planet is in Djibouti at the very end, right across from the Houthi. So the Chinese have been there for a long time. They've been doing these anti. Piracy patrols for a long time. So, you know, there's a lot of infrastructure, and China's got the money to help people, you know, they can make things happen. And so, you know, I think China has been able to exert a lot of influence in the area behind the scenes. And I think this is the big misconception the US is making. They think there's a military solution to this, and I don't think so. I you know, the Houthi have been bombed by Saudi Arabia for a decade, and they haven't given up. And I think we're very good at blowing things up. We're really great at that when we do do it repeatedly, but you can't blow everything up. And I think we lose the image that the persons we have to convince to sail through this area isn't the Houthi, it's the insurance companies. And if I'm an insurance company, I am not taking the chance that one missile or one boat comes loose and sinks a $250 million container ship and I have to pay that out because the liability associated with that is going to be catastrophic and and there's no way that the shipping company is going to be able to be able to do that? Why?

Blythe Brumleve: 36:03

Why wouldn't some, I guess, you know, I watch a lot of like, you know, you know, action packed movies, and I'm just thinking to myself, of all of this is going on with a small fraction of, you know, a terrorist group. And I would imagine, is it the Houthis are a terrorist group. I guess technically class, they've

Unknown: 36:19

just been redesignated as a terrorist group, although they have 30 days until it goes into effect, so they can, like, move all their cash and money in the meantime. So again, we're not, we're not being very effective in declaring groups terrorists. But go ahead. Well,

Blythe Brumleve: 36:32

I did see that it was a strongly worded letter that was sent to them. It's so I was like, Well, if the maybe the strongly worded leather letter doesn't work. Why wouldn't the Americans just go in and, you know, kind of, you know, bomb them away like I don't again,

Unknown: 36:49

you know, you know, what's preventing us from sending Vin Diesel and the entire, you know, crew in and, you know, and getting this fixed up is number one. I mean, if you're the Biden administration, number one, you've had a bad track record with, with land engagements following Afghanistan pulling out. You've got a political, you know, you got a big thing called an election coming up in November. Do you really want to go back into the Middle East and land there and start committing forces again? It would make the most sense because, because, you know, if you look at the piracy issue back in the 2000s and 2010s what fixed the piracy issue wasn't naval patrols. It diminished it. It reduced it. But what changed it was the African Union going into Somalia in 2017 and eliminating the nest of pirates. That's what did it you know, when you look at the U boats in World War One World War Two, what defeated U boats wasn't the Navy we we suppressed them, but they were still sinking ships to the last day of the war. What ended them was the war on land. But again, you don't have a desire for the Americans to put a battalion of Marines ashore in the region, for fear that we're going to get sucked into that and not out of it again, especially by November for a presidential election.

Blythe Brumleve: 37:59

So if I'm a merchant mariner on one of these ships that does decide to take all of the risk and go through the Suez Canal. What does that? What does that look like? Am I armed, walking up and down the ship? What does that, I guess, sort of situation look like?

Unknown: 38:15

So through my channel, I had the opportunity. I had a batch of merchant mariners who sailed through this region contact me. That's been really interesting to hear them. So batch of them went through on January 9. This is the big battle that was fought that kind of triggered the American reaction. Huge, massive convoy battle. And, you know, three, three things stood out in all the conversations with all the mariners from the ships. Number one, they said it was unbelievable. It was they used this specific word. It was a blank show. You know, it was like, it was like, there was so much going on. It was like, insane. It was like, it was like, it was like being in a movie, but you weren't in a movie, and it was like three hours of non stop, of missiles and combat going on. They said, the second thing was, it was really disorganized. In some ways. A lot of the ships had embarked security detachments, private security detachments. So very common thing that had happened during the piracy period is you'd bring on these armed guard detachments. Commercial ships can't have weapons. You're not allowed to go into port. We're not going to allow a ship from a foreign flag with foreign crew coming into New York loaded to the gills with machine guns. So what happens is, these ships meet small boats, these offshore supply vessels. And what comes on board is an armed security team. They bring the weapons, they bring the crew. They get on board, they ride the vessel through the contested waters, and at the other end, they meet another boat, they offload to that boat, and then that crew gets on another ship and goes the other way. And they do that. They do like several weeks doing that those crews. And you pay for that. You pay for that. Initially it was very lucrative. Now they've farmed this out to getting kind of foreign workers to do it, and they get people from foreign militaries in to do it. Well, that works great against four Somalis in a speed boat with AK 40 sevens. Doesn't work when you have drones and missiles coming at you. You got to have the Navy on board to do that. And what you're seeing is that. Navy is providing protection. The US Navy and the British Navy in particularly, have basically stationed their warships between the main shipping channel in Yemen, and they're working almost like skeet shooting. The Skeets are coming overhead, the drones and the missiles, and they're knocking them out of the air. And the problem that the insurance companies has is that's great, but you gotta prove me 100% you're gonna knock everything out of the air, and that's difficult to do, because things are going to get by. And that's the report I got. Is that every now and then missiles would get by. And fortunately, these aren't the most sophisticated missiles, but when you have one blow up a few 100 yards off the bow of a vessel, it wakes you up, and so it's harrowing. And then you have shipping companies where the shipping with a cruise on board sit there and say, Hey, we're risking our lives. How about a little extra money here? And they asked for war risk pay. You know, you know, Maersk announced, when Maersk was going to send their ships through, they were going to double the wages, which sounds great, but it's a week. It's a week worth of double salary. It is a drop in the bucket of what the profits they're making. And yet, some shipping companies aren't willing to do it. Matter of fact, the American companies are not willing to pay the double wage for the crews to go through, which is, I think, is a huge problem for me. It's like these guys are getting and women are getting shot at. And, you know, it's by hook a crook, they're not getting hit. So it does create problems, because when you you sign on a ship again, and they sit there and say, Well, where am I going? Well, you're going to the Red Sea. It's like, oh, no, I'm not, because I'm not going to sign on because, you know, I don't have to take this job. I have options. I'm not. I was going

Blythe Brumleve: 41:33

to say, is that? Is that a can they know, I guess, sort of the route ahead of time and be able to give a permission, like, Yes, I'm willing to risk it, versus No. Or you just find out sometimes they

Unknown: 41:44

do. There was a there's a not, there's a company in the United States that actually transports fuel to Israel under a State Department contract. We provide Israel with high octane fuel for jets and military. And so State Department charters a tanker and they sell it in and during the period of the attack, there was a big debate. It's like, you want us to sail into a port in Israel during rocket fire? It's like, okay, we're gonna be pumping high octane gasoline. It's like, okay, I think I want something in return for that. It's like, like, a little bit something extra for it. And they actually had to have negotiating about it and everything. And it seemed, you know, it makes the crews look bad, because, like, well, they're holding out for money and everything, but in truth, they want to be paid for their services. And you know, they're taking a risk, and you know they expect just compensation for that. So

Blythe Brumleve: 42:30

you just brought up Israeli ports. Are those still operational during all of this that's going on? Yep,

Unknown: 42:37

yep, the main ports are up and running. We've seen some issues. There was a big problem, actually, at the very beginning, because when Israel, everybody in Israel is in the Israeli Defense Force, you don't have a choice. Turn 18, you're in the Israeli Defense Force. And, matter of fact, you're in the rally defense force. For years in the reserves, they called up reserves. So a lot of people in supply chain got yanked out to go in. Because if you think about who's in supply chain, last time, a lot of young people, a lot of Doc were of dock workers, a lot of people in the offices doing the clerical work. A lot of the, you know, the the administrators, they got yanked out. And so they had a big problem for a while there where everything slowed down in the ports. They they wanted to be efficient, like, I want to bring a ship in and pull it out real quick. Well, I can't, because three of my crane operators are not here, because they're, they're, they're at the front lines. And so Israel actually had to change some things. They had to release some people, get them back into some critical jobs. It was very similar to what we saw in World Wars, where people got drafted out of crucial jobs. So yeah, the ports are still open now, not as many ships coming in from outside of Israel, because there's a fear. There's a ship that was targeted going through by the Houthi, a ship called the Maersk hung Joe, and it was, it was, it was not Israeli owned, not Israeli linked at all. But the ship had been in Israel back in October, and the Houthi says, well, that's target. And so, you know, so there's a lot of people who are saying they don't want to be target. Even have any connection going into Israel right now. So how

Blythe Brumleve: 44:02

do you see this kind of playing out? Or is it just, you have no idea at this point. How

Unknown: 44:08

does CEO of, CEO of Maersk came out Vincent Kirk, and he sat there and said, there's gonna be months, at least months we're seeing I understand Blythe, if tomorrow the Houthi say, You know what? We've realized, the error of our ways. The straights open, everything goes back to normal. It's going to take a month or two to reset everything. It's, it's, you've already got the disruptions going on, and so it's, we're definitely seeing several months out. The problem is, most people haven't seen this yet, because the delays and the costs haven't really hit the US yet. You're going to see at the end of January, early February, at the earliest, where we're going to start seeing this start, pick up and and the other problem you have is shipping will adapt to this. We will, you know, we'll go around the southern end of Africa. We've done it before. You know, Suez closed. Suez Canal was closed for eight years from 1967 to 75 you know, we will go around it and make it happen, but it's going to cost. Dollars and and what's really significant right now is the container liners are in a really good position, because they have excess ships, and their freight rates were so low coming into 2024 if you read all the forecasts for 2024 like in November or October, it's like, oh yeah, bad year for the container companies. It's really bad. Now they're revising forecasts. Their profitability is up because they're using extra ships. They're they're getting higher freight rates, and they're getting a percentage share off that. So everything's looking better. So I don't there's some interesting forces at play here that don't want to fix this. They don't want to say it out public, but it's really hard, because the Houthi, again, are ideological. You can throw every missile the US Navy has at them. You can land the Marines. You can do everything. It's not going to stop them from hurling a missile every now and then. You got to convince the insurance companies that is, that is, that is easier. So if you look at the scenario right now, that's going on in the Black Sea. So just use the Black Sea when, when Russia blockaded Ukraine. That cut Ukraine off from exporting grain. You had a deal that was brokered by Turkey to do this, this black sea grain initiative. You started seeing the grain come out, then Russia withdrew from it. And the Russian reasons Russians withdrew is because the Ukrainians were being very effective at sinking their ships. And so the Russians said, Okay, we're pulling out of this. We don't like this deal, but the Ukrainians sat there and said, No, we're going to keep running ships in. And they have. And what you've seen happen is it's gotten safer for them to do it. And what we're seeing is the war risk insurance has come down. It was up at 3% it's now at 1.25% and you know, they're showing normalization. Hey, the attacks are not happening, they're not as frequent, they're not severe, and that takes time. And that's the problem is, it's going to take time to convince the insurance companies that, listen, you don't have to worry about the catastrophic loss of a vessel. But again, it's all gonna be a matter of what works best on the balance sheet for the companies.

Blythe Brumleve: 47:01

I'm not sure if you know the answer to this, but what goes on in sort of the insurance sort of war rooms? How are they analyzing this? Do they have, you know, sort of experts from all over that are, you know, providing insight and consulting them on what they should do? Like, what does that look like? From their end? They

Unknown: 47:19

hire the person who has the worst case environment, you know, you know the most dismal for the person who's got the like dourest personality you can imagine to think, you know, the worst pessimist in the world. That's an insurance broker. He's like, Okay, how bad can this be? And, and, and it's still not the worst. I'll give you the best example I ever heard. So insuring a container ship like ever given that got stuck in the Suez. The worst case scenario, they came up to ensure that vessel was okay. What's the worst thing could ever happen to a ship like they ever given? They said, Okay, we got it. Ever given, runs into a passenger liner and kills everybody? That's the worst case scenario. The ship sinks, the passenger liner sinks, and you killed 5000 passengers. What's the payout on that? You know, what's, what's the economic payout on that? And they said, Okay, that's what we got to insure against. That's the worst case scenario we got to insure against. And what's interesting is, I talked to some insurance people afterwards, and they said, Yeah, we didn't think worse enough, because ever given was worse than that, because, because we didn't kill anybody. But the worst thing was, was we made 450 ships late and and now the liability for those 450 ships worth of cargo is more than we ever envisioned. So yeah, they're they're doing the worst case scenario. Because, again, it's not just the loss of the cargo, it's not just the loss of ships, not the loss of the crew, it's the environmental damage. What happens when all of a sudden you have this massive oil spill in the Red Sea, which is basically a huge tidal basin. The water doesn't go in and out of the Red Sea too much. So you've killed fishing, you've killed the coastline, you've killed everything. That's the scenario you start getting into. And it's really hard to get them to start coming down. What you have to do is show that they're going to make enough revenue. I mean, because this is the other thing too. If war risk is so high, no one's going to go through you're not going to make any money, so you're kind of killing yourself at the same time. So they want to make money, but they want to minimize the downside. What's that sweet spot? And everything you know, why is it that when you automatically turn 25 you're a better driver than you were when you were 24 and 355 days? I don't know what the difference is. You're kind of the same person, but in terms of insurance, you change dramatically, and that's kind of what they're

Blythe Brumleve: 49:27

looking at. So if we bring it back, you know, to the state side, you know, people who are working at the ports, people are working in brokerage offices, and you know, they're responsible for communicating some of this information to their customers. How do you even advise them? Or would you advise them to explain, you know, maybe this is why you're going to have a rate hike on your shipments in February. Yeah. You

Unknown: 49:53

know, it's so funny. As I started talking about this really early, I was talking about this in October and November and and I had some viewers on my channel. Send me some notes. It's like, like, Sal, thank you. I was the smartest person in the room the other day because I talked about this and and it has come to fruition. We're seeing the rate heights, and we're seeing this. So, you know, we planned ahead. So I told everyone, we got to stop fresh pushing forward some cargo. So, so, you know, I'll give you one of the things like it's happening right now, is, is, is this? So you've got these big, you know, again, ships coming from Asia, they're going through the Panama Canal. They're loaded down with cargo. They can't load down all the way, so they got offload some of it in Panama. Rail it across, pick it up, go to the eastern Gulf Coast, offload. But now that ship is largely empty, heading back to Asia. They don't want to send that ship back through the Panama Canal, because that takes a transit away from a loaded ship coming the other way. So they're sending that ship now back to Asia, around Africa, and that's a longer haul back. And this is going to delay goods coming back in. So if you're back hauling something to Asia right now, it's going to take a lot longer than you planned for. So you got to, you know, one of the things I think, that I hope people got from the supply chain crisis back in the early 2020s. Is okay. You got to diversify. You got to be looking at multiple if you're just coming into one port, if everything you own in life comes in through Los Angeles, and you're still doing that, you should have learned a lesson, you know, because, because this is not boating well for you, if you're counting on this, because it only takes one thing to throw a monkey wrench into it. If you are now bringing in is like, I can come into Los Angeles, or I come into Savannah, I can come into Houston, I could come into Charleston, I come into Norfolk, coming to New York, I am in a much better position. I can call an audible and change the play up. You know, my playbook isn't carved in stone. And I'm going to, you know, I'm going to be Alabama and run up, run up the middle every time, and lose against Michigan, which still haunts me. Blythe, it haunts me a lot. But anyway, you got to be able to have that ability to play. And so that's why, I think is neat. This is why you can't be doing your own logistics. You've got to have professionals who know this, who saw this happen, and now are realizing that, and they're getting ahead. You know, I just sat in on a freight seminar by one of the freight forwarders. Really, good, really, really top notch. They're watching the shipping. They had a good handle on it. They're talking to the operators. They're talking to shipping firms. They're communicating to everybody is like, hey, you know this? This is q1 is going to be different than what we thought of. So for q2 you got to be start planning ahead a little bit more that Chinese New Year is going to cause more of a disruption than we thought, because not everything's going to be here before that. So make, make preparations for that. And, you know, I'm not going to be surprised to see some adjustments happening here, and it's really trying to watch it, and it's hard to do because it's shipping. Is such an isolated field that it's very hard. Like you said in the beginning, it's like, I don't know what's going on. How is this going to impact me directly?

Blythe Brumleve: 52:44

And so for a lot of it feels like, you know, the situation in the Red Sea, and then also the Panama Canal has sort of sucked the oxygen out of the room for a lot of maybe other or maybe, I'm not sure, are there other shipping stories that we should be also paying attention to in addition to these two big ones, well,

Unknown: 53:03

I would argue that you're not seeing the impact of them very well. So, for example, we got ships piling in up off Savannah right now. And, you know, we usually see ships off Savannah, but that number is starting to grow quite a bit. And you know, we're seeing some containers not arriving as as it should be. So, you know, for example, a lot of the container ships that go through the Suez into the Mediterranean, hit a couple of ports, and offload the cargo. Well, that's not happening. So what you got is ships coming around Africa, going into Tangier or Al Jazeera in Spain, offloading. And so you're seeing the kind of the influence of that. You know, the ability to get an empty container is going to be tight. All of a sudden, there's a finite number of containers out there. And if you're expecting to have an empty container to load some cargo that you need to haul from the US outside that may get tough, you may want to grab a container now, because they're going to get tight. You know, most people, I don't want to lease a container early. I don't want to pay empty lease to have a box out of my yard. It doesn't do me any good. It's like, well, if you can't get it in a week or two, or a month or two, you may want to be paying a little bit extra to have it here, because all of a sudden there's going to be a shortage about that. I think what we're seeing right now is the focus is so much on these big things. I'll give you another one right now. When you have a problem hauling in the short distance, like we're seeing, what do people do? I got high priority cargo. I got to ship it. I'm going to put it on air. You know, how much is air freight right now clogging up? We've got shortages of aviation fuel. How much is that aviation fuel price going up? Because aviation fuel has to be refined. It has to be distributed. Well, aviation fuel. I'm not going to load a load of aviation fuel in the Middle East and sail through rockets to bring it to Europe, because I'm on a floating bomb. You know, we're going to sail this around. And so what happens when we start seeing aviation fuel going around? I saw a story just today that every Jones Act tanker, these are the tankers that move oil and fuel around the United States, because of the Jones Act law are booked for 2024 they're all booked. So, you know. Know, if you've got a fuel issue, for example, if all of a sudden we have a hurricane, because that never happens, you know, if we have a storm that shuts down refineries and all of a sudden we don't have gas in the pipelines. Or, you know, something happens in Florida that you you know, all of a sudden everything shuts that's going to cause a disruption, probably amplify it more than I previously new. So, you know, if I'm a trucking firm, you know, is it better for me to keep my tanks pressed up at my facilities, to fuel my trucks? It probably is at certain times, because disruptions could be more prevalent now than ever before.

Blythe Brumleve: 55:35

So it's almost like this, this entire conversation is just, I guess a kind of an awareness level of, if you weren't already paying attention before, you should be paying attention now, so you can get ahead of some of these things. I think you had just mentioned that you had some commenters that had listed these concerns and made those preparations in advance, so they're kind of avoiding some of these overages, overage fees,

Unknown: 55:59

yeah, you know, we all use just in time logistics, we all do that. I mean, I don't have, you know, a year's worth of food in my house, you know, it's week to week. You know, some commodities, I'm just going to do it. It's just in time. Food, you know, I'm just going to do that. And it's the way we operate. And, you know, which is fine, but the way the global supply chain, especially on shipping, works is there's not a lot of slack in the system at times. And when you cause disruptions, it takes time for the system to catch up, catch up, and when you disrupt it by a couple of percentage points, either way, it has ramifications, and it just resonates down. You know, there was a debate about, well, everyone's going to file into the West Coast ports right now? Well, no, they're not, because there's a lot of issues about coming into West Coast ports that still exist, that they want, even though the rail companies are sitting there saying, We want rail freight, we'll take it, you know, tomorrow, bring it in. We'll do it, there's still a lot of hesitation about going in, because there's a lot of variables going into California ports, you know, with terms of drayage and trucking and labor issues. So, you know, you have those, those, those kind of hesitations. And again, I go back to, you know, there are people who watch this every day, and they're really important for you and the supply chain to know this. You know, if you're, if you're, you know, just a regular, routine shipper, you don't need to be watching this, but you need someone who does it for you all the time.

