Efficient Expeditions Shipping AI Materials in Containers through Global Logistics

May 6

Written By Kelly K

You know what it is! Everything I do, I do it big. Stopping in for what appears to be my WEEKLY wassup with the best shipping company on the globe. Let’s live and learn and see how AI is enhancing the shipping world.

Why Attend: Brah, I’ve said it a million times; I’m obsessed with this upcoming merger I’ve cracked, I believe, that will include GameStop, (maybe AMC), the former Bed Bath & Beyond, eBay (potentially), Flexport (what whatttt! role call), the White House, and maybe even SpaceX/Tesla? Let’s seeeeee.

I arrive right on time: Logistics for the AI Era. The girl is introducing herself. The Northwest’s general manager. WHEN WILL THE CEO be on camera hahahah I’d be too giddy and excited hahaha. Luckily they can’t see me. I’m still in wake-up-mode.

Love it. They’ve got simulators and calculators you can work with.

I need to build these for my business. build some calculators and simulators that I can reference in my classes and suggest my students to use them!!! This is genius. Flexport. You’re a sensational, inspirational buddy.

OMG, the VP of airfreight will be here too, lol and last time I joined their event, I wasn’t sure that they even did air. I thought it was only shipping on boat. lol. Newbie.

Okay, today’s agenda ONLY 3 points!!! AI infrastructure supercycle, executing on AI infrsatructures, and Q&A.

Let’s dive into the AI super cycle. We’re seeing the largest infrastrucutre buildout in US history, maybe globally. Previously it was the US highway infrastructure. Today’s dollars was $635B over 36 years. NOW the most conservative estimate is $3-5T… half deployed in the next five years in teh USA.

600B is just in 2026. Up from the year before 36%. We’re going to reach globally 200gigawatts of global capacity. You’ll see the models getting better every day. Lots of data centers are dedicated to training models.

In 2030, most of the capacity will be dedicated to actualyl running the models.

Data centers, waht does this mean in terms of freight? Data centers accounted for about 1.4M kilograms. If you start squinting on the graph to the left. The biggest exporters are tawiwan and china. Not surprising.

AI Infrastructure was about 15% of air demand growth, was growing 49%, project that out in a couple of yeasr, itl likely superseed e-commerce.

WOW, e-commerce is the leader. No wonder Ryan Cohen wants eBay - the #2 e-commerce company… BRAH and its being run so poorly. OMG he will nail this!!! This makes so much sense.

Okay so I just paused and wrote on my post on linkedin, connecting dots (below)

Now back to business.

Okay this guy talking is new. His voice is a little tough to understand on this digital audio. THEY NEED SUBTITLES!!!! I SAY THIS EVERY TIME.

Data center logistics operate ina. fundamentally different reisk category than general freight

extremely valuable and fragile
modern AI clusters can cost up to $1M per rack and are highly sensitive to vibration.
a single road bump can unset GPUs and cause catastrophic loss
Large, heavy crates and dangerous goods
single racks reach up to 9 ft and weigh 3,500-4,000 lbs. Requiring dock-height assets
high-power backup systems contain Class 9 DG, and liquid cooling units have specialized industrial fluids
require extreme speed and reliability
57% of data center projects experienced construction delays in 2025. Speed is needed
logistic partners must orchestrate deliveries so that expensive equipment arrives exactly when the site is ready. Not before, not after.

Okay he’s just hard to follow - all of that above i copied from their slide. Lemme try again.

You really plan to get the maximum speed and execution through your supply chain. You need to ask your (idk) how are you going to move your freight? YOu want to isolate from geopolitical and weather items. If suddenly there is a weather event in Anchorage, its blocked; you don’t want that to stop. You want an outlet by another corridor to move your freight. You need to assess the resiliency of your portfolio to this type of event.

The older freight used to barely fit in a aircraft. I see bigger and bigger freights lately. If your providers don’t have access to large capacity on this aircraft type, you will be stuck. You won’t be able to move this large freight, and you won’t be able to adjust.

You need a resilient multi-airline procurement strategy.

Build a resilient air solution for one of the world’s largest companies by market cap and the leader in networking solutions and AI infrastructure.
They ship from Hanoi and Mexico. This is what we built for them to build resilience. OMG cool!!
- They built like 3 different plans. One is direct flight, one is Hanoi to PVG (Shanghai) then Flexport charter to LAX. The third is Hanoi to GDL then on a branded cross-border truck. WOWWWWW.
- branded cross-border truck!!! amazing. who knew that exists, I mean, duh - but it builds trust and reliability. and efficiency.

Make sure that no matter what happens int