Blythe Brumleve: 57:12

So if, if Sal is, is president of the world, how are you fixing these two big issues that can, hopefully, you know, alleviate some of the other, I guess, ongoing pressures that typically exist in shipping Well, you know, again, you

Unknown: 57:30

know, it's hard to make it rain. I mean, even as president, you can't make it rain. And so, you know, you do have climate issues. It's, you know, it's really, it's redundancy, and taking lessons that we've learned. My fear of coming out of 2020, to 2023, and COVID. And the supply chain crisis is okay. We saw a lot of things go wrong. Have we fixed them? Or have have we even acknowledged that they're a problem? What are we doing to fix those problems? You know, you know, we talk about infrastructure in the United States all the time. If you look at the $3 trillion infrastructure bill, how much of that went into ports? Almost none. It was a fraction of a percent. It was very minimal. You know, there's got to be better ways to do it. You know, you need to have some redundancy in the system to be able to do it. You know, there there are choke points. Choke points are always going to exist. There are these little areas that you can't get away from. I mean, and in truth, Bob Elman, dab and Suez is a lot better of a choke point than the Straits of Hormuz, because that's a that's a cul de sac. If you close the Straits of Hormuz, you can't get out of there at all. So you have to have it. You have to react quicker. I think one of the flaws that the US did, and the world, it's not just the US, because this is really a world issue, is they didn't react quicker enough to the Houthi. When the Houthi started grabbing ships and they started shooting, and there should have been a quicker reaction to it. I think if you reacted quicker, that may have convinced the Houthi maybe not to be as bold at times. But when you react slower, they're going to keep ramping up, ramping up, ramping up. And now it's kind of hard to get them to back down at times. I think we got to look at how the systems function around the world. What we're seeing right now, at least on global shipping, is a reordering. We you know, we announced the last year that the 2m Ocean Alliance, MSc and Maersk are splitting in 2025 Maersk just came out and announced a new alliance with hapag Lloyd the Gemini, that that's a reorder. We're seeing shuffling going on. And the fear that we have is that we see a big reshuffling, and we see a collapse of in the container liner again, kind of like Hanjin back in 2017 which caused chaos for a lot of shippers around the world because their cargo got stuck in that system. You know, we have to do some more things for more oversight and more visibility. I don't like regulation. I don't like sitting there saying that the government can fix that. Can Fix things because they can't. But I think visibility is one of the key things, and being able to put light to it, you know, why is it that the CEOs of these ocean shipping companies were not, you know, called up sooner to talk about what's the plan here? How do we fix this? Because in many ways, when Maersk and now. They're pulling out of, out of the Red Sea, and then announced they're going back in, then announced we're pulling back out again. Okay, that's not an economic decision anymore. Maersk, that's a political decision. You're you are impacting foreign policy, military policy, of countries. And you know that's because you're a big corporation now, a big international corporation. You have a big power. It's very similar to, almost like the East India Company of the 1880 1800s that's the power that these companies have. And logistics power companies can do that. They can do it. You know, we're used to trucking in the United States, which is very small, little firms. But ocean shipping is the exact opposite. It's behemoths. It's these massive entities that control 10 companies that control 85% of all the ocean shipping. That's what you have to see. And there are a lot of elements that need to be looked at. And the fear I have is that we regionalize shipping, that the global shipping common becomes a regional shipping area, where you're just shipping between small areas. You don't ship outside those areas, and navies and nations become very protective of their shipping, and that means it gets very expensive to ship on the oceans.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:01:11

So it's a lot of like, I don't want to say heavy topics, but I mean, in some instances, of course, that's very heavy. It's like, oh my gosh. How do we get out of this? But is it just a sense, from like, a historical perspective, that all of these things, conflicts like this, are always going to exist, and we just have to, as a human species, just sort of work to problem solve and work our way around them? I

Unknown: 1:01:33

think it's two things. Blythe number one, we don't see these. These things happen as much as anymore. Therefore, when they do happen, they seem to get more just, you know, a disproportionate amount of attention, and at the same time, it's the fact that the Houthi, a very small, little regional player, is having a global impact. Because you can, you can reach out and do more, because we're more intertwined, because we're more global, because we have more communication. I mean, the Houthi have communication. Gotta be clear. I mean, I get trolled by the Houthi all the time. I have, I have, I had a video. I'm not gonna kid you, I had a video that was copyright infringement of the of the landing of the helicopter on the ship, and I'm convinced it was the Houthi who didn't want me to use the video, and I won. I beat the Houthi. I'm the only one who's beat the Houthi on YouTube, but they have an influence of reach that's kind of disproportionate to themselves. So I do think that we're in a much safer world, you know, and perhaps we hype this up maybe too much at times, because, you know, what we're not talking about is the global system is working. Trade still working goods, you know, nothing has stopped flowing. It's going longer. It's being displaced. You're still going to be able to get your Stanley Cup, you're still going to be able to get everything you want. It just may take a little bit longer, which isn't the end of all things. Now, there are critical things that have to be shipped, and we may pay more through the nose for that. We may have to allocate it to air or expedited shipments, but in large we can basically work through these issues, but it does make us more cognizant of the fact that we're much more intertwined than we've ever been in the past. You know, there's this argument that we've been globalized since ancient times. You know, I we found Chinese coins in Pompeii. Okay, well, true, but it's not like there was constant trade between China and Pompeii, you know, now there's concentrate between China and Pompeii. You get it all the time, that is the element. So I do think we tend to maybe, maybe magnify the issue quite a bit, because we can talk about it more, but at the same time, I think we can also be better prepared to handle it, because we have more better access to information and alternatives than we ever had in the past.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:03:39

And too, I just wanted to add on to that, that, you know, I heard a great comparison, is that, yes, we are dealing with these conflicts right now that are affecting shipping, but we're also not dealing with it the compounding efforts of what happened in 2020 where it was just this massive increase in demand of products. And so we're a little lucky that that's that demand is not there. In order to further complicate all of these issues that are going on, yeah,

Unknown: 1:04:03

because that was the issue I always argue in 2020 we didn't have a shipping crisis. We had plenty of ships. There were 109 off. LA, I could get you ship. There was no problem with ships. The problem was, is that we just changed our ordering habits. So you had, you had, like, the kind of, quote, unquote, pre COVID Ordering habits, and then you had the COVID Ordering habits superimposed on top of them. And the problem was nobody knew when COVID was going to stop, so you couldn't stop ordering the pre COVID stuff. And so we wound up ordering was kind of like two parallel, you know, sense of goods at the same time. I always make the analogy that the toilet paper shortage wasn't caused by the fact we were using the bathroom more we were using the same amount before as as that. The fact was, you were home 24/7, as opposed to being out half the day where you didn't use as much toilet paper in your house. You know, there was plenty of single ply, industrial sized rolls of toilet paper. But, you know, we're human beings, and if there's one thing we're going to pamper, it's our but. And so we're going to spend a little bit extra money and get some two ply, three ply, and that's where you started running out. You could have got all the one ply you wanted. So, you know, it's just it created that, that problem in the supply chain. You're right. We don't have that right now. The problem, but too, is, what's that next Black Swan flying overhead that we don't see yet? So,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:05:19

but before we get into the growth of your YouTube channel and sort of the marketing side of things, I am curious to know, do you have being a history professor and being able to talk about a lot of these stories with your students? I did want to ask one particular question. It says this actually comes from my fiance. He's also a big fan of your content as well. But he asked, How much cross, if any, is there between the topics and the content you cover on your channel and the work you do with Campbell University? Do you use any of it as a basis for lesson plans? And what do your students and faculty think of your internet theme? So

Unknown: 1:05:57

it's a great question. I know it came from your fiance, so that's great. I'm glad he asked that one. So two parts that question. So number one, yeah, I use stuff like this in my class all the time. Matter of fact. Matter of fact. It has helped me develop classes that I, that I do in in So, for example, I'm teaching a brand new course this semester called the history of business and trade. And we literally started that class off talking about the Red Sea. It was, it was the exact thing. We're talking about, global trade. We're using that example. We're going through a historical analysis right now of the history of business and trade. Plug a great book here, a splendid exchange, how trade shaped the world by by Walter William Burns Bernstein. Great book using that right now. And so it's funny, we're talking about the Red Sea regarding to the ancient Egyptians right now. So it's interesting to see how that plays out. I've also used it in maritime security class. I teach in a maritime history course. So yeah, it does. It does influence the way I teach here. So that's a big thing. In terms of of I get a lot of attention for the YouTube channel. I really do. It's funny, the media people here at my university will always tell me, it's like, they have, they have a thing that catches every time Campbell University is meant, they get a Google alert and they say, man, it's like, we dread when shipping things happen, because it's just like, non stop, you that come flying through. He goes, he goes, he goes, you get more hits than the sports team sometimes coming through. So it's a lot of fun. You know, I think I get a little jealousy at times, because I do get a lot of attention for doing this. But I gotta say, my university is extremely supportive. You know, I'm doing this for my office at school, so when you watch a video for me, I got Campbell University in the background. So they they're they're extremely supportive in me doing it. They love the publicity. They They really do. They think I get, I get the word of Campbell out quite a bit. Do

Blythe Brumleve: 1:07:48

you see an increase since 2020 where supply chain sort of became like a it gets more well known. Do you see an increase in interest in taking courses like, like, what you offer?

Unknown: 1:07:59

I, you know, I had it so funny is I had, I've had people outside the university say, I want to send my kid to Campbell to take your supply chain program. It's like, I don't have a supply chain program. Don't come me, you know, I'll send them someplace else. It's like, I know where you need to go, but don't come here because I don't have one. But, yeah, I have students ask it all the time. You know, we do. We have a program here in Homeland Security. And I talk about Homeland Security, maritime security program all the time. And so that's a big one. I push my students to we do a course on critical infrastructure, and so I talk about ports and shipping and everything associated with it. It's always very interesting. And I think I've been really pushing my business school aside to really push this more. I think supply chain is a great opportunity. We talk about it all the time, and the potential and the aspects for it. What's really interesting is, is, I gotta say, as a historian, My undergrad was a BS in marine transportation. So I did an economic business, very logistics undergrad. But it's the historian in me that's actually works a bit better, I would argue, because it allows me to synthesize a lot of information, to read a lot of things, and then to project it and to really focus my attention. I don't know if my business and logistics training really helped me with that as much as my historian training with that. And I joke, because I deal with a lot of MBAs too. And you know, I think MBAs are great. They're fantastic, but they also tend to be very narrow focus sometimes too. And I think historians allow you. One of the things I love about being a story is I can look at something at the 500 foot level, or go all the way up to the 50,000 foot level, and I could zoom in and out all the time. I think it's really helpful at times to do that. So it's been a really interesting mix what's been happening. It's been a crazy three years with this thing. I gotta lie. Do

Blythe Brumleve: 1:09:39

you have a favorite story that you like to tell your students, like a favorite shipping historical story?

Unknown: 1:09:44

I don't know if I got a favorite historical shipping story. I mean, I always tell them the story they ever given because it's a great one, because it's just, you know, if I knew all it took to propel me into fame was that I would have bribed a helmsman on a big ship years ago to hook a hard right in this. US and run that ship aground, because, because it was just, it's amazing. You know, what I talk about with the students is this, I, you know, because, because I'm dealing with young students, I'm in a very kind of small to medium size college, I deal with athletes a lot. And so we're talking a lot about, right now, about name, image and likeness, which is a big, hot topic. And, you know, I keep telling them, it's like, Listen, you doesn't matter where you are. You can make a name for yourself. Doesn't matter, you know, you don't have to be at a big institution or a big university. You can be someplace like where I am right now, and do it. And I'll show them my video. That's my most popular video I ever did. It's got almost a million views and and I'll show them that, and I'll talk about the revenue I got from that, and I'll tell them right there. I said, that video took me, you know, you look at the time stamp, you know, 15 minutes to make. And I said, it didn't take me 15 minutes to make that video. It took me 30 years to make that video. I had, you know, it took a lot of elements to get to that point where you can sit down and for 15 minutes do this. And I said, that's what you need to understand. And so, you know, my shipping thing I talk about all the time is, when I was driving the ships, I had no idea about any of this stuff. I did. All I cared about was, you know, keeping the bow between the anchors, that's what I worried about, and not running aground and making the news. That's, that's what I wanted to do. Now, I understand the bigger picture, and and, and, and what I try to do is, is make people in the shipping industry understand the bigger picture, because they don't because they don't, lots of them, they just see the the balance sheet. And same thing with people who are not involved in the shipping industry, make them understand it. So, you know, I think everyone really have a favorite story in regards to

Blythe Brumleve: 1:11:33

that. Do you ever get scared of you know, powerful people kind of coming for you? Oh,

Unknown: 1:11:41

I got a phone call not too long ago. I was on LinkedIn, of all things, I'm on LinkedIn, and I friended somebody. It's like, I saw somebody actually free. He connected to me. I looked at him, like, oh, wow, that's, that's imprint. I won't say who it is, but it's like, well, that's, that's impressive. I mean, I mean, they're busy people, and they're really up there and, you know, and all of a sudden I got that LinkedIn is like, yeah, hey. Sal is like, oh, okay, you know. And so I sent back. He goes, he goes, Hey, if you got a few minutes, I'd really like to talk to you. It's like, Oh God, I'm in trouble. It's like, there's no way I'm not gonna yell that right now, because I've been saying things. And it was the most cordial discussion. It was like, Sal, appreciate everything you do. It was, it was like, really impressive, and it's amazing. I think I've mentioned this to you before, but I I've gotten contacted by people. It's like, Are you kidding? I'm like, Assistant Secretaries of of in the cabinet level. It's like, it's like, you know, hey, the Secretary saw your videos. Like, really? It's like, why'd you see my video? And it's like, it's like, maybe, like, your your opinion and input on this. It's like, okay, I'm gonna YouTube. I don't like to use influencer, but, like, it's just a YouTube guy. He goes, No, no, no, you got a good handle on things. We're really interested on it. And I like to think that at times, I have contributed a little bit with this. And it's amazing the influence you can have. You know, you say this all the time, Blythe, I basically copy you all the time. If you're not on social media and using it correctly, you just don't understand. I tell every professor I ever do, it's like, man, you are an expert in this field that nobody else on the planet does. There's gonna be a moment when you are sought after more than anybody else, and if you're not on social media, no one's gonna find you. They're not gonna know who you are, and you're going to miss out on that opportunity. You can't do it after the fact. You got to be on there to begin with, and you got to do good stuff. And then they'll come catch you. What

Blythe Brumleve: 1:13:29

kind of opportunities has, you know, having a YouTube channel opened up the doors for you, I imagine, speaking engagements, you know, it may be a full time income, you know, all of that good stuff. I mean, it's

Unknown: 1:13:40

generated income, which is great. But I got a job offer not too long ago to go be dean of a school, which I unfortunately had to turn down. But it was an amazing offer. I was just like, you know, we really love what you do. We want you to keep doing what you're doing. And, you know, come here and do this speaking engagements. I think every time I go into speaking engagement, that gets me from the channel. I always talk about it. I'll do a quick little short when I'm there, you know. So I was in Vancouver, Washington, you know, Vancouver, Canada for talk, because they saw a paper I was I was doing a brief for the US transportation command on global logistics in the Pacific because of a paper I gave on the history of Navy tankers in World War Two, because I posted it, and it's like, it's like, Hey, come on. We want to hear you talk about this. And so I came on. I did that. I just got invited up to the Naval War College to come participate in an event. So the amount of events I get called to, to do and to ask for my my problem Blythe is I'm one person. I need to clone myself. Because I just, this is a one person operation. I joke all the time when I do my videos, like, I'm gonna get my you know, there's a mistake. I said, That's staff fault. This. Staff is terrible. And the staff is my two dogs, you know, it's Maui and peanut, which you'll see in the background on some of my videos, every now and then. But that's it. It's really amazing, the connections you get. And I think. You got to appreciate them and grab them when you can. And the biggest, the hardest thing I've had to learn is to say no, because I can't do everything, and if I try to do everything, I'm going to diminish what I'm doing. And so I've gotten to the point where at times I say I'd love to help, but I just don't have the bandwidth right now to do it.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:15:18

So that's, that's how you answer the question, because I struggle with it too. I I feel the the requests coming in, especially with, you know, conference season coming up, and it just, it's very difficult for me to say no. So I imagine it is, it just as simple as, you know, sorry, I don't have the bandwidth, because, if so, I'm just going to copy this. That line. It

Unknown: 1:15:36

is for some it is for other others, like, Man, I really want to do this. It's like, Oh, man. Is like, this is what I really want to do, but it's like, I can't cut loose and go to DC for three days to be in this event, and afterwards I kick myself because, like, I should have cut loose for three days and been in the event. But, you know, you just you can't because, you know, it's either family or work obligations or it just you got something else going on. So it's really, really tough to do. But you know, I think prioritizing is always an issue. We were always, we're always juggling this, you know, I've got the flexibility to do this YouTube on the road. I've, you know, it's amazing. I've been able to come up with a, you know, the portable studio thing, where I can basically with a portable mic, with my phone, you know, and basically a laptop, and I'm up and running, I'm good to go. And I can, because I've also found out every time I ever leave like home base to go do something, something hits the fan. Every guarantee something's going to happen that something hits a fan, it's like, here's the story I'm missing right now, and I got no way to talk about it. So, you know, I get more versatile with it and and, you know, I'm at the point where I'm, you know, almost three years in. Now I am thinking about, you know, okay, I need some help. I need to do something here. And also think it's an opportunity for some students to take advantage. You know, I'm in a university. I'd love to get some communication students, and maybe working with them and doing that. I think there's some great opportunities to make this a good learning experience for them, too. Yeah, heck

Blythe Brumleve: 1:16:59

yeah. That would if I was a student at Campbell University, I would be the first one to sign up. Because I said, you know, I kicked the show off by saying when the president and founder of the SAL fan club, so, you know, I guess you know, as sort of we round out this discussion, are there any creators that you follow within, you know, the shipping industry, or outside of the shipping industry that you draw inspiration from, or you just sort of head down, focused on, on what you're doing. So

Unknown: 1:17:24

I got a trio of buddies who who are naval historians, and they do very different things. It's very funny. They they have a podcast they do together called bilge pumps. And so Jack kind of fell, who does this Naval History site? That's just amazing. I mean, he's almost at a half a billion, you know, half a million subscribers. It's crazy. Just puts out quality work. I mean, just really says he he has a system, and he follows it, and he's really good with it. You know, I got another buddy who does this, Alex Clark, who's a naval historian. He does these kind of stream of consciousness videos, which I love, and he talks about these very ingrained topics and everything. And then another buddy, Jamie Slidell, who does a kind of a video series, it's called armored carriers, where he does aircraft carriers in World War Two, but it's not him, it's literally images and videos and basically primary sources talking. And I remember when I started all this, I talked to all three of them, because they all had three different it was three different models they were using. And I talked to all three of them, and they were great. They were really supportive and helpful. And one of the things that I've really loved is, is, and you know this is, there's a community in YouTube where we can kind of help each other. So, you know, I'm a firefighter. I got very much involved with the shipboard fires that took place up in Newark, New Jersey. I've been watching the testimony this past week of the Coast Guard hearings, and I had a buddy call me who's got a channel, stash D training, which is, does firefighting training. He said, Hey, I've never done a guest before. Why don't you come on and we could talk about this lithium ion fire up in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. And I did it. Was great. I love doing that. Buddy Ward Carroll, who does a naval history and then a naval a naval YouTube channel. He's an aviator, so he talks about all US Navy stuff. He had me, come on. He goes, I don't understand this commercial stuff. Come on and talk to my audience. And it's great, because we feed off each other's audiences. So, you know, I love those comments where all of a sudden you get this things like, actually on boards channel. It's great. It's so funny. It's like the guest star you never expect to see, you know, on your TV show. So, so, yeah, I get off a lot of inspiration from you. I mean, Blythe, you helped me where there when I got started with this, and yet, I remember sitting there in some interviews with you, like good stuff. I can write this down, and I need to do this stuff, I mean, so there was always, you know, I started on freightwaves. It was great, because that really hooked me up with a good little group. People at the time who were doing their own shows and starting to really venture off this way, because this is a complete lock for me again. I never expected to do this. This is not what I expected to do. And if you would have told me, in March of 2021 I go back again. I go back to that day, March 21 everything. It is 23rd March. 23 of 2021. Whenever given one ashore, I had 136 subscribers. And the day before, three people watch my channel. That was it. That's what I had. And I did, like the first video me and John Conrad from G captain, about an hour long, talking about, ever given, I think we got 3000 views. I was like, 1000 views. It's like, saying, this is like a static now, it's like, it's like, it's crazy. And then, you know, back in June, I had a viral video that went crazy because we were covering the Titanic and the submersible that went down, you know, and then the amount of calls on a daily basis that I take for granted. Now, you know, I was just talking to Reuters earlier today, I got asked to write an op ed for the second time by the New York Times. It's crazy. It's just, it's just the what you can use this for, to get your message out. And again, it's got to be a quality message. If you watch my videos, it's not high tech. It is not a video that is, that is, that is, you know, a lot of art in it, a lot of graphics and everything like that. This mug and maybe some pictures thrown up, maybe some maps of marine traffic. And I joke about because I just got, like, on a Canva to, like, change my thumbnails now, and I'm very proud of myself because, like, okay, which is very funny, because my 15 year old son keeps telling me, it's like, oh, they're terrible, Dad. You got to change these things. And so, you know, I get a lot of inspiration from my 15 year old son, Christopher, he he's the one who tells me all the times like this, this, no, no, this doesn't work. It's like, too wordy. You just make it simpler and everything. And every time updating

Blythe Brumleve: 1:21:49

your thumbnails, what's that I said? I have noticed an update in your thumbnail. It looks good. And

Unknown: 1:21:55

every time I get, like, really cocky in my YouTube, he will come in with his phone, pull up a video and say, Okay, here's a potato chip rotating. It had 3 million views. And I'm like, Okay, that's it. That's like, I can't, I can't compete with that. And so it's very humbling right off the bat and everything. It's like, it's not that good. So

Blythe Brumleve: 1:22:13

what do you have planned for the YouTube channel? Is it just sort of just plugging away, as you know, these topics arise or or, do you plan content pretty far out? Or what does, I guess, sort of your planning strategy look like? So

Unknown: 1:22:26

I try to have in the back of my mind, because these new, you know, the problem I have is, is, if I chase news stories, they go away, and then all of a sudden, what do you have behind it? And so, like, right now, I'm doing a series on the US Merchant Marine, so I'm looking at different shipping lines, trying to get a video out a week on that, trying to be very consistent. You know, consistency is one of the keys. And I'm trying to be much more consistent with that. So, you know, putting some background content in there, which, which, you know, for a YouTube channel works, because if you're very news driven, then you get a peak and trough. You need to have kind of steady little base at the bottom, that's getting people in all the time. So I'm working on that. That's a really good one for me. I think that's a really solid one to do. I'm looking to really kind of get into a cycle of, okay, this is when news stories are going to come out. My problem is I am driven by the news cycle. So sometimes I'll be like, okay, a video a day for a week because there's a lot going on. Other times it'll be like, okay, every, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or something like that. I'm just going to try to get on a cycle. Do longer content ones on the weekend. I like to, you know, have a, you know, a kind of a longer one on the weekend that goes a little bit more in depth. And I pretty good with that. I have a series called what the ship, where I take like, five top stories, break them down over 30 minutes, and then the last kind of, kind of five minutes each one, and the last five minutes is okay, have these all tied together. And, you know, those I love to do, they take the longest to do, but they, they're always the the good ones, because they get a lot of feedback on those, because a lot of people will look at them and say, okay, that kind of gets me up to date. They don't have time to watch all these videos. And so, you know, it's measured, and I really want to get to a point where I can get some help and develop it and make it so it's a little less on me, and, you know, I can focus a little bit more, but it's tough. It's just, it's hard to juggle, especially when you have no guideposts to go by.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:24:19

How are you balancing it all. I, you

Unknown: 1:24:22

know, I just, I thrive on this stuff. I really do. I like being busy. Busy, to me, is the way to go. If nothing's going on, I turn into inertia rock. I don't move, you know, it's just like I turned to a slug. So this has been great. I love this keeps me going. It's a very big passion. I have a lot of them, you know, as you mentioned before, you know, I'm a volunteer firefighter. I do stuff with the athletics here at University. I'm a chair in my department. I got a 15 year old son. I got a family. It's a lot going on, but I think it's, it's, it's really, my family's been really supportive. They've been really great at this they've had to deal with craziness. It's like, okay, something's happened. I got to be on TV at two in the morning for India. You know, and so I'm up, you know, in, you know, in a shirt, tie, jacket and pajamas, you know, doing, doing the standard thing we do. So, you know, they're really good. And I love my wife for putting up with me with this sometimes, because it's crazy, because she, whenever something happens in Chevy, she's like, Oh, here we go. You know, here's the phone. Here it goes. It's like, say goodbye to dad for a few days.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:25:25

All right, last couple questions, what advice would you give to a YouTuber that's just starting out?

Unknown: 1:25:32

Number one, don't get discouraged. Don't, don't look at your numbers. Don't, don't. Don't sit there and say, Sal's doing this and I'm doing this. I should give up. I remember when I started doing it, I was like, it's like, oh, man, I'm making enough for groceries for this week. You know, it's like, I was like, so excited. It was like, This is great. And, and, you know, just, just focus on what you want to put out there. Don't, don't go over the tip of your skis. Don't talk about things you don't know there are subject matter experts out there. And also understand you're going to be wrong. You know, one of the things with historians I deal with all the time is historians never write a book because they never want to put their writing down on paper for fear that someone's going to come back a week later and say you're wrong on that. Because I just found this, and you got to get away from that. So whenever given happened, I actually got called by CNN and the Washington Post to write pieces for them, and that was some of the toughest writing I think I've ever done, because it's like it had to be quick and fast, because this story is going to go away. You've got to get it out before the ship is free. So we need this tomorrow to get it done. I'm doing this right now with the New York Times, the Op Ed. You got to get it done. And so, you know, you got to put aside your preconceived this is the way things worked. And try to try new things. And don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to be wrong. And everything I, you know, I tell people all the time, I get notes on my videos that's wrong. It's like, great, what's the right answer? And I'll highlight it on my video, and I'll highlight up in it to the comments, and if I need to, I'll cut it out of the video. So, you know, don't be afraid of that. And most importantly, find the thing that you like, you know? I thought about a YouTube channel before this. I actually, during COVID, I was working with a history organization, and we were doing interviews. I was like, oh, hit naval history. I could do a Naval History Channel, but there's like, ah, there's a lot of them out there. There's a lot of people doing this, and I think be competing against them, you know? And then I thought, well, I'll do naval stuff. It's like, ah, there's naval stuff too. And then I found my niche, and that was commercial shipping. It's like, nobody's talking about this stuff. This is great. It's like, it's like, I found my one little lane, and it's like, okay, this is my lane. I'm gonna take it and and off I go running. And what I find too, is I find people who are doing things kind of similar. So there's a lot of guys out there and women out there who are recording themselves sailing. It's like, okay, I'm not going to do that, but I'm going to bring them on to my channel, and they can talk about and I'm going to promote their channel, and they'll promote mine, and this will be great. We'll feed off each other and and, you know, that's, that's the thing. Don't be afraid to ask. That's the other thing. Is like, you know, they're everyone I've ever encountered. I've never had someone. I'll see someone who used something on their videos, like, hey, what do you use for that? That's great. Like, Oh, here you go. No one's keeping anything proprietary. It's like, this is, this is what we want you to do. And I'm really amazed about it. I did, I did a two I did a two video section on a 60 minute segment on the US Navy, where I took the entire 60 minute segment, cut it in half, and I just kind of overlaid me on it. I was like, There's no way this is flying. There's there's no way I'm not getting copyrighted hit by 60 minutes. I did. It's like 60 minutes, flagged it, and I put in a, you know, an appeal, saying, Okay, this is fair use doctrine and and I've changed it substantially and stuff again, if they didn't approve it. And I said, Okay, well, that's amazing to me. And then last week, I got called by 60 minutes because of the Red Sea, and they said, Sal, we wanted to talk to you. It's like, it's like, okay, great. 60 Minutes, like, like, I was wondering about it, and the first words out of their mouth was, hey, we've enjoyed your videos a lot. I was like, Really, it's like, seriously, if you did, like, no, no, we really did. We thought they were really constructive. Like, okay, great. He goes. Matter fact, that's why we're calling you. We figured you'd know this. So, you know, don't be afraid to reach out and go that way because, because I think what keeps everyone back is being discouraged, and those low numbers, nobody's watching. I'm not getting anything. It's a lot of work. I'm not getting anything out in return. Man, that changed for me, and it changed for me in September of 2021 when I shifted from talking about a ship stuck in the Suez to talking about the global supply chain issue and the the arrival of ships off of LA and Long Beach. And that is solely because I had a I had a viewer sit there and say, Sal, you should branch out a little bit and talk a little bit more than just the ship stuck in Suez. And I was like, It's good idea. I should do that. And then I had a lot of people, subscribers and Patreon members, who gave me a lot of great advice. And it's like, Okay, you guys do know what you're talking

Blythe Brumleve: 1:29:48

about? What kind of advice was that it, you know, just different topics to cover and things like that. Yeah, there's a whole variety of

Unknown: 1:29:55

different thing. You know how to change your Patreon page, what to do with that? You know how to how to. Change, you know, you know, okay, you're doing this in your video. It's really annoying. Don't do that anymore. It's like, it's like, I had this really, like, long introduction to myself. It's like, oh, God, I don't need that. You need even my son said, can I get into a dad? Gotta, you know, 15 seconds. You got to be the quick preview, you know, because that's what people are doing scrolling on their phone. You gotta have action in your first 15 seconds, your video and and so, you know, a lot of things, you know, I change, change that, change the format a little bit. It's so funny, because sometimes I'll do like these really long videos, like, I know it's gonna like this, and I'll get that it's like, it's like, Oh, dude, you drone on for too long. It's like, it's like, okay, this is not tick tock. If you want a 32nd tick tock, go to tick tock. This is going to be a little bit different. And I've had people say, no, no, we like the long format. Go that way. And and, you know, I listen to the people who watch me because I think they do. And there's some, you know, there's some who've been there for a long time. I've known them for a long time. I don't know who they are, but I just know their handle. And so when they drop me a comment every now and then, it's like, Oh, that's good one. I'm gonna listen to that one. I I appreciate that. And then, you know, it's, you know, I got the stick with the Hawaiian shirts, which I wear Hawaiian shirts anyway. So it's like, it's great. And, and, you know, every now and then, when I put, when I wear a new Hawaiian shirt, I get more comments about that. It's like, oh, hen, seen that one yet. Where'd you get that? So it's a lot of fun.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:31:16

Yeah, I think you are the perfect example of a creator that had a wealth of knowledge about something and then just decided to just start creating. And then you just evolve as you go, and you pick up things along the way. And a lot of people want that instant success right away, but they don't realize, you know, how many reps and how much you know self awareness it takes to continuously, you know, watch yourself and get better, and listen to some comments, and know which ones to avoid and which stories to cover and which ones to avoid. It just It comes with time that it's not really something that that can be taught. Yeah,

Unknown: 1:31:51

you know, YouTube is a great medium too, because, you know, if you read that hurtful comment comes up, it's like, oh, that's hurtful. Delete, you know, and you can just move on. It's great. It's a great feature. It's just, you know, you can't do that in real life. You know, sometimes you just can't do that, and but, you know, here you can. And sometimes I leave them, it's just like, that's fine. You know, I don't like to delete comments at all. I really don't. It's just, if it's really spiteful, mean and derogatory and it's hurtful other people, but, yeah, but only one, they're fine. I love I love that comments, but it's just, you know how you develop, and again, be willing to listen and change, because you haven't figured it out. If you're like me Blythe, and you go back and look at a video you did two years ago, you're like, oh god. It's like, it's the same thing about writing. I do the same thing when I read something I wrote, like, years ago, I would have done that so differently now I just, I just kind of cringe at that at times. And so, you know, I just keep developing and keep developing and keep moving and keep changing and and you try new things at different times too, you know, see if this works. And then, like, Ooh, no, that did not work at all.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:32:49

Well, it's definitely been a joy to watch over the last few years. You're definitely that example that I look to, as far as, you know, Hey, YouTube is probably the home for a lot of our content that we create, and you know, we should invest more time and energy into it. So, so thank you for being that, that you know that, that beacon of reason, I guess you know, in this crazy world of content creation, where can folks follow you? Follow more of your work? What are your social platforms of choice? I don't think it's tick tock, but I'm pretty sure it's Twitter slash x. And

Unknown: 1:33:23

I do, well, you know, it's so funny because, because I am thinking tick tock, and I've done a few of them, and I really need to get better, that's really one of the things that I want to bring somebody on that can take a video and put it into a tick tock, because I think, I think that eats up a lot of my time. And it's like, okay, maybe if I get somebody to do that, that'd be more efficient. But no, I'm on Twitter, a lot, X, whatever you want to call it at mercagliana, as obviously YouTube. What's going on with shipping, which has all my links there? I've got, you know, Facebook, I'm on Instagram, I'm on LinkedIn, you name it. I joke with my students all the time. If they can't find me, they're just not trying hard enough, because, because I'm pretty much out there everywhere. And I don't think you Blythe, I'm seriously you know, when we started talking very early on, I appreciate it. I remember how many of the talks we had like, oh man. Blythe has got all these great ideas. I need to be listening to them. I tell people all the time, it's like, it's like, social media is your friend. If you think it's a problem, you just you're not using it correctly. And for businesses, I just don't understand how they don't under I really don't. I went to a conference not long ago where these shipping companies were complaining, I can't get young people interested in it. And it's like, you don't, you're not out anywhere where young people would know about this. Do a video showing these kids in sailing around the world. I guarantee you'll get interest in it. It's like, You're crazy. There are some guys that do that and women that do that, and I love talking about them, because they can do things that I can't do. They got a big ship for a backdrop, and so it's great, you know, to do that. Yes,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:34:48

I 100% first of all, thank you for the nice comments and but then, second of all, I would echo that statement, because we had a woman on the show. She's a merchant mariner and she's the captain of a ship. Get a. Gabby Salazar, so she is still to this day, one of my best performing videos, because people love to learn about these different career opportunities. And

Unknown: 1:35:09

Gabby's great. I mean, she's on Instagram. You can follow her. She's a beautiful girl, but more importantly, she does this, you know, she goes, she's so funny, because she goes from this really kind of picturesque, beautiful woman. And next thing, she's in coveralls, and she's working on the ship, and she's just like, boom. It's like, go. And she travels the world. And people love that she love, you know, one of the things that she emphasizes the fact that I could work for two months out of the year, then I got two months off, and it's great. And I'm gonna go everywhere, because I make good money, and I'm gonna go travel, and I can do it. And Gabby is just fantastic about that. And, you know, I've been highlighting a lot of those guys and women who do that, because I think it's really important to show them and let that, let people know what it's like. Because, again, it's too easy to think that my goods just show up at the, you know, on a shelf and there's nothing behind it. Whether it's a truck driver, it's gotten a railway, it's a female captain driving the ship. There's a lot involved, involved with this.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:36:02

Well, I think that that is the perfect place to end this discussion. We went. I thought we would go about this length, about an hour and a half, two hours. I was hoping that you would be okay with it, because I had a slew of questions. You answered all of them flawlessly. So Sal, thank you so much for joining the show and your time. It's very appreciated.

Unknown: 1:36:21

Blythe, when I talk about telling people, you know, I don't have the bandwidth, you will always have my bandwidth. Blythe, there's never a problem with that. I will make bandwidth time for you. I appreciate what you've done, how you've helped me and especially your audience. So thank you so much for having

Blythe Brumleve: 1:36:34

me. Absolutely. The feeling is mutual. So thank you, Sal now let's get into a little bit of the unsung modes in freight. Now, I wanted to to bring this up, because I love tug boats. I thought, you know, I had this story idea that I wanted to do something on, like the cute boats. And I was like, well, majority male audience, they probably don't care about a show that's tied with like, cute boats. So let's, let's go with unsung modes in freight. And what brought this, like to the top of my attention again, is that, obviously, that, that the big cargo ship that obviously ran into the bridge involved the key, the key bridge in Baltimore. Caused the bridge to collapse, but they were finally able to have a controlled demolition in order to bring down, you know, parts of the bridge that were holding the big cargo ship in place. Number one, I am a number one fan of Salma carliano. Just throwing that out there again, just in case anybody needed a reminder. But his YouTube channel is, I love, well, not love when stuff like major events happen around the globe, like Sal is the first one to, like, jump on and make a story about it. And he just done it's so he is such a lesson in content marketing and how this man went literally from like a firefighter for a merchant mariner college professor. He still does those jobs as well. He's the only former job is the former merchant mariner. He's still a college professor. Still does like play by play for Campbell University professor at the damn University too. But he is now a super popular YouTuber who has close to 300,000 subscribers, I believe, on YouTube, which is insane. I was on one of my like, regular sort of news, you know, channels the other day that I watched regularly, breaking points and all in the comments is you should get this channel on what's going on with shipping. You should have him on because he'll be able to talk about the the pier in Gaza. That is, that's a hot mess going on over there. The construction of it is a hot mess. Anyways. So that was a little like a sidebar there. But Sal is like the first to put out information, just anything that's going on with, like, major shipping stories all around the globe. He really has become like, in just a short amount of time, like the go to source for a lot of these global events that are happening. Well, one of those events is obviously the Keystone bridge, and so a big part of that, after the control demolition is moving the cargo ship back to port, where they can finally get those people, get the merchant mariners off of that damn cargo ship, get whatever cargo is salvageable, that that's still on that ship. And what plays a huge role in that is tugboats. And so I was like, Oh, this is the perfect opportunity to cover tugboats in this show. And I said, Well, we also have to cover the other sort of cute boats and unsung heroes, or unsung modes and freight. And so the way this is going to kind of work is I'm going to talk about tugboats, and then you're going to talk about barges, and then we're going to kind of marry these two mighty, mighty modes of unsung i. I guess freight I guess, how else to really put this, what was your familiarity with tugboats? Lots of familiarity. Or like, Oh, you just kind of noticed them. And you know, what is your, I guess, knowledge level of tugboats. So

Grace Sharkey: 1:40:19

interestingly, bring that up, I would say, from very low level, I always spend a lot of time on Lake Michigan. So we see a lot of barges going across Lake Michigan throughout the day, especially if you're just hanging out by the lake for hours on end. And a lot of times those are being pulled by tugboats in particular. So that's one I've, of course, seen dredgers with tugboats too. And then what I feel like there's like a child story about tugboats or something. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's like coming to mind, but that's very little information there. I will say, though, recently, there was a company that I did get a chance to write about who was working on, like tugboat visibility and like being able to capture the network of, like, tugboat, yeah, as you go through this, I'll try to find that really quick and see who that was, But it's when you say unsung. I think, yeah, 100% it's one of those. It's like, kind of reminds me of, like, pilot cars, right? It's like, people don't really can think about the importance of their role and, like, oversized movements as well, but they have really, really interesting responsibility too. So that's kind of where my we're not doing any research. Was limited to like base

Blythe Brumleve: 1:41:42

level, because they are really, like the the title of this segment, like unsung heroes, because they really are called, in my research for this, they're called the backbone of the shipping industry, because shipping experts believe that tugboats to be a vital piece into smooth port operations. I could go through, like, the history of it, but, you know, sort of too long. Didn't read or watch. Really got started early 1900s they were steam powered at first, but now they're, they're trying to, they're mostly diesel powered now, but then they're also trying to move into, like the EV world. There are some EVs that are in the tugboat space as well. And that the thing to keep in mind with tugboats is that they're extremely powerful. They're essentially like just all all power, and they're the worst ones responsible. And the reason why I bring up the Baltimore Key Bridge incident is, or the accident that happened, is because in order to move that cargo ship from that location, you have to use tugboats. And a big piece of why the accident happened in the first place is because of a lack of tugboats within that that port control that port area. So that's the reason why I had this graphic up from from Sal. That Sal tweeted out is that the tugboat is like an essential piece for helping to get that cargo ship and steer it in the right direction to get to the port that it needs in order to take care of that business and take care of, you know, just the getting the cargo off, getting the crew members off, and it's, I'm going to play this video really quick, because it's it's super cool just to I have a whole new appreciation for tugboats, so hopefully you guys and I'll play about a minute and a half of this video from interesting engineering

Unknown: 1:43:36

tugboats maneuver vessels through the tightest spaces, such as a narrow canal or crowded harbor. But don't be fooled by their size. They're powerful enough to move vessels up to 1000 times bigger. Here's how the first thing to note about tugboats is that they are practically all engine these diminutive boats sport diesel engines of up to 3400 horsepower. That gives the average harbor boat an insane weight to power ratio, a whopping 9.5 compared to the 1.2 of the cargo ships they pull. These engines can power up to three propellers acting in tandem, generating massive amounts of thrust for the small boat. This thrust is the force that generates a tugboats bollard pull, the theoretical maximum amount of force it can exert on a pulled object, while most tugboats are able to exert 110 tons of bollard pull, recent technological developments have allowed the construction of the island victory, which sports a bollard pull of 526 tons. But it isn't just their engines that allow them to do what they do so well. Tugboats also need to have extreme maneuverability, which is achieved through a sophisticated system of rudders and nozzles. Their overall design is also a big contributing factor to how much they can pull. Tugboats feature heavy. Displacement hulls, which allow them to dig into the water, creating more friction, which means a greater bollard pull.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:45:09

Yeah, so that is, like, you know, sort of like the back story of tugboats, and you know how they not, I mean, kind of the backstory, but just the more or less, like their power and the jobs that they more, most likely take over in essentially any port like I've heard after this, this Baltimore Key Bridge accident, that there are calls from like John Conrad, from from G captain, for example, that thinks that tugboats should be at every single port in the country, just to be able to help avoid accidents from happening like that in the future, and just to be able to use them in tandem with making port operations much more efficient. So there was a couple other key facts here. They said that they can operate solo or as a team to help the mega ships move through a port or canal. If you're looking at the screen right now, you can see two tug boats in action, and so they work together in order to help tackle some of these bigger cargo ships, which seem to really only get bigger year. Yeah, like many cities, like year after year, they're just getting bigger and bigger. They will also push more than they tow, which is why you see them run right up next to a big cargo ship and push it in the direction that it needs to go. A lot of the construction around a tugboat is really made of like rubber. So in the in the video that we just saw, you see a bunch of tires sort of on the side of the boat, and that is that that's by design, so that it's not just that those pieces of rubber, but the actual whole of the ship can, a lot of times, be made out of rubber as well. They help put out fires at sea. They help icebreakers through tough Arctic routes. And like what you see in the dolly situation, which is what the dolly ship is, the one that was crippled underneath the Baltimore Key Bridge, it helps it to get to safe land. And now there are also some I mentioned earlier. There are also some extra efforts to electrify tugboats, which kind of has a similar debate compared to trucking, which I thought was interesting, because there's a lot of like tugboat captains that have their own YouTube channel, and it's very similar to drivers that have their own YouTube channel and that, you know, 1000s and 1000s of followers, and they sort of talk about, you know, the the day in the life of a tugboat captain. There was a really great video that Vice released where they sent, like, this nerdy little writer. They called him the tugboat guys that are working on that actual boat. We're calling them, like, making fun of them come like Egon from, from Ghostbusters, in case you want a visual. And then he shows up to a place where it's like a marina with, like, super, you know, tough guys that are working probably 15 hours every day doing hard labor. And then, you know, you got a guy like Egon that shows up and, you know, wants to, know, wants to do a story on a day in the life of a tugboat captain. And so it was really interesting to see the dynamics between the two, that the community is really strong among tugboats, like the crew that works on them, and also within trucking as well. But back to the electrification, because in that video that we just watched, the power is the most important part. And so the theory is kind of, you know, where you have some tugboats that that when they need the big power, then they're just going to use those tugboats for diesel operations. But then other ones, you could might work in tandem, where it's maybe not just two, but it's three of them, and one of them is electrified. That the trouble is, is that the EVS got to be able to match the diesel power. It's not quite there yet, but there are some opportunities that you could work in, maybe smaller ports, or work in tandem, like I said. There was also another company, which I thought was kind of cool, because you we mentioned, you know, with the rubber around a tugboat and how they have to attach a line to the cargo ship. And the tugboat itself is a lot of times made out of rubber, but connecting to the cargo ship, that's where, like the most danger happens, the most dangerous activities and but there is a company called co tug that is based out of Europe that is trying to change that, where they use a instead of a tugboat going directly up to the to the big cargo ship in order to catch the line, or to get the line from either or what they're doing is they are taking A drone instead and taking the line from a tug boat and flying it over to the cargo ship. So let me I'm going to play this video really quick. This video comes from Delft dynamics, and it's about the CO tug system. You.

Unknown: 1:50:00

Kotak is a leading towage operator offering its innovative services to ports and terminals on a global scale in its ambition to achieve safer and more efficient working conditions, Kotak invented a way to ensure safety while connecting the tow line conventionally tugboat captains maneuver close to the assisted vessel to be able to grab the messenger line from the assisted vessel's crew, often even under the bow or in the turbulent a minor floor in the maneuvering can result in major damage or injuries of the deck crew of both The tugboat and the assisted ship to is the first tugboat company that uses drone technology with object recognition software to deliver a messenger line to a predetermined location. Thus, instead of picking up the messenger line of the assisted ship, the line will be brought to the ship. This allows to sail beside the assisted ship instead of in front or straight after that. Yeah, with this technology, a safer way of connecting towing lines is achieved, not only to sea vessels, but also when assisting rig moves platforms and dragging pontoons. This innovation is again a step forward in the continuous pursuit of safer tug operations.

Grace Sharkey: 1:51:31

Well, talk about like a no brainer, that you're surprised it wasn't fixed yet, right? And it's scary, like the boat's like, basically sucked into the other boat, and they're like, aim. Well, it's like, if you're watching, like, below, decorate like, they have to do that when they come in. They have to, like, throw and if they're off, like, you know, Captain Lee is, like, not gonna be happy about it, because they have to basically screw they have to, like, back up all the way. We can't do that with that big of a Oh, like,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:51:58

well, it's also a lot of danger that happens with that Vice video that I mentioned. They the deck hand, who was also the writer, was getting yelled at, like, constantly because of the way that he was holding the rope. And the guy was like, he was like, if I see you do this again, he's like, I'm going to slap your hand, and I'm going to do it every single time, because I would rather slap your hand and make that muscle memory than for you to lose your fingers, because it can happen just so quickly with a lot of these, you know, just just being on a boat in in general, like there's a lot of issues that can happen. But when you're on a boat all day, every day, like you are increasing those chances of some kind of an issue happening. So there's one more thing that I did want to share, because I don't know that I've talked about it on here before, but I did start a merch store for everything. Is logistics podcast. Oh yes, I made this cutest little mug that I already ordered for myself. So it's called a tugboat respecter. It's cute little tugboat right on on the front of

Grace Sharkey: 1:53:04

it, American too.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:53:07

Hopefully, you know, people would like it as much as I did, because I already ordered one for myself. So if you're looking for something like that, I'll put a link to it in the comments, just in case. You know, you want to, you want to, you're now a tugboat respecter as well. So that is sort of my, my, my tugboat fandom in a nutshell. So Grace, I think it. Now it's time for you to talk about barges.

Grace Sharkey: 1:53:30

Well, you know, right before we get into that, because I did find it. I sent you, I just saw, you know, a YouTube video. If you want to pop that open really quick, there is so there was a I knew I once did I write about this, you know, February. Okay, cool. So not too long ago, this was actually, I like to a lot of times people come to me with stories, but once a week, I try to find a story that no one's like wrote about that. I think it's really cool. And this one captured me. This was like, again, in February, they raised$3.1 million and their their job is just to bring more visibility and create a marketplace for for tugs. And it looks like they just came out with a barge one, too. So what a great transition. If you want to play like probably the first minute of the video should be a good idea of exactly kind of what he's doing, too.

Blythe Brumleve: 1:54:18

Oh, and they're at a plug and play event. So shout out to shout out to plug and play.

Grace Sharkey: 1:54:22

Yeah on the show, yeah, exactly.

Unknown: 1:54:27

CEO, co founder of open tug, and we're improving the efficiency of freight transportation by improving access to inland and coastal waterways. So if you look at freight as a whole and logistics as a whole, most modes have been making transportation easier, Coyote, a lot of digitization and trucking, international container freight, rail and even air cargo as well. But looking at waterways as a whole, domestic waterways, bulk and break bulk transportation is still fairly difficult to access. Most of the sales processes are very manual. You gotta talk to a lot of people depending on. Doing, you may be coordinating across 3456, different parties, each of which you have to communicate individually, depending on your use case. And that creates a really high barrier of entry for shippers. And if you know the industry, great, but if not, there's a lot of complication there, and it's difficult to access, which constrains the efficiency of the industry as a whole. So we simplify that. We're the first digital marketplace to connect bulk and break bulk shippers with transportation and terminal capacity. Customers simply search for their requirements, their destinations or cargo and their timeline. They book that shipment and they track it to their destination. That's not something that's normally accessible with the technology stack of existing domestic and inland coastal maritime organizations. So we streamline sales for these operators by providing them a modern SaaS platform for their sales and customer management.

Grace Sharkey: 1:55:52

So this includes my money SaaS, take my money

Unknown: 1:55:55

portal, instant proposal generation as well as automated tracking and play

Grace Sharkey: 1:56:00

sauce, they said

Unknown: 1:56:04

that's coming through us through our marketplace or their existing customers and their existing channels as well. So our marketplace launched in q1 of 2023 we saw over 3 million tons of cargo requested through it through the year, and we have hundreds of service providers that list their services, provide quotes and interact with our customers. And I think these are all q3 numbers. So it's grown since that. And then our SaaS tools power some of the largest companies in the industry. Oh, Jack Spartan, shut up. Hey, yeah. CLG, formerly float freight and many others, port of Pittsburgh, port of Jacksonville, as you see here. And we're growing that every single day

Blythe Brumleve: 1:56:42

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Grace Sharkey: 1:57:30

Super cool. Yeah, right. Like talk

Blythe Brumleve: 1:57:34

for shippers. I just pulled up their their website, open tug is free for shippers. Wow, that's awesome. And so if you click on their website, like, it literally just, like, pulls up, hopefully, yeah, you can see it. I kind of want to, we're just going to do

Grace Sharkey: 1:57:50

a live demo spot open tag. No, I love this. No, it's it is interesting too, because it's like all this data is available. One of my favorite sites to use when I aim on the lakes is this site called boatner.com and it's, it's just all AIS data. So it's not hard to brought to you by marine traffic, brought to you by P 44 I guess. So, you know it all. It all trickles down somewhere, doesn't it yet, but it's, I think it's cool. I mean, it's a different type of of marketplace that, if and anything, I think is probably even more difficult to to find connections for right, especially if you're going into, I mean, he's 100% right. You probably, if you're a ship liner, and you're going into a certain type of water where your system there's probably someone you've always used. And whenever we talk about someone you've always used, that means, price wise, you're probably paying a premium price. And he's right, the bear of entry. Entry would be difficult to get in there if you did want to open up your own tug situation, or own a barge line, or something like that. So I just think it's interesting. It's a It's again, like, this is a huge people don't talk about this type of mode when you talk about bringing goods into United States. Wow,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:59:21

if you're listening, we are, we are currently open tugs website, and just clicking around

Grace Sharkey: 1:59:26

and photos of boats like, that's my favorite too. Is like, yeah, look, see, look, do you need a hopper, which we're talking about barges, perfect transition that's going to be for all of your grains and all of your hopper bulk related needs. It's cool

Blythe Brumleve: 1:59:41

that you can see all of this visualize. I didn't know that, because, from what I understand, and especially, you know, doing like, the tug research is like it, it really is. Like, who you know, like it is, yeah, completely relationship driven. I would be curious to know, like, how many. Okay, like it, it doesn't sound like there's, like a load board for barges, like, you just gotta know somebody in order to get your your stuff shipped, especially on, on the inland waterways, which, if you're, you're looking at the map, you know, the the Mississippi River that flows through Louisiana, and then has all these different waterways that go throughout, you know, the central part of the United States. It's arguably inland waterways are arguably one of the the biggest geographic advantages of the United States. Just watched a video on that the other day. I

Grace Sharkey: 2:00:30

love that quote. Yeah, sure. Well, France

Blythe Brumleve: 2:00:35

owned. France owned, like, the middle part of America, and when I was looking at this map at one point, obviously France owned the middle part of America before the Louisiana Purchase. But it looked like France only owned that part because of the inland waterways from the Mississippi River that dumps out into the Gulf, up throughout the central and sort of towards the Western like Montana, North Dakota areas. But yeah, they owned all of that land. And then when Britain and France went to war, Napoleon couldn't fight a war in the United States in order to keep the Louisiana Purchase. And so that's why he needed the money to fight the war against Britain. And so that's why they sold their Louisiana purchase to the United States. And, you know, the rest is kind of history. So it's,

Grace Sharkey: 2:01:27

it's not a good history at all times, but definitely a history there.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:01:32

Well, let's, let's get it to the barge talk. Let's talk about barges. Yeah,

Grace Sharkey: 2:01:36

actually, don't leave this page. Can you go back to that? Because I think that actually will help a little bit. So especially, visualize a little bit more of the good old barges themselves. So in that first photo, and clearly, if you, if you've you've probably seen these again, in inland waterways, if you're surrounded by great lakes, like myself, you've seen a number of these. There a lot of what you usually see pulled around, clearly, not always moving container ships inland. And honestly, I don't think a lot of our inland waterways could take those ships to begin with. So barges, in particular, here's some fun facts for you. So first thing, they're they're mostly flat, and they're the opposite of tugboats. They don't have a motor or an engine. That's they're just kind of there floating, and if anything, they need some type of tow boat or tugboat attached to it to get them moving from there. And I think that's why, you know, they're absolutely flat, which helps them navigate a lot of these waterways, so they don't get stuck, or they don't get a hit anything as they're going through they're used a lot of what you usually see moving around is the hopper style or the bulk types right there that we talked about earlier. Saw a couple of those this week and myself, but there are a number of different types of barges, and they can measure is up to a larger specials measure up to about 200 feet long, can hold over 3000 tons of cargo as well. And the ones that you see in the sea ports, the ones that are ocean barges, definitely hold more than that. Majority, though, are inland barges, and again, they're for more of those small bodies of water, cost effective, can move a lot in the little space, and a lot of them are used, actually, for oversized loads as well. So if you're moving turbines or things of that nature, you'll see a lot there. Basically, if this thing can't fit on a truck or a a rail car, then they're probably on a barge. There's also the deck barges, which is usually more like construction equipment, natural rock, stone, large pieces of metal. A lot of times they even move livestock on those two. Yeah, I'm trying to see if you if I see an inland one on there, but those ones are going to be usually just like the flat, perfect. There we go, that that one in particular is called a deck barge. Yep, just again, flat for equipment. A lot of times too. You'll see deck barges used, apparently as like dry land for waterway workage. So it's interesting, actually, they're finishing up the new how Gordie Howe bridge here in Detroit. So we'll have two bridges now in Detroit crossing over to Canada. And there's a deck bridge there that they use, is kind of like a surface in the middle of the Detroit River to to help build that. There's also the hopper Hopper barges. We went over those. Those are the ones that move more of like grain and bulk loads. There's shale barges, and so those are used for more of the oil and gas industry. They look kind of like the deck barges, but they're usually just like a little bit taller, some kind of way to explain it. Those are. Apparently highly regulated, though, by the US Coast Guard too. So a lot of times they'll they'll help pull those, um, there are then a liquid mud barges, those have pipes and pumps on board to help circulate and dispose of fluid. Typically use more in like inland oil drilling sites. So the ones that you're likely seeing with your on a lake or you're sitting near a large river or waterway, are the inland barges, deck barges and Hopper barges. And if you're at more of like a construction site that's on the water, you're probably seeing a crane barge as well. But yeah, these, again, I see these all the time, and I usually it's funny, if you want to bring up the site really quick, like I said, I use a site here for Michigan. Well, it's called boatner.com I should have to cry see if we can, like, put it underneath the fire ground. But it's a guy who basically just tracks, yes, love this site. He basically tracks boats and, like, we'll talk about certain like, boat history and barge news. Oh, I love this. Yeah, right. So fun. Like, I just love that. There's a person out there that's dedicated themselves, what a great domain name, too. Yeah, oh, yeah. And then, if you look, I think, is there? Oh, see on the right side, it says, AIS quick links. So this is what I use. If so my mom, I will spend a lot of time on the beach during the summer, and it will, it will, if we see like a boat, we always want to know, like, what it is, who, where it's going, stuff like that. So if you click the did you already click the aisle? Yeah, I'll take it. Oh,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:06:55

wait, it shared. And sorry, it opened a new tab.

Grace Sharkey: 2:07:00

And so, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of them right. Zoom in. Go over to if we zoom in a little bit more, go to the top left. Go, okay, perfect. So that's why I live there. Go scroll it to the left. Culture, Lake, Michigan. That's funny. Nope, that's your on other side, other side of the hand. There you go. Okay,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:07:27

it's nothing like live navigating, right?

Grace Sharkey: 2:07:30

So, like, this is usually the boats that I'm looking at, too. And if you like, click them, they'll usually show, like, see the one that's just like, Great Republic or something, right there. Yeah, click, click the Click the actual boat. It's like a red icon. Yeah, see. So it'll pull off exactly that looks like

Blythe Brumleve: 2:07:52

a little photo, yeah? So, if you're just listening, we are on AIS dot boat nerd.com, and this is all live information, correct?

Grace Sharkey: 2:08:01

Yeah, yep. Sometimes it's like, off by like, an hour or so, but, yeah, usually, like, if we see a boat in front of us so quickly, we'll go down there and it'll show us, and then we click it and see, see what's up with it. It's awesome. It'll usually tell you in the bottom too, like, where it's going or where it came from.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:08:20

So cool that there's just, like hobbyists out here that is just pulling together this kind of information.

Grace Sharkey: 2:08:27

I know, right. Look at this, and then this will actually capture like, any type of boat too. So a lot of times during the summer time, we'll have like, big yachts coming through the lakes, and it'll tell you, like, what its name is and all that. Oh, that's cool. Yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:08:46

that's so I briefly did, and I say briefly, but I need to do a more in depth episode on, like, Great Lakes shipping. I had a rust belt, Rust Belt kid on on from Gator bar. And so he handled, he does, like, he's a shipper, so he does a lot of, like, Great Lake shipping. And he was talking about some of the boats that come in and, you know, different shipping scenarios and things like that. But this just, is just on another level of all of the, I guess, just available shipping options that it's not just the inland waterways, but it's great lake shipping as well. I would maybe argue that are these so we have, obviously, like, port operations, but then we have great lake shipping, and then we have the INTERCO, like, the inland waterways. I think it's probably like the big three of the United States.

Grace Sharkey: 2:09:40

Oh, most definitely. I mean, like, especially you zoomed out here, like, look at all that stuff is moving right now, right? So it's like, when I say, like, I'm used to seeing barges, like, I'd say probably 80% of what you're seeing right now. I'm pretty sure the red ones are barges. Blue ones are toe or tugboats. And then. And there's like, another color blue, I think also sometimes it's like yachts and stuff like that. So awesome.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:10:06

Yeah, I mean, if you're just listening again, we're looking at a screen of, like, almost like Google Maps, but it's all of the Great Lakes in sort of one screenshot. And then you're, I mean, dozens and dozens of barges, of ships, probably tugboats too, that are in there, of just all just operating. This is all just going on around you, like right now, which I think a lot of people don't fully appreciate, how much stuff gets just moved all the time, and how efficient this kind of shipping is. Because I had pulled up one note that I did want to share. It actually came from Rachel Premack, formerly freight waves. I believe now she's working for a hedge fund, but really, really talented writer, and she said, just with one gallon of fuel, the resourceful barge can chug along for 616 tonnage miles, compared to 478 tonnage miles for rail and 150 miles for trucks. So one gallon of fuel will get you, like, four times as much as a truck, which is insane that that's that's crazy. So we're, yeah, unsung heroes for sure, in in the world of shipping, you

Grace Sharkey: 2:11:19

are, even though you should we, we could do an episode on Monday, Tuesday, up in the So, up in the Upper Peninsula, if you see, there's a ton of boats by it, it's like, um, it's kind of like the center right now of the screen, right on the border of Canada. And if you scroll inwards, Michiganders already know this, but a lot of out of staters don't know right, like, kind of exactly, like where your cursor was, yep. So keep going see, yeah, see where all those boats are right here in the middle of the screen. Keep nope, to the right, right where, like, Canada meets perfect. Yes. Keep scrolling right there. So though that is the Soo Locks. So like we have locks in Michigan, just like the Panama Canal. And basically the boats will come in through there, the water will raise up. Then they can go and they travel through it, and then the same thing, once they get to the other end, it goes down, and they keep traveling through the Lake Superior too. So I visited there. It's really cool.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:12:25

It almost looks like they're they're suffering from Port congestion as well, which is, you know, some somewhat recent news that a lot of ports around the globe are suffering from Port congestion, especially everything that's going on in the Suez Canal and Panama Canal and so all these ships are being diverted, so it looks like they got some congestion going on too, which is kind of crazy.

Grace Sharkey: 2:12:45

Well, and if I'm remember correctly, there's only one in and one out. It's where I think pan wells got like, two lanes, right? Two, or somewhere between two and four lanes this. I'm pretty sure it's just one lane each, so it's like one boat at a time. I'm pretty sure that is coming through, but maybe we should do an episode. An episode on

Blythe Brumleve: 2:13:03

that. Yeah, we should do great like shipping and canals, and then I also think something on icebreakers. So hopefully, you know, if you're, if you're listening, be on the lookout for those episodes in the future and to the haters that steal our content ideas and try to do them first, we'll know well

Grace Sharkey: 2:13:21

that no, if you want to go into this too, we can talk about lesser transportation, and one of my favorite boats is actually built to break ice too. What we're going to do now is So Liz, I literally want to tell everyone this is my favorite boat of all time.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:13:40

I think I just brought it up, the SS badger.

Grace Sharkey: 2:13:44

Yes, the SS badger, my favorite, absolute favorite boat of all time. It has an identical twin called the SS Spartan that hangs out in Ludington. This is where I spend. That's probably me waving from that there. Yeah. So I spend at least probably two or three weeks every summer at on the holidays in a city called Ludington, Michigan, and it has it's connected to one of our still used us 10 waterway highways, and it's run. It runs the SS badger. So this starting Memorial Day until I want to say it's it's actually extended. So sometime in November, the Badger will run back and forth from Michigan to Wisconsin, and a lot of people use it so to get start back in its history, originated in 1952 as a rail car ferry. So it actually was they put rail cars off of the trains into the boat to get it over there a little bit faster. Year, and over time, it actually became more of a commercial and car ferry. So instead of having to drive through Chicago to get to Wisconsin, you can jump on this thing for four hours and get over to the other side very, very quickly. And it's actually now one of the, well, there's 14 vessels that were running back and forth back in the day, but now this is the only one left, excited. Does have a twin. It's the Spartan. If we had boat nerd open, you'd see the Spartan sitting there. It again, looks exactly the same. The Spartan only sits there, though, as a parts server for the USS bad or the SS badger. So basically, see that it's twin. If a part breaks down in the badger, they just go take it off of the Spartan, and they put it on this thing. And so it's kind of cool to bat or the Spartans always sitting in Ludington all day long. It never, never moves. It actually is now a national historic landmark as of 2016 it's the only national historic landmark that does physically move. And it is a state landmark for two states, not only Michigan, but for Wisconsin as well. And it goes into manage to walk Wisconsin. I've I've been on it. So here's the thing. I've been on it for a tour, but I've never actually taken a trip on it. So that's something I want to do at some point. My parents have done, they do a really cool Fourth of July dinner, where the Fourth of July after it comes back, so it leaves at 9am and Michigan comes back to Michigan by 7pm from Wisconsin. And so afterwards, though, it'll take the boat will go out into the ocean or into the lake a little bit, and then you can watch the fireworks from the boat, which is kind of cool. Kind of looks like the Titanic, yeah, it's pretty sick. And it's cool, because you don't hogs every time it comes into shore. So it's like, well,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:17:04

what happens during this might be a dumb question, but no, like during winter time, like, Can these ships still operate? Like, are there, like, level so ice over it,

Grace Sharkey: 2:17:16

layers of ice. They used to operate during the winter time because they are built to break ice. That's kind of an interesting thing about those. They can, they can, they're redesigned, I think, in the like, early 60s or something, to to break ice. But I just don't think they run anymore, because I don't think it's just needed, like, there's not enough volume of of users. It's really, it's easy for for them to fill it out, I think, during the summer time, but a little bit harder during the winter time for them. So I think they do shut down for that reason. Here's, and this is when I say, it's my favorite bow. I know all of you out there who are like Grace. You know you are you your Sierra Club member. You, you still give money, clean water, action. This is still a coal burning boat. It's one of the only ones still left on Lake Michigan, I think, if not the only one. A couple of years ago, it did get a new, I don't want to say engine, because I don't think it was exactly the engine, but it did basically. It used to burn coal, then dump the coal into the water. Yikes. Yeah, not that great, right? Now, it doesn't do that. It still burns. It still burns a little bit of coal. It's not fully coal operate, but still does burn coal. And instead, now they dump the ash, they offload the ash at the end and actually goes into making this event. So, oh, that's super smart. Yeah, they have thought of it. But, you know, a lot of people were against my I love I have some friends from my college years who are very, no, no, I spent a lot of time fighting coal ash. I'll just say that I did. I fought a lot of coal ash in my college years. So a lot of people are very mad at me for loving this boat so much, but I just it's so big and so beautiful. It looks like like the Titanic, and it's it's awesome because it moves. It moves a number of trucks a day. Most commercial trucks that are hauling in it are actually hauling turbines, but they are, so I think in that first YouTube clip I sent over, that's them loading up, I believe trucks for it to go into there, and a lot of it, because in Traverse City, we have a Big turbine, wind turbine producer, instead of paying the oversized fees to to go, like, through Chicago and Illinois. Instead, you just, like, put it on this phone. You have to worry about any of it, and it gets there in four hours. I mean, can you imagine driving oversized load turbines through like, four states? Yeah. I go traffic each

Blythe Brumleve: 2:20:02

margin, a nice little waterways trip.

Grace Sharkey: 2:20:06

Yeah, is that? Yeah? Get a nice view. The driver gets it feels nice, yeah, save some hours, right? Because you turn the truck off, you have to worry about it. It's true. Did

Blythe Brumleve: 2:20:18

you find that? I wonder, does that count towards your your your driving time. If you're a truck driver, you're sitting on the barge. I'm gonna un

Grace Sharkey: 2:20:26

without the education say no, because you turn your truck off. Yeah, true. I mean, there's, there's movie theaters in there, there's cafeterias, there's, I think pretty soon, there's, like, beds that you can sleep in if you want to. So it's like, it's a good time. It's not just sitting there waiting for hours. There's actually things to do. Apparently, there's, like, a big bingo, big bingo situation. You know me, I love bingo, so I just need to get down this boat. And one of my best friends from college actually lives on the other side of it too. So we always joke like, I just set the boat to go pick you up. But yeah, if you want to show there is, if you see it, where it's I put in my notes. Moves 1000s of portions a year. That should be, I just highlight it for you. That should

Blythe Brumleve: 2:21:19

be, Oh, okay. And

Grace Sharkey: 2:21:21

then they also will show this one first, I will say too, they also, in recent years, got a new social media view, like person, so they're like, on Tiktok now, yeah, exactly, on YouTube. And I'm like, very proud of them.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:21:40

So look, now you're going to have to get a Tiktok. So you can see all of these things before they make it over to Instagram.

Grace Sharkey: 2:21:51

The day they make it Tiktok is the day they take Tiktok.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:21:53

They better not. God, I hope they don't. It's the, easily the best social media ad as we're about to play a YouTube shorts. That is watermark. It's this video, if you're just listening, it's, it's loading and unloading large tractor equipment using a semi. And it's going on to the SS badger. So that that, I think this, you know what Grace was talking about when referring to some of these, these large items that can be shipped using, you know, a boat like this. So definitely, like another unsung hero, which, no,

Grace Sharkey: 2:22:35

there's another shore underneath that. And this is like, this is one of my this is what they're like, famously known for, for moving these, yeah, no, no on my notes, if you see it,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:22:50

oh, let's see okay. So

Grace Sharkey: 2:22:54

they're famously known for moving Clydesdales. So yeah, they do this, I think, every single year, and they've been known for for a while. It's just a faster trip for for that. If you don't know Clyde's,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:23:08

you're probably on the horses too. Oh yeah,

Unknown: 2:23:12

the world renowned Budweiser Clydesdales were in Ludington to take part of the sesquicentennial celebrations. After a week of appearances and events, the Clydesdales departed Michigan on their way to South Dakota via the badger the second time they have ever sailed with us. They are one of three teams consisting of 10 horses that travel the country for a majority of the year. They attend special events all over the country with their operations team,

Grace Sharkey: 2:23:37

they can fit five trucks in there.

Unknown: 2:23:40

Their appearances this week were sponsored by Ludington beverage. It's an honor to safely carry America. I love that.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:23:49

No, it's such a good if you're wondering what that sound was. That is a YouTube shorts deciding to automatically play the next video in the feed as soon as we watch some cute little horses, exactly transported.

Grace Sharkey: 2:24:00

I love shorts, but yeah, so that's, that's, that's my favorite boat. It's, it's my mom and I, we love, we always love to go sit and watch the sunset, watch this boat come in and it's, it's loud. It's just, I love boats, because especially on like, big bodies of water, you know, they're just like, they're there, and then they're not there, you know, it's like, come out of nowhere, and they're just, you always see this thing from very far away. It's like a little dot, and then it just, like, slowly gets massive, and it's just the coolest boat, and the, know, the history of it, and how long it's been here, and also just how important it is. I mean, it is very, very important. There was a year that it was actually shut down because, if I remember correctly, hit a rock or something like out in the bay somewhere, and so there was a year that it didn't run at all, and they're like, going through new ownership or some. Thing. And just think of everyone that moved oversized loads that year. I mean, if you know, if you look at Michigan, you don't want to take an oversized load north, hell no, you don't want to do that. That would be miserable trying to go through the Porcupine Mountains that way. No, I would never do that. And then you

Blythe Brumleve: 2:25:17

definitely have Porcupine Mountains. Is that what you said? Yeah, yeah. Never heard of them. They're

Grace Sharkey: 2:25:24

so like, you go, yeah, they're like, over here. And so you definitely don't want to do that. And then you have Chicago, which is like, Who would want to take an oversized load through there? So it is talk about, like, an interesting way that we move oversized loads through the United States, especially. I mean, even, like, if you're shipping, even from somewhere, like anywhere on the East Coast, you're likely probably coming in through Michigan and taking that route, instead of having to go through multiple cities, if you can get through Michigan and up into there, that's easy way out.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:25:59

Wow. Michigan kind of a shipping, unknown, shipping powerhouse, as far as that's especially when you think about all of the states in the United States, like, who is you tend to think of like more like port cities, traditional port cities, but Michigan is also a port city as well, correct? Because of all the waterways and,

Grace Sharkey: 2:26:21

yeah, I, you know, I think that's why we have, like, we have so many different cultures, especially around Detroit. I mean, the fur training was huge in this area. It's, I think, about the way that we expanded out west. I mean, Michigan was, I think, just so important to as an economic importance to just how this their country grew, and really, until you get to the Mississippi River, and we met that there were no other huge bodies of water like that that you can take advantage of and and moving things as well. So if we should do a Michigan episode soon, and I bet you that could get really interesting if we actually put some research into that as well.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:27:02

Yeah, well, I wrote that down for a future episode idea because I liked doing like this that hopefully other folks, you know, enjoyed it as well. But like this kind of segment that's a little bit away from, like news, news and more of like what, some other parts of shipping that are just cool that I don't really understand all that well. And so using this, you know, using this show with you as as a vehicle or, you know, to research, you know, pun intended for for a lot of these, this, these things that I want to learn more about. So this was cool. So we'll, we'll definitely do that. We'll do canals in the future too. And I really want to do one on ice breakers, so maybe that'll be our like sort of show plan here for the

Grace Sharkey: 2:27:46

next especially with Lake Lake Superior. I think I get really interesting too. Yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:27:53

let's shift gears a little bit, because you if you were listening to the previous episode, we talked about tugboats and barges, and we also talked about what we would be discussing on future episodes. And so I think we talked about icebreakers that we're going to do in future episodes. I'm not sure what maybe the other ones I'm blanking on on what we had mentioned, but one of those topics was also shipping canals. And so we thought that we would shine a little bit of a light on the different and major shipping canals all over the world. And I think for for most folks, you are used to like the Suez Canal, that that's the one that Egypt owns. That is, it's been, I'll just go through my notes right now. It was opened in 1869 it's a critical maritime route, or has been a critical maritime route for over 150 years. And the significance of it is that it reduces the maritime journey between Europe and Asia by about 4300, miles. I was going to mention kilometers, but I don't know what a kilometer is. And you know, it's, you know, day before July 4. So we are going to go with miles. Yeah, for sure, what the fuck is a kilometer? What

Grace Sharkey: 2:29:01

is a kilometer the world?

Blythe Brumleve: 2:29:05

But nearly 10% of global trade passes through the Suez Canal, including 12% of the world's total oil shipments. I could also go through the Panama Canal, but I wanted to show this quick video first, so let me bring up Grace's favorite platform, and that's the Suez Canal. Hopefully you didn't hear that volume, but let me go ahead and play on this one. Oh, I gotta add it to the stage first. So some BTS for you guys. Um, here's an overview of the Suez Canal from this Tiktok user, Nova sphere two

Unknown: 2:29:45

here is the Suez Canal, one of the busiest shipping channels in the world and also one of the most profitable canals. The Suez Canal was initially excavated by the French, but the British later became the major shareholders after. Egypt gained independence, they consistently sought control of the canal and eventually succeeded in ousting the British as one of the busiest shipping channels globally. The Suez Canal witnesses 10s of 1000s of vessels passing through every year. It brings significant economic benefits to Egypt, serving as a vital financial pillar for the country. Reports estimate that around 23,000 ships transit the canal annually, generating approximately $8 billion in toll revenue. This means an average daily income of around 22 million and an average toll fee of $350,000 per ship passing through the canal today, 70% of oil tankers and cargo ships worldwide navigate through the Suez Canal. It has become a crucial trade route between Asia and Europe, given the substantial costs involved in detouring around the southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, Egypt seems to be making money hand over fist, lying back and enjoying the benefits,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:31:04

which is actually when you think about any, any fun facts that you got about the the Suez Canal,

Grace Sharkey: 2:31:10

not about the Suez, but apparently, like we've had canals, we've been using canals. One thing I saw was since Mesopotamia times, which, if you're street buff, that's, yeah, we're talking 1000s of years BC before the guy that a lot of people believe in, you know? So it's make BC politically correct. But no, it's, that's crazy. I didn't realize how much money they're making. And the

Blythe Brumleve: 2:31:43

toll fees, I think is, you know, what's I'm like, Wow. What a, what a great opportunity for just, I don't know, just, I wish,

Grace Sharkey: 2:31:52

I wish. Now I'd like to see, like, P and L though, because I, I'm assuming the upkeep of a canal isn't the cheapest thing, either. So, like, I again, people who might not understand businesses, like, just don't think that they're bringing $22 million and that's their profit. I I just assume there's gotta be some costs, or else, like, I mean, Egypt is a pretty but they've also had some instability issues, so, but that's, that's great, and so I was going to say the lock aspect of it. So as I said, you kind of have canals, and then there's some right that do have a lock aspect, which we see here a lot in Michigan. We have the Sioux locks, the suit Sioux canal, the SU locks up in the UP, whereas then there's also like the Erie Canal, which is more closer to Toledo, Detroit area, but that doesn't have locks either. But interesting, yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:32:46

I had it on my so I'll play that video next on the well, maybe I could play it now with the Erie Canal, because in my notes, it says it opened in 1825, so it was one of the first, like chipping canals in the United States. I think it was the first but it played a pivotal role in economic development of the United States in the 19th century. It reduced transportation costs by about 95% significantly boosting trade and settlement in the Midwest. And it spans 363 miles, connecting the Hudson River in Albany to Lake Erie in Buffalo. Um, so I don't

Grace Sharkey: 2:33:25

think some walk at some point time of the

Blythe Brumleve: 2:33:28

well, here I'll, I'll bring this video up now, since we're talking about it. And then we'll get into the Panama Canal next, which is probably, I think, for for United States residents, probably the most you know, famous one, so Suez and Panama. Um, so let me I'll play this video now too. And this is one is on the Erie Canal, and this comes from Legends and lures over on Tiktok. Oh, wait, I gotta actually share the screen.

Unknown: 2:33:55

Beautiful, flawless

Blythe Brumleve: 2:33:57

production level here. Can you tell we're ready for vacation

Unknown: 2:34:01

America's greatest engineering feats was completed in 1825 the Erie Canal, stretching 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo, was a groundbreaking project that transformed the nation before the canal, transporting goods from the interior to the port cities was costly and time consuming. The canal drastically reduced transportation costs of time, fueling economic growth and westward expansion. Its construction was an immense challenge, requiring innovative solutions such as the use of hydraulic cement. The success of the Erie Canal led to the broom of cities like Syracuse and Rochester, turning New York City into the nation's principal port. It also spurred a canal building frenzy with numerous other canals constructed across the country. The Erie Canal wasn't just a marvel of engineering, it was a symbol of American ingenuity and ambition reshaping the landscape and economy in profound ways. Today, it remains a testament to the transformative power of infrastructure. True. So that is the theory. Yeah, I

Grace Sharkey: 2:35:03

made Tiktok videos. So much better, huh?

Blythe Brumleve: 2:35:08

I know it's about time you get on it all

Grace Sharkey: 2:35:10

those AI images. I'm like, wow. Well, you know,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:35:13

it doesn't make my sort of the the wheels turn to my brain, like, oh, maybe I don't have to go and do hair and makeup every time I go on screen. And I could just write these scripts myself. And, you know, not have to be, be a faceless

Grace Sharkey: 2:35:28

straight AI us. It's like Maddie, we don't even do it. Oh, God,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:35:31

that. That'll be the dream.

Grace Sharkey: 2:35:36

That's incredible. Yeah, it's, uh, it's so crazy too. The thing like, the time period that a lot of this stuff was built, and how long it's stayed,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:35:48

and I think, you know, with all of our space discussions, too, it's interesting to see how this exact sort of infrastructure not exact, but this same exact, not exact, again, is being built in space now. So we're, we're developing these different like trade lanes and trade routes to space, very similar to how they were developed in the US and just, you know, across, like, human history. So here is the next video on how the Panama Canal works. Well, first, let me give you a little bit of an overview with the Panama Canal. I'm sure maybe that. Well, the video I'm going to show is how the Panama Canal actually works, because it's different from other canals across the globe. But the Panama Canal opened up in 1914 it contributes nearly 2 billion annually to Panama's economy, and it shortens the route for shipping, saving around 8000 nautical miles for ships traveling between the east and the west coast of the Americas. And so obviously the Panama Canal is vitally important to shipping goods into the US, so much so that, because the US kind of controls the majority of the Panama Canal, or probably all of it. China was in at one point in talks with Nicaragua in order to build a new canal. That those talks have stalled, but they were going to build a new canal in Nicaragua that China was going to, you know, control most of it and fund most of it. So that did not happen. So the Panama Canal is still the the number one probably, you know, greatest importance for the US. So let me play this video on how the canal actually works. And I'm sorry if you're just listening, but hopefully it still kind of comes through, okay, but if not, you can go check out this video over on YouTube, and this video comes from energy dot sector eight, over on tick tock. So if you were just listening, basically, what that video is showing is that the ship, once the cargo ship, comes up into the canal, I think it's the lock system. Is that where you very similar to the lock system what you were just talking about. So it goes almost like into a giant pool. They fill up the pool with the water, and then they shift them over to the next sort of lock step. So they go through like three processes of this to get the into the canal. Then they go through the canal, and then they go back through almost the same sort of section where they put the ship in a certain section, these walls go up. Water is filled up or dropped down, and you move section by section. So you might people might have heard of like the the drought problems that the Panama Canal had suffered earlier this year. And so when they don't have that water, they can't have that you know that that different fluctuations of pumping water in, draining the water out, and doing that series of processes for each ship that goes through. Think that's one of the bigger complaints with the Panama Canal is. And really, I think the Suez Canal is only one ship can really go through at a time. You can't have multiple ships, you know, going north and south or east and west at the same time. So that's the only sort of, I guess, sort of downfall or down, I guess, con of the Panama Canal is that you can't have two ships going at once, very similar to the Suez Canal. But any, any fun facts about the Panama Canal you got?

Grace Sharkey: 2:39:35

Well, the one thing I think we have, too is, I'm pretty sure now that they have, they've expanded it as well, because what they call like a Panamax ship. So it's like cargo ships that are now so wide. And if I believe Rachel Premack, wrote about it a while ago, right? I think it was during her yes, but they actually had to expand in order to make those work. So that's, that's, I think, in a. Interesting point there. The other thing I was considering, too is, I'm glad you brought up the drought. I think especially that visual kind of shows you, like, how important that water is to that system, right? So if there is a fall, you can imagine how much slower it's going to take to to get those through. Now, a fun fact for a while, up until I want to say last year Disney, actually, Disney cruise ship was the I paid the highest toll today. This is in 2008 to go through the pan with canal. And that was $330,000 Wow. If you are a freeway swim fan, then you probably remember, though, in November of last year, because the line was so long, people were paying higher tolls to jump the line. It was a Japanese container ship, if I remember, I had paid $9 million to jump the line as well. So a little bit more. And I can't imagine that price, if I remember correctly, though, with that Japanese ship, it had some type of product that had an expiration date. So one of those things where it's like, if we don't get through this line, like everything on this boat, or majority, wow, boat will expire. So it wasn't just like we have the money. Let's pay it and just send the tax over. Another fun fact, and I thought this was interesting, as someone who loves the water in 1928 a man named Richard, Richard Halliburton, he's like, an adventure or something. Halliburton, yeah, no, I don't think related to that. Help, okay, swam the full length of a Panama Canal. Oh, wow. Anybody? Yeah, I guess you can. Now the any boat that goes through it, you have to pay a toll, and it's based on your weight. Well, Halbert and had to do the same thing. And so his toll again, 1928 is probably a little higher. Now he ended up having to pay 36 cents to so if you are going to swing a pan like now, maybe have

Blythe Brumleve: 2:42:11

to go through the different, you know, law,

Grace Sharkey: 2:42:15

Oh, yeah. Like to think about that like you're just like, rising with the tide. I mean, they go like, at least once I've been through they go very slow. So it's not like, you're just like, like, all sudden up. It's like, very like, a gradual process. Yeah, and that was a small one, so I would assume even bigger, it feels even slower. So, yeah, that's I like to pay there's a lot of interesting history. I mean, it's not the most it's definitely not the safest history, if you look back at it. But you know, Teddy Roosevelt, I believe, started it. And very interesting President in terms of infrastructure and natural

Blythe Brumleve: 2:42:58

parks,

Grace Sharkey: 2:42:59

yeah, 100% so. And then to see the back and forth aspect. So, yeah, if you ever get a chance, like, just look up the history of, like, ownership of it. Because

Blythe Brumleve: 2:43:08

I think, too, there was one, like, interesting fact about, I mean, obviously this is, like, a terrible part of history, but it's there were a lot of workers slave slavery going on with building that the Panama Canal. But for a lot, I think of like the white workers, they were falling sick to malaria, and for whatever reason, you know, the slaves that they had brought over from Africa were surviving it. Wow. And so I want to say that that's like a lot of like the locals in the area were falling sick to malaria, but meanwhile, they found a cure, or not a cure, but a way to fix malaria, and where it was coming from, because of the slaves that came over and were also, you know, constructing, obviously, Not willingly, the the Panama Canal, and they weren't dying, and so it was the locals that were dying from it. I mean, if I remember that story correctly, which is, you know, I don't, I don't know if it's like, a good thing or a bad thing, but it was a thing that happened. Okay, so another one that I wanted to talk about is, you know, we, so we've talked about, like, the famous canals. But then I also wanted to know, like, well, what other I would have thought that, like, a lot of canals have already kind of been constructed that, like, you know, we don't really, like, is construction really happening on new canals? It turns out they are. So I found a couple videos of, like, the new canal Oh, interesting constructions that are going on across the globe. Because if you think about from the like, none of that is happening in the United States, because we have, you know, the inland waterways. And we talked about a briefly on on the last episode of just the power of the inland waterways, starts at the Mississippi River, and it goes up north, and then you have. All of these different outposts that go into, you know, sort of the Midwest, but then also into reaching into some of the West Coast that comes all off the Mississippi River. And so when you can go through the Panama Canal, and you can ship your freight over to the New Orleans port, then you can put it on a barge and put it up a barge and send it up the Mississippi River like that is an extreme competitive advantage. And also from, not just from a military perspective, but also just from, you know, just supplies in general. And that's really how the dominance of the United States is that we're, you know, we have oceans on each side of us, but then we also have the the Mississippi that allows for that transportation process to take place. Well, China is actually building that same thing. Because if you look at a map of China, especially population maps, the overwhelming majority of the population, I want to say, like 80% of the population, all lives on the eastern coast of China. So they have rural areas that are, you know, obviously in the, you know, central and western parts of China, but most of the population all lives on the east coast. So now they're trying to change that by building a new canal that will hopefully alleviate some of that shipping stress and almost make like a little bit of like a model of like our inland waterways, just doing it for the the Chinese population, and also, you know, countries like Vietnam. So I'm going to play this video from futurology shorts that's going to talk about that new canal that's being built China

Unknown: 2:46:35

has begun construction on a $10.5 billion canal of the pinglu canal, located in southern China. It will stretch 135 kilometers, linking the river with ports in the paper gold, providing a faster route for any goods to regions. This will provide major economic benefits, while also opening up a new waterway for trade with Asian countries. The project, which is China's first new canal in over 70 years is planned to finish in 2027 you think the bingol canal is a good idea? Let us know in the

Blythe Brumleve: 2:47:10

so that's the pingalu canal that is going on, or the construction that is going on, like the video said, it's opening up in 2027 another country that is building a new canal, or planning to build a new canal, is Turkey. And so over in Turkey, they're kind of trying to do the same thing where there's one, they already have a canal that is within the country, but there's, I think they have a lot of, you know, similar problems where it's, you know, you can't fit two ships. And, you know, there's a lot of like, obviously any kind of Canal, especially like Egypt knows this with the Suez Canal, there's also geopolitical tensions. Who controls, you know, the canals, who gets to collect the tolls? So there's that aspect of things, too. So let me play this video from the same company, futurology, dot shorts, where it talks about the construction of the new canal in Turkey.

Unknown: 2:48:07

Turkey is planning to build a 45 kilometer long canal across Istanbul, uniting the Mediterranean and Black Sea. The project, which would dive traffic away from the highly congested bostrous Strait, would cost $20 billion generating massive revenues while establishing new ports and transforming Western Istanbul into an island. In addition, it would bypass the Montreal Convention, allowing NATO naval vessels access into the Black Sea, infuriating Russia.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:48:38

Yikes. So I mean, obviously there's some geo political tensions from from that aspect, but I thought that that was really interesting to know about the new canals that are being built. And then, you know, obviously China had plans to build a canal in Nicaragua. That is not happening, but there was a lot of environmental concerns around that happening, because you think about all the the animals that are going to be displaced, the massive, I mean, it took, what, like, 100 years for the Panama Canal to be constructed. And so for a lot of these construction projects, it's like, especially for a lot of different governments, like, yeah, how long are these governments coming? You

Grace Sharkey: 2:49:18

know, how quickly China gets theirs up and running. Yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:49:22

exactly. Now there is another canal that may happen in Thailand. So it is, I don't want to even try to pronounce this, so I'm just going to spell it, K, R, A is Smith's canal proposal. It's a potential route that would cut through the Kira is, God, I'm not going to pronounce this, right, but K, R, A, I S, T H, M, U S in Thailand, yeah, right. It's Miss Kira, creating a direct link between the adamancy and the Gulf of Thailand so that one could potentially reduce shipping times and cost by. Bypassing the congested Malacca Strait, one of the world's busiest maritime routes. So thought that was, that was, I just, I don't know, I you kind of think of canals that, like they've just always been there, like the Suez and the Panama like, I had no idea that new canals were being built. Let's go ahead and get started on icebreaker ships. Because this is a very it's one of those things that you hear in shipping, and I don't know that I have the had the full grasp on it, on why people even want to establish this shipping lane. Did you? Did you know about this? I guess shipping lane, or shipping story before you know, we were doing research for this,

Grace Sharkey: 2:50:45

I guess. No, not in particular. I mean, I know of icebreakers clearly, just like being where I'm from, and have seen them before. But no, not in particular. No,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:50:58

well, I think for the first I want to play this I want to start off this section with why this sea route is important. Because essentially what we have throughout the world is that we have these shipping lanes, these big trade lanes, which are safe passages, or somewhat safe passages, that giant cargo ships, oil tankers, fishing vessels, that they can travel through and end up at their destination in the quickest, most efficient time period. And with this new route that is opening up, largely in part because of the ice melting in the Arctic region. So that's the North Pole. We're not talking about Antarctica, which is the south pole. So the North Pole is where a lot of this ice is melting, and it's starting to open up faster and more efficient shipping lanes. But that brings a whole lot of sort of discussion, geopolitical, natural resources. It brings up a whole lot of discussions. But first, before we get into some of our favorite takeaways about learning about this topic, I want to play this video that will kind of give like a good, I think, overall arc, overarching view of what this is and why it's important. So let's play the clip.

Unknown: 2:52:09

This is the North West Passage. It's a sea passage that spans 900 miles and joins the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Arctic archipelago. It may look insignificant, but the truth is, this passage has the potential to change everything. The only problem is that it doesn't exist yet. Well, soil. You see, we've known about this passage for centuries, but it's always too COVID in sea ice to be used for regular marine shipping during most of the year. But now this is all potentially changing. Since 1979 the Arctic sea ice has declined by 40% with NASA saying it's currently disappearing at a rate of 13% per decade, put simply, the Arctic sea ice is melting and also being replaced with thinner seasonal ice due to climate change. And this means that eventually, whether it be by 2050, 2100, or somewhere in between, the Northwest Passage will become fully navigable for mega container ships for at least a few months out of the year. The importance and geopolitical ramifications of this cannot be understated. In fact, the reason we've known of this passage for centuries is because of how transformative it would be. Even back then, European explorers, beginning with Christopher Columbus in 1492 searched for a direct trade route from Western Europe to East Asia, but they never found one. It took until 1850 for the first icy northern passage to be discovered, or while technically invented, and until 1906 when it was finally traversed by the legendary Raul Amundsen. Since that first crossing, there have been at least 320 transits up until 2021 with 38 of them being from 2019 to 2021 showing it's still a pretty challenging passage to traverse. So I'm

Blythe Brumleve: 2:53:47

going to stop it right there, because that's a really good point to, I guess, Intro This discussion of what exactly like icebreaker ships are. Now you kind of have a general overview of what's happening in that region and why these ships are starting to be needed. Basically, with icebreakers, there's two types of icebreakers where one has a bow that sticks out much further than, I guess, sort of the top of a traditional ship. Of what you can see, it has an underneath that sort of, you know, can bust through the ice, up to six feet of ice that it can bust through before the actual, I guess, sort of real part of the bow that you see on a traditional ship makes it has to, you know, sort of slosh through it. So there's that method of it, and then there's another method of icebreaker ship that they almost try to go as fast as possible so they can get up on the ice and then come down and crack it that way. And so there's a bunch of different like videos where they can see, like, especially in this region of cargo ships and or mostly like, oil and gas ships that are being caught in this ice up north in the Arctic, and these icebreaker ships have to go through. Go and do one of those two methods in order to carve out a path for those ships to make it through. So I'll stop right there, since we, you know, had the video and explained it a little more. But what, I guess, what are your first thoughts when you know about that, when you learn about this history, when you in the region that you're in, what are sort of your, I guess, favorite takeaways about icebreaker ships?

Grace Sharkey: 2:55:25

Well, in general, I think it's, it's interesting for just trade domestically, in the US, how much of it is dependent on this as well, let alone what we'll see in the future. I think the stat I pulled for this lane in particular was by 2050 I believe this will be the primary point of transit between Europe and in Asia. So clearly, a huge impact it's going to have on on global trade, let alone what we see just domestically as well. I want to, I'm trying to look at the stat right now. I think it was around, yeah, just in Great Lakes. Ice breaking alone, supports over 90 million tons of cargo annually. So imagine what that number is going to look like, especially once it becomes such a main trade line. I mean, here it's, it's interesting kind of, I wish I would have pulled some solar charts from this and might be able to send you some later. But, well, theoretically, we don't really have much right for this lane, but it's, you know, one of my favorite things, favorite sonar charts we do at freight waves, is the Panama Canal index. It's not exactly what it's called, but it's kind of what we call internally, and it helps you kind of see right the rates between going to LA ports compared to going to someone like Houston based on the availability of going through the Panama Canal at that time, right? So it gives you like this flux of a different option that that's why we see so much investment in Dallas and Houston etcetera, because of that path, because at the Panther canal, of course, was widened, which led for more of that option. So I get really excited, just from like, a data standpoint, to see, like, how that would affect overall, like what we see on trade lanes right now, even through the United States and and so on. So yeah, I get, I think it's really cool to, like, consider and think, right, like, just because of these icebreakers, the the global ramifications of it, I think I wonder if you're going to get to it. But, I mean, we have a whole pack, right, based on this lane. It's called the ice pack, and it's between, I believe, the US, Russia,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:57:41

China, in Europe, it's,

Grace Sharkey: 2:57:45

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 has two main icebreakers that they're starting to use as of July of this year to start cutting that ice that you just went over, right? Well, so

Blythe Brumleve: 2:58:05

it's a little complicated in that regard, because we've only had two of, yes, icebreaker ships, and they're decades old. So they're, meanwhile, like Russia has more than 50, and a few of them are nuclear. One of them and the Arctica, I believe is the the name of the ship, and it's nuclear powered, so, yeah, it doesn't have to go back to port. Yeah, it can just patrol. It can traverse. And so what's happening with a lot 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 a lot of this, the these passage ways, and this, these routes, and are like, No, you have to pay a fee. And Canada's like, No, you are going to there, because this is all I

Grace Sharkey: 2:58:52

go talk to NATO, yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 2:58:55

like, we're going to friends and, yeah, this and,

Grace Sharkey: 2:58:59

but, you know, a big, a big issue that we do have outside of this lane in particular, is there's not many United States owned cargo carriers right as as part of this. So it's it's interesting, like, Could this be a lane that finally gives the United States an option to to gain some traction on that fact, right to to have more carriers under the United States sale. And I think that also could be interesting, right? The political ramifications are something that clearly is going to have to be discussed at some point. But it's, it's almost like, if you've played not war, what's the game? If you haven't played it so long, we're going to different countries now, all of a sudden, there's sudden, there's just a different path for you to take. How much that could change, like trade relationships, right? Like maybe talk about Russia. I mean, maybe that is a relationship we grow even more so just knowing that the economic ramifications of of ignoring. That relationship, right? So, I mean, it's, it's this, it sounds like we'll probably air after the election, but, like, who? Like, it's crazy to think, like, that could be an election topic, right? Like, yeah, a couple of years.

Blythe Brumleve: 3:00:11

Well, it's, it's to your, your earlier point about the Panama Canal and for cargo companies, or for cargo ship companies, carriers the route from San Francisco to Rotterdam, Netherlands via the Arctic route would take about 7000 nautical miles, while San Fran to Rotterdam via the Panama Canal is about 9000 miles. That's about a 40% difference in nautical miles by taking the Arctic route versus taking the Panama Canal, canal route. And you can have more weight if you take the Arctic route, because you're limited. When you go through the Panama Canal, you have to have certain weight restrictions, 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 Initiative. They have another initiative called the polar Silk Road. And so, if you know your history, you know that Silk Road was this, you know, major, you know, I guess, trade road from the East Asian countries over to over to Europe. And, you know, Western Asian, Asian countries that are, you know, partaking in trade. It was one of the first, I guess human civilization, I guess not tactics. Maybe tactics is the right word for here, but it was mostly human trade was set up in a variety of ways. Human trade and commodity trading was set up through this Silk Road. And so they're calling this the polar Silk Road. And so it's because of no restrictions. You can get there faster. So it brings up a lot of, I guess, sort of environmental debate too. Like, because of global warming, because of, you know, everything that's going on in the Arctic with this ice melting, you almost have to ask yourself too, like, are we even going to need ice breakers in the next couple decades? Because you have Russia that has more than 50 of these icebreakers. You have China that's building out a ton of icebreakers, and they're doing it to, you know, take advantage of this new trade route that is starting to open up. And they believe that they will, that it's estimated by like 2035 that we're going to have just a huge section of this Northwest Passage route that's going to be completely open for anyone to use. And so now, from a geopolitical standpoint, you have Canada that's like, No, we're going to start charging fees, sort of like Panama or Egypt. You know, they're charging fees to go through the Suez Canal, to go through the Panama Canal. Canada wants to do the same thing, because there's not that much economic activity going on up there, which is another sort of, I guess, negative aspect of this polar trade route is that there aren't many ports, and that a lot of for the Inuit people that have been there for they're called, like, the first, Canada's first peoples, And there's so many like livelihoods that are set up in these northern like regions, and their way of life is melting away before their eyes. And so it brings up, like these conversations of, okay, if you're going to establish these trade routes, and you're going to maybe start building ports along these trade routes, because right now, there are hardly any courts along this trade route like you should be involving these people who are already having their lives impacted. And then also think about it from the lens of if one of like an oil taker goes down in the Arctic like that is devastating to these communities, because you can't even clean up the oil because it's the ice makes it incredibly difficult to be able to use sort of modern we had a spill in the Gulf. What like horizon, Deep Water Horizon, or something like that, I think. But they can use these large, sort of nets in the ocean to scoop up all of that oil. You can't do that in the Arctic, because there's, you've got freaking floating ice going on up there. So it has, like, all of these different ramifications. And I just thought that was

Grace Sharkey: 3:04:11

even to that point, like, I'm thinking about, like, again, funny or near election season, but the migration that would need to, like, happen up there to to back a port, you know? Like, do I know right now there's a number of really great like, flatbed trucking jobs in Canada and towards the Arctic and in Alaska as well, just because it's, you know, they're growing communities and things need to get up there, and it's a tough drive, right? But now it's like, when you sit here and you talk about, like, putting ports in some of these areas too, it's like they don't have, I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen like, the most northern town, but it's like, everyone there works for the oil company, and there's, there's kind of a grocery store, you know? It's like, and so think about the job creation needed to, like, support a true port community

Blythe Brumleve: 3:05:09

supplies. Like, yeah, there was

Grace Sharkey: 3:05:11

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

Blythe Brumleve: 3:05:32

Well, there, there was another video. It was like a CNBC video that was talking about Arctic shipping, and it was published about a year ago, and there was a gentleman that was on there talking about, he was like a captain. He was talking about, you know, the, I guess, the intricacies of sailing through some of these different issues. But he mentioned that during the time of that recording, that only 300 ships have made it through the Arctic since, wow. It was that the passage has been discovered 300 ships. And so it's so new, it's so fresh, and it's so really, like actively developing or erasing, or kind of, maybe, yeah, like going on at the same time. And it's just, I, it's very interesting to sort of watch that geopolitical, strategic chess pieces being made, because that's, it's something that for a lot of our borders and a lot of our, I guess, countries, and the way things have, you know, this is 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 of our space episodes, yeah. And that is now it. You could start to see the chess pieces being made by China, by Russia, and then some of the other NATO countries, and like Finland, Norway, Denmark, all of these huge ports. And what's crazy is that you watch a lot of this stuff and you forget how close these countries are to each other. I think we're so used to seeing the regular map where it's like the US is on the left, and, you know, Russia and China is on the right, and it looks so far away. But, you know, sorry to the Flat Earthers out there. But with the circulation of globe, you can look at the Arctic and just see how close Canada, Russia, like China considers them an Arctic country, like they mentioned that in one of their I'm sure they did it for, you know, economic and political reasons. But they are, they want to be mentioned among some of these Arctic countries, which is also super interesting because their Belt and Road Initiative, which, for folks who may not know, that's China's initiative to sort of have soft power throughout the rest of the globe by building ports and roads and just like logistics infrastructure in all of these different countries. And they'll do it, and they'll pay for it, but if you don't pay them back in, you know, a set amount of time for these loans, then they get to seize those ports. They seize the that infrastructure, which is happening in some African countries, it's probably going to happen in some South American countries. So it's a very it's an interesting thing to watch play out that will likely be decided in our lifetime, that the art this Arctic ice will largely not exist in the next 30 years. It's going to be a lot of it's going to be melted away and for the majority of the year. Because right now, it's only a few months out of the year that these icebreakers are largely being used for these routes, but it starts melting away, and you have less need for icebreakers. And you know, I guess maybe the US is playing the log game. And in regards to ship building, much to a grin or chagrin of you know, friend of the show, John Conrad of G captain, if you follow him on X, he's always talking about ship building. And China is pretty much kicking our ass in that regard, of ship building. And a good portion of their ship building is for icebreakers. So maybe that's a good thing for the US. In the end, there's also a tourism that's kind of taken off for that region too. You have icebreakers, I think, from Norway, that will go into the ice. You can pay, you know, 1000s of dollars and go on this ship, and then you can get off the ship and go just walk around on, like, the different ice sheets. And I watched this video of this family. They, this guy put on a suit that's, like, meant to help you if you fall into, like, prevent, you know, hypothermia, yeah. And he can they let people wear these suits and jump into the Arctic if you want to. And I thought that was pretty cool, too. So there's some tourism aspect that's going on there as well. But I just that the idea that it's called, like, the polar Silk Road, I think it's crazy and not crazy fascinating, I guess not like crazy and like, ah, like, you know, I'm going to pull my hair out, kind of. A but, like you

Grace Sharkey: 3:10:01

said, in our lifetime, that stat said by 2050 I mean, that's not incredibly far away. Like that could be a main, the main line between, you know, us and and Europe. That's crazy. Consider so again, and just like, I mean, I love to, like, have Lauren on this show too, be the maritime professor. Lauren began, and, like, the alliances have already changed with carriers. Just like, how would that change carrier alliances? And how would that shape, because global pricing and add the security level to it all too. It gets, like, super interesting

Blythe Brumleve: 3:10:41

if you're if you're watching the video version of this, I just pulled up the graphic that shows what, what I was referring to, as far as, like, map purposes wise, like, how close all of these countries are for this one trade lane area. And you can see, like, it's going to pull like a Sarah Palin, like, I can see Russia in my backyard, which the United States is literally right there, right next to Russia, or freaking Russia. It probably shouldn't cuss like that on the show, but yeah, close. It's close. But you can see on this map all of the different trade lanes that have been established, the trade routes, and then all of the yellow dots are ports that are currently already existing in this area. And so as this ice melts, more and more, you're going to see more ports pop up, especially on the Russian side of things, because this was a major initiative, a major focus of the country, from what I understand, before the Ukraine invasion. And so since then, their supplies and their budgets and their focus have been on that, less on this. And so this arguably, I guess, depending on which way the war goes in the future, this is going to be a focus again for Russia. Another graphic that I wanted to bring up, too is the economic exclusive economic zone. And so this is an area of that same map I just showed you, of which the US has rights to from an economic perspective. And so that's more along the lines of just, I guess they can drill for, like, natural resources, natural gas, oil, things like that. And so that is, yeah, that's another concern, I guess, is the the economic zone, and who controls these different areas and who doesn't? And it sort of brings up the earlier point of, like Canada, like some of this shoreline, or is starting to even emerge for them, and so that's a territory that they have to claim. And you know, very like it's with Antarctica at the South Pole. All of the world's nations kind of have a pact. Have an agreement. They have their own little sections of Antarctica, where the Arctic, it's still very much like up in it's it's up for debate, I guess, and where those where those borders are, and where it's being contested. And some countries recognize certain borders, and then other countries don't recognize those borders. And so it's just, I think it's just a really fascinating topic that I'm glad we got to cover in this show. I do wonder, though, is there any difference between some of these Arctic I guess, icebreakers in, I guess strategy versus the Great Lakes area like is it largely the same? Is it maybe just the Great Lakes shippers kind of all stay within the Great Lakes. Or what is, do you know any of, I guess, that routing that goes on up there, like, are these Chinese companies coming in? Or

Grace Sharkey: 3:13:54

it doesn't? I don't think so. I know most of them are ran by the US Coast Guard. Um, there's, I want to see. I was just looking at the number of them here in the United States. Most of them are used, though, of all the ships, icebreakers at the United States own most of them, which I had that number? Where did it come? We only

Blythe Brumleve: 3:14:17

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

Grace Sharkey: 3:14:19

have two. That that was, that was the point I was gonna make. We only have two that we have 12 total, only two are functional for the Arctic, where as Russia has 41 in particular, Finland, it looks like 11. Canada has 20. Again, not all those are for the Arctic, though it sounds like some of that's for, I think, the Hudson Bay up there and but they're, they're building more out of Canada, and then China has just five. But again, they're so close to Russia to say that they would never work together on that it's is silly. So they're, they're building. Mean, it looks, it sounds like two more here in the United States, current or no, sorry, they're building more. The numbers not on here right now of how many they're looking to build, but yeah, the ones that are in are in the Great Lakes. Are just like nowhere near the the type of icebreaker that you would need for that type of ice in particular. But

Blythe Brumleve: 3:15:23

it does make me wonder with but they aren't like they

Grace Sharkey: 3:15:27

are. I will say they are Coast Guard run. So there's no like entity that

Blythe Brumleve: 3:15:32

commercial operation, yes, yeah. Mm, hmm. Well, they're

Grace Sharkey: 3:15:36

technically Navy ran. I guess if you looked at it that way,

Blythe Brumleve: 3:15:40

I 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 then just trucking it in. Like, would they do the same thing with Canada, and then just truck it in on the other side. So I was just curious about that, which I'm sure would especially rail lines.

Grace Sharkey: 3:16:01

I think the big problem there would be, yes, you have rail lines, but they're like, how covered in snow are they at different there are certain times of the year, I think the infrastructure is nowhere near that of Mexico. So, but like, again, it depends on if you, I'm sure can, if you built a port somewhere between, like Alaska and so, like a Canadian port, right? Like that could be an option, depending on the times of the year. But I know, again, ice road trucking, it's really dangerous up there. So I would a lot of times they're just, they're those guys are just driving that ice right? So I would just, if anything, though, I don't think you're wrong. I think again, goes back to my statement on, like, this lane, like, think of the trickling effect of the economy it could do. I mean, there would need to be more truckers up there. They would need to be more towns and settle settlements, right for for those people that are helping move any of those goods. So again, I don't think out of the question, especially because if we're losing that much ice, I would assume at some point we're going to see less snow in some of those areas too. So a lot of, a lot of what ifs right,

Blythe Brumleve: 3:17:16

and there's, as I was watching a lot of these videos too, just breaking down. Like, what icebreakers are, what why this Northwest Passage is is so important, and why it could change things from a geopolitical perspective. And a lot of the videos were showing like these, you know, chips that are coming from China and leaving the East Coast, and they're going all the way up to the Northwest Passage, or they're going all the way through like, the Panama Canal, I'm like, why don't they just go to LA like, why are you going all the way around? And apparently it's the from what I understand, the Malacca Strait is where a lot of the Chinese ports are located. And if the ships come out of the those areas, that's where there's a lot of geopolitical tension, because of Taiwan, because of Japan, like the Philippines, and that's a lot of contested waters there. And so that's why these other routes where China either goes north or they go through the Panama Canal, that's why it makes much more sense for them to avoid the drama in the Malacca Strait, or the potential of drama in the Malacca Strait, and take these routes to the US instead. So it also has some US implications too. Like, you know, is the Port of LA is Long Beach? Are those going to, you know, be impacted by the Northwest Passage as well? And so a lot of these questions we can't answer today, but fascinating discussion regardless.

Grace Sharkey: 3:18:35

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 talk about, like, where is this money going to come from, too? So it looks like the Coast Guard has they call PSC program right now, a polar security cutter program that would aims to acquire four or five new heavy polar icebreakers and an acquisition of a new Arctic security cutter. So a medium polar icebreaker, is that?

Blythe Brumleve: 3:19:08

What you're saying, a cutter, like they yes through the ice, I guess, yep.

Grace Sharkey: 3:19:11

So, like icebreaker, basically, like a heavy duty one and a medium sized one, or a medium effort, I would assume I mean, and it looks like estimated cost for the big one is I gotta move things over $1.2 billion for the first ship, 921 million For the second ship, and $1.1 billion for the third ship. So again, it's just, it's just so crazy, right? Another, another thing we're going to have to figure out taxpayer wise, right? But it's just the money behind it. It's crazy. There's, like, a whole report, I'm sure you probably have some of the i. Data from that too.

Blythe Brumleve: 3:20:02

There's so many like just, it's untouched land too. So it's the minerals, the natural resources, sure, like lithium deposits and things like that, that you know, wars are being fought all over the the world for. And so it's just an unfortunate reality that that's going to be something that they fight over next, and how are they going to pay for it? Well, probably through some of those natural resources, I would imagine, or securities budgets. I'm sure they could justify a lot of things for securing that oil. There's

Grace Sharkey: 3:20:33

there's oil somewhere, you know, oil pay for it.

Blythe Brumleve: 3:20:39

Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI logistics, and I am your host, Blythe Brumleve. We've got another great episode for you today, and we are talking to the shipping manager at Gator bar. His name is Jack Zwart. Hopefully I said that name right. I think I did, because we just talked about it five seconds ago, but hopefully that is still the correct pronunciation. But we're going to be talking from the shipper point of view for this episode. This is always a really popular one with our audience, because brokers and carriers are always looking for ways to work more efficiently, probably more on the carrier side, with shippers all across the country, brokers too, of course, but the carriers are the ones that are probably going to be the bigger focus in this episode. So Jack, welcome into the show.

Jack Zwart: 3:21:26

Yeah, thanks for having me honored to be here. Awesome, perfect. This is

Blythe Brumleve: 3:21:30

going to be such a fun discussion, because I was just, I just told you, before we started hitting record, that I listened to your interview on trucking for millennials, with those guys over there great bunch of great bunch of guys that have been hosting a podcast for years now, and they're hosting conversations that need to be had. And so after listening to that, I'm I am pumped and ready to go for this one. So for folks who maybe didn't listen to that episode or aren't familiar with your background, can you give us a little bit of insight of your career history.

Jack Zwart: 3:22:03

Yeah, as it relates to what we're going to talk about today, we'll trim it down a little bit for the last I'm in my fourth year now, third or fourth year at manufacturing company called Gator bar, we operate in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so a pretty rural area here, and we manufacture composite rebar for the construction market. So that's what I do on a day to day basis. I work with truckers. I handle our shipping program. We don't use any outside brokerages. I handle everything in house. So everything from booking to loading, routing, everything like that, runs through me, and that's basically what I do on my day to day.

Blythe Brumleve: 3:22:57

And then, and you're you have a pretty strong Twitter presence, and one of the things in your bio that caught me off, or that caught my attention, is you call yourself a Midwest supremacist. And so I imagine that has a lot to do with where you're located in the country and the businesses that you support. So what is, I guess, sort of the meaning behind the Midwest supremacist, because you're not the only Michigan person that I've met that is very, very quick to pull out their hand and show you exactly where they're from on the state,

Jack Zwart: 3:23:26

yeah, yeah, um, it's, it's beautiful country up here. And I grew up in the more traditional Rust Belt. So I grew up in Illinois, between Chicago and Rockford, two great rust belt cities. So I've split my time in two different areas of the Midwest. I love them both for different reasons, and there's a lot of things that we have in the Midwest that are lacking in other parts of the country, specifically industry and community that we tend to think of comes from days of old, I think. And there's a lot of things that are still here today with us, and that we should be proud of and that we should take more pride in. So I try and highlight those things, highlight industry, highlight small towns and and so because those things are prominent in the Midwest, I call myself a Midwest supremacist. I really, I really enjoy it, and wish everywhere could be like here and

Blythe Brumleve: 3:24:34

with rust belt. So your Twitter handle or x handle is called Rust Belt kid. And I think for a lot of folks who maybe didn't grow up in the Midwest, or maybe, you know, are of a certain age, they're not exactly familiar of or aware of the historical significance of the, you know, just the prowess of, you know, American manufacturing, especially decades ago. Um. For folks who may not be aware of the changes or how that's evolved, can you kind of break down, and for people who don't know what is the rust belt and what is sort of the state of it today?

Jack Zwart: 3:25:13

Okay, yeah, definitely. So I you'll probably get different interpretations, but I would consider the Rust Belt, the heavy industry backbone of the United States that lays between, let's say, Pittsburgh to Chicago, kind of in that east to west band, and in that geographic band, historically, you had a lot of heavy industry for and I guess it would start up in the Iron Range of Minnesota, that iron ore comes down into the Rust Belt, into places like Detroit and Gary and Buffalo. And to me, you know, it starts on the Great Lakes and then disseminates from there. So you can go probably all the way back into the late 19th century, and and find that basically, as soon as people started coming to the Midwest and mass as the country moved west, industry followed. And I would argue that for there's geographical advantages that the Midwest has with the Great Lakes, with the Mississippi River, that it allowed industry to be come more prominent there. And so as we get into things like World War One, World War Two and and post World War Two, automobiles, mining, planes, tanks, etc, so much of it came from the rust belt. And then after the war, you see that industry stay and kind of evolve into other things. I already mentioned, automobiles, but Lakers like, you know, people that listen to this podcast are probably familiar with, like, Great Lakes, Lake shipping, the ships being called Lakers. Actually, the first one was built in Detroit, right? And, and so you see it evolve into consumer electronics and all kinds of different categories. It would be, I don't know if you put me under pressure right now, if I can name them all right, but heavy industry machinery was predominantly manufactured here in the Rust Belt. And you know, as time has went on, we've lost a lot of it. But as you look, if you look at America as a whole, I think there's still a ton of great things here, especially here, and are things as good as they used to be? No, definitely not. But is there still a lot to be proud of, absolutely, and is the majority of heavy industry in America still reside here? I would also say yes. And so those are things that I like to emphasize with people. And I hope give people hope and aspiration, or something to be, you know, something to be proud of, I guess,

Blythe Brumleve: 3:28:35

well, I imagine, because what I have heard, you know, just throughout the years, is like the areas like West Virginia, or something like the coal mining towns, like things like that, where it's just all of that, I guess, processing and manufacturing has been pretty much outsourced to other countries. And so there's is a movement, I think, of trying to bring manufacturing back. Do you see that evolving into what I've heard it called, is like a manufacturing 2.0 where they're starting to bring some of those jobs back, but in a different way than what it was before. You familiar with any of that, you know, sort of, I guess, the evolution of modern manufacturing, I imagine you are and with your respective field.

Jack Zwart: 3:29:19

Yeah, yeah. I think, I actually think Gator bar is kind of a good example, right? Like, so Gator bars is just rebar. It's just concrete reinforcement that goes in everything from roads to bridges to houses, office buildings, you know. And rebar, for 100 years, was made the same way. It was a piece of steel with little grooves in it to hold it in the concrete and Gator bar is different. It's a composite material, so it's made with like New Age chemistry, stronger fibers. It looks nothing like standard rebar. It feels nothing like standard. 100 rebar, but it's modern iteration, right? And it's taking place here in the Midwest. So yeah, you're right. This is, I'm glad you brought this up, right? There's a lot of talk about about reshoring right now, and I don't want to pretend to be a policy expert or anything like that, but I think as more young people might be interested in not going the traditional college route, that maybe they don't want to take on the debt or or they want to work with their hands for some reason, and they don't want to, you know, have an office job, I think the Midwest is a great opportunity, offers a great opportunity for these people, because you have a ton of natural resources, you know, you have the Great Lakes, you have the Mississippi you have a ton of rail hubs and and there's a lot of what I talked about. I've talked about this with with Lombard before, right? Lombards dad was like an old school manufacturing guy on the East Coast. And if you're in the right place, in the right towns, and you know where to look, and you open yourself up and ask around, there's still a lot of these guys around with expertise from the first go round, right? Like they're older now, right? But you still have the opportunity to garner a lot of information from them, and there was maybe a 40 year gap, let's call it, since we lost a lot of industry. But if you can find the right people, there's still a lot of knowledge here in the Rust Belt, because that's where most of the manufacturing was. And so yeah, I do think that there's a lot of opportunity, and maybe I kind of forgot what your initial question was there, but like New Age manufacturing. So yeah, I mean, I think we're a good example, and I don't want to take credit for that. There's 40 guys at our shop, and a lot of guys that started long before I got there, but it takes, you know, it's just different than it's different than going to business school. It's different than getting a degree in environmental science or whatever. It's just a different route that as a society, we we have, haven't really explored in the last 40 years, right? We kind of just like, let it hang for 40 years. Didn't really do much with it. And so, yeah, I think we'll, we'll, I think we'll see a lot more of what you're what you're talking about. I

Blythe Brumleve: 3:32:35

guess it with a good follow up for for that statement, especially for our young people, how did you What did that process look like to decide you're going to become a manufacturer, where you in on the inside, when this process started? I like, how did you just wake up one day and you're like, I think I'm going to manufacture rebar. No,

Jack Zwart: 3:32:56

no. First of all, I wasn't around at the beginning of the company. I want to make that clear. But basically, basically, I got into it by luck, right? And, and there'll be hundreds of people after me that get into it by luck. And hopefully, you know, hopefully they have as good of a time as I have had. I stumbled into it, right? But I was, I actually got a forestry degree, so I think maybe we'll talk about this at some point, right? But there's a lot of timber in our area and a lot of mining. There's still a lot of raw goods that get moved around in the Upper Midwest, and that's what I was doing. I was in that field wasn't, you know, wasn't quite making what I wanted to make. And I quit my job. And right about the time COVID started, and I was kind of just in a panic. And, you know, a lot of it was the early days of COVID, when people were closed and whatnot. And so the only job I could find at the time was a a management position at Walmart. So I was operating the, like the back room of Walmart, like the loading docks, basically. And so that's how I got into shipping. Is just by luck, right? I was just, I needed a job. COVID had struck, and I I took a job at the local Walmart, managing a crew the second shift at the loading dock. And I knew I didn't want to stay there for long, but it gave me some good experience. And for for anyone, it's like embarrassing as a grown man to say you worked at Walmart, right? Whatever. But it's just there. It's just like, it's just what we had, what we had to do at the time. And actually, like, I was also telling this to Lombard is, like, it's a little bit embarrassing to say. But one, they pay good and two, you know, they're a big entity. They're a well oiled machine. So. So I learned a lot about a, well, a functional, you know, a functional business and a function, functional shipping department, right? So I was there for a few months and just, you know, looking for something else. And I have some family at Gator bar, and they were saying, hey, you know, we're, we're growing, and we need someone to we're moving more than, like, you know, they started to get multiple trucks a week. That was like, a big deal to them, right? They were a one truck a week company, and they could just handle it with a phone call. And then it started to grow, and it became its own thing. They needed somebody else. So then I, you know, then that was back in 2020 or 2021, I came over to Gator bar, and that, it was just pure luck, right? But I've learned a lot since I've got there. I got a little bit into the production side, a little bit into the purchasing side, and, you know, mainly handle the shipping component,

Blythe Brumleve: 3:36:03

I guess. What does that process look like? Are you with as a manufacturer? Are you sourcing the goods? Are you making them on site? What does that I guess that process look like? So,

Jack Zwart: 3:36:16

yeah, great question. Our product is actually pretty simple. It there's three raw ingredients. One thing we market to our customers is that we're 100% American made. So even our ingredients, or components are American sourced. One of those comes in via liquid tanker. I posted a photo of of one of those unloading today at our facility. If anyone wants to check that out, one of them comes in via drive in, and the other one is a local product. Is a local product that comes in drums. So basically, I'm just doing the purchasing of those products, the production planning. So, you know, you have, you have X million number of feet on order for next month, which means, you know, we need this million feet per week, and so I order that much when the, you know, when the material gets to our facility, we're offloading it, we make the product, and then we, you know, we're filling the orders that we have on the outbound bound side. Then basically what's happening is we, we ship exclusively flatbed, unless there's a custom fabrication to mean babe. But for 97% of our stuff, I would say we're shipping flatbed, right? So rebar is standardized to 20 feet long, and so we'll, we'll make two piles to take up 40 feet of flatbed deck, and I'm using all local, local in our context, is probably a pretty big range. But all local carriers, you know, from Green Bay to Duluth flatbed carriers, that's kind of the radius we draw. And so I've gotten pretty familiar with the Lake Superior flatbed guys. I know most of them, it seems like. And, you know, we anywhere from one truck outfit to 100 truck outfit. We're, we're using, and we dial those guys up. I I handle still everything with phone calls and emails. Uh, it's pretty rudimentary. I guess if they're, you got brokers that listen to this. They probably got some fancy CRPS or what have you. But we do everything the old fashioned way, and seems like they show up on time. We load them at our facility, and then they deliver to basically everywhere. I mean, we've got all 50 states under our belt right now. And we did our first actually, I should take that back. We did our second international shipment late last year, and I'm working with Ross Kennedy right now on our third. So we're, we got a few international shipments on the docket now. And

Blythe Brumleve: 3:39:13

for folks who are watching, we just showed your website, which is incredible, by the way, it's very rare to find, I think in our industry, you know, just all of supply chain is very rare to find, like, a really standout website. But that website kicks ass. So

Jack Zwart: 3:39:29

we paid a lot of money for it. So that's good.

Blythe Brumleve: 3:39:32

It's definitely it great photography too. So if you haven't visited the site and you're a website nerd like me, go visit it, because it really is very well done. Now, you know, as you were talking now, I was going to ask these questions a little bit later on, but since you already brought it up, I would love to talk about how you work with carriers. You You mentioned that, you know, it was one truck a week. Now it's a, you know, a couple and growing. Um. And what one thing that really stood out to me when I was listening to you on on trucking for millennials, is that, you know, you were very passionate about carriers being their own marketing and walking into an office to do business with a shipper, instead of sending cold emails, instead of sending, you know, cold or making cold calls, you do business still to this day, I believe, with a carrier who just walked in and introduced himself, is that right? Yeah,

Jack Zwart: 3:40:27

that's correct, yeah. So I am pretty adamant about that. I have a lot of respect for people that do that. I think for me, probably a little bit more, just because, like, I just told you, you know, we're sourcing carriers from a pretty big circle, because we are remote, so I don't, I don't have a ton of options. So anyone that walks in the door has my ear, right? Like, I don't have that many options and and if you take the time to walk in my door, I'm, I'm going to give you some business. Now, you have to still be a good carrier, right? But, yeah, it did happen two times, and I still use both of those carriers. The Other Guys, I'm just I have a kind of a short list of of companies that I that I use, and I think all of them were either recommended to me by another driver or another carrier, or they, like one of the carriers that are used frequently delivered. We were putting up a new building, and they delivered steel to our facility. And the, you know, beautiful truck driver was courteous, driver was on time, and at that moment in time, I needed another carrier, and so I just extended the invitation for Hey, have your boss call me, and he did, and and we've we use them like a lot, a lot. So I do think that whether it's by recommendation or by walking in the door. It is. It goes a long ways. And I don't know how you know how the audience will feel about this, but like, I probably take five to 10 phone calls a day, like cold calls from brokers and anyone that's just shows up in person, you know, like, I'm just ecstatic to talk to somebody that is is personable, is real. You know, when you, when you call me and say, I have assets in your area, I kind of doubt it, so when I actually see someone with assets in my area, I'm like, Alright, let's go. This is good, you know? I don't know. I think it goes a long way. It might be different in different markets, right? But for rural shippers, I it's, it's meaningful on a personal level, but also on a business level, right? Like it's, it's advantageous for both of us. So

Blythe Brumleve: 3:43:01

when you you mentioned that the limited amount of of carriers within your region, so you're really just finding them now by just either referral or they just walk into your office. And I think that that is incredible, because it's one of those things that just, it's so simple, and hardly anyone does it. And I've told Adam Wingfield, which he's an advocate for small carriers, that he's on all over social media, but he had this great tip not too long ago that it just really stood out to me of just having carriers and brokers, to an extent, to go to your local networking meetups, your Better Business Bureaus, you know, things like that, those, those different groups that you can go and meet, shippers, business owners, introduce yourself, shake their shake their hand and make a connection that way. Instead of trying to send 1000 cold emails in a day and hope that you know someone opens it, I would imagine, how successful do you think the the cold calls or the cold emails are for you, maybe hardly ever, or they catch you at the right time? Like, how does, what? Does any of that work on you?

Jack Zwart: 3:44:12

I don't, um, no, I, I actually it does the opposite. So, so if I'm, if, if I'm being very, you know, real and blunt, like, I have no, I have no interest whatsoever. And if you call me, especially after I asked to be put on a do not call this right, it does the opposite thing. It pushes you away and, and that's, that's a good example, is like, there's, there's a another business in town here, that's, that's bigger than us and and more trucks than us. And I, actually, I was like, you know, okay, I dialed their logistics advantage. I was like, hey, you know, who are you guys using? Let's, let's try and team up. And you. If he gets to the first facility, then he's not that far from our facility, and up here that that's pretty good, right? You know, if you're only 40 minutes away, like, that's really good. And so I had done a little bit of exploring. He said, You know, here's a few people and and then I had made some phone calls, maybe even given away a load or two. And then one of the companies was just non stop, trying to, you know, they're just non stop. A lot of brokers are non stop and and I, like, asked, like, alright, you know, I didn't want to use you the first go around. I don't want to use you now. I think, I think brokers can overdo it, and maybe they don't realize that sometime, I, like I told you earlier, I probably get five to 10 calls a day and at least 10 emails a day. So we're just, I think shipping managers are just immune to that kind of stuff. At least I am. I shouldn't speak for other people, but you got to do something different, you know?

Blythe Brumleve: 3:46:05

Well, it's funny, because I've been at a couple different conferences where I know that shippers are there, and what they'll do is they either just show up to their panel that they're speaking at or whatever, and then they just leave, and they don't interact at the conference at all, but then they're turning their badge around, or they're hiding their badge because they don't want to be harassed, and that's their sort of networking time that they would just want to have genuine conversations and not just be pitched non stop. So I imagine that has to get exhausting all of the time, and so those the thing that is a little bit more hard work of just showing up and introducing yourself. That sounds like it's a much better use of your time versus, you know, spending a lot of money on marketing software and a lot of these different sales tools and call recording tools just go talk to people in real life, make introductions, and that seems like it works well for you. Yeah,

Jack Zwart: 3:47:02

yeah. I've only had two guys do it in four years, and they both got loads out of it. So seems like it would be a good, a good use of someone's time. Now,

Blythe Brumleve: 3:47:12

before we started recording, I told you that I had this tweet saved of yours for, gosh, close to a year now, because you originally sent it out on April 10 of last year, and it was talking about Great Lakes shipping. And I you said a phrase earlier that you know, your audience might be aware of this phrase called Lakers. I when you said Lakers, I'm immediately thinking of the basketball team in the opposite coast and but this tweet I have had saved because I was like, I gotta get this guy on the show. Because I never knew that there was such a massive and I'm based in Florida, so I, you know, I spent some time up in Michigan, but never in, like, the, you know, the up and the Upper Peninsula, for folks who don't know what up is, it took me a long time to remember what that was, too, but it's dead Michigan, I feel like, has its own, like just, it's almost like Texas, where it's their own, like little country up there, and, you know, very people that are very proud to be from there, and they're gonna let you know, very similar to folks in Texas, but this thread, and I'll link to it in the show notes for folks who are just Listening, but you basically go through about how you know it. You say it's rather quiet, but massively important when it comes to Great Lakes shipping. So you kind of, can you kind of break down, I guess, the an overview of, you know, sort of the natural resources in that area, and then how they're shipped out, and how the Great Lakes is used.

Jack Zwart: 3:48:39

Yeah, absolutely, I'm very far from an expert on this topic, but I'm a fan of this topic, so I'll talk about the little bit that I know. You did a really cool thing when you asked me to be on here. And that's like, what are, what's you asked me in a little questionnaire, like, what's some of the things that you want to talk about, and one of them that I, I think I wrote down, was that the upper Great Lakes in particular, still is a very raw materials based economy. So iron ore, limestone, timber, those kinds of items. And for anyone that's not familiar with Lakers, Lakers are are basically aggregate hauling ships, so they're not like a container ship. You know, the Baltimore incident just happened. The ever given thing happened a few years ago. And I think a lot of people think big ships, they automatically see a stack of containers on there, and that's not what Lakers are. Lakers basically have these big carved out bellies. And they get these big carved out bellies get filled up with taconite, which is where iron ore is derived, limestone, asphalt. All salt, you know, even salt for road salt. And there's a, there's a whole smattering of of, like, geological minerals that that I think people don't even, and I didn't even recognize, you know, for the first many, many years of my life, what these things do. And so when we look at plastics and metals and and even things like paper. Most of these materials have fillers in them that are doing something right. Or you can look at limestone for roads, there's there's, just like everything in your life starts somewhere on the earth. And so many of these things start in Minnesota or Michigan, and because they're rural, we just don't really think about them. And so, like you had the ships up on on the screen right, there's a huge deposit of iron. The the main one in the US is comes from northern Minnesota. It gets referred to as the Iron Range. There's a lot of lime and gypsum and other minerals like that that come out of, you know, if I do the hand thing for you, you know, they come out of up here, Northern Michigan. And these are where most of our goods start, and I don't, and we just, we're just, we literally don't see em, right? Because they're on the they're in the mine, they're in the ground, and then they're on the lake and and everyday people don't, everyday people see semis, right? They might even see oil wells or whatever. But we don't. We literally don't see these things most people, so we're kind of oblivious to them and and yet, you have these huge rural economies based on them. I'm not sure if it was in there or not, but about an hour, hour and a half away from me, here, we have the only nickel mine in the United States. So things that we need, even for high end consumer electronics, circuit boards, they start here and and they now. Nickel doesn't go on these ships, but most aggregates do, and these ships are very, very large, very large. And if you've ever had the, you know, the pleasure of being in Green Bay or Detroit or Toledo, you might get to see one. They they draw a lot of fanfare. There's like a whole cult following of people that say, Oh, I spotted this ship today. Or, oh no, I spotted that ship today. Yeah, it has like, kind of a, like a cult, like following and, and so much of it starts on superior on Lake Michigan. And I just think it's a forgotten part of the economy. Maybe is the best way to say it.

Blythe Brumleve: 3:53:02

So a couple questions. As you were talking, why is it nickel put on a ship or

Jack Zwart: 3:53:09

a Laker? So I assume I don't know much about it, but I worked out there in that area by the nickel mine for one summer. And it's funny that you asked this. This was one of my one of my first popular things I talked about online. And nickel is the mine in Marquette. Is in Marquette, Michigan, and it's, it's quite interesting. So there's a lot of iron. There's some iron mines in Marquette as well. And everything historically was done by rail. But where the nickel mine was was geographically tough to get rail to. All the rail lines had been laid 100 years ago. And so there was a proposed new highway, actually, to get the nickel from the mine to the processing plant, but it went through a environmentally sensitive area, right? They could have done it, but there are some public there were some public pushback. So now Marquette tour. Marquette, Michigan, is kind of a tourist town, but if you're ever there, and you spend like more than five minutes there, you'll see these big B train semi trucks hauling or right through town. So they basically what they did, instead of running it through the environmentally sensitive area, was they ended up running it back through town and then out of town. So all day, every day, if you're in Marquette, Michigan, you'll see these ore trucks. They run B trains. If you know your your audience may be familiar with the B train. Maybe not. I. But they're the double, you know, they're the double trailers, and they're running or right through town in Marquette, so that, I don't know, I think that's, that's pretty I think it's pretty cool. Why it doesn't go on a Laker? I couldn't say it's right by the lake. It seems like it should be able to, but I'm, I'm guessing it has something to do with processing,

Blythe Brumleve: 3:55:23

probably, you know, cleaning the the ship, you know, before or after. I'm sure there's some kind of, like, regulations around that, what, what happens after it gets loaded up onto a ship? Because I, you know, my geography is right, like, where does it go after that?

Jack Zwart: 3:55:40

So I'm assuming you're talking about other things now, like iron or, yeah, like any kind

Blythe Brumleve: 3:55:46

of shipment. So you mentioned, you showed that the top of your hand, I guess, where a lot of these mines are located, you know, if they're loaded up on a ship, where are they going after that? Are they they going to, you know, I don't know, maybe, like, further south, closer to Detroit, and then, you know, being distributed from there, like, what does that? I guess that process look like, do you know?

Jack Zwart: 3:56:07

Yeah, so most, I believe most of the of the traffic out of Duluth is going to be iron, and out of Northern Michigan is going to be like, lime or gypsum. There was, I should see, if I can find it. Someone had made a great heat map of where all these ships go out of Duluth. And predominantly you see them go to the big Rust Belt processing towns. So they will leave Duluth, they will go through the Sioux locks, and they will end up in Gary, Indiana, Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, these big steel towns, right? Is where it's we're converting now from iron ore to to steel. So I'll see if I can find that. I think it's like a super cool map. Well,

Blythe Brumleve: 3:57:07

I didn't find a map, but I did find that the first result of the Duluth shipping canal is that the same area,

Jack Zwart: 3:57:14

yeah, Duluth harbor is where most of these ships are coming from, yeah,

Blythe Brumleve: 3:57:18

right off of Lake Superior. So, yeah, you could see those big Lakers, and I can now see why. And you know, it's tough to describe it for the folks who are listening, so check you on YouTube in order to watch the video version of this show. But yeah, you're, you're not lying. That's definitely, it almost looks like big flat beds. But the ship version, that's, I think that's the Yeah,

Jack Zwart: 3:57:41

right. But the full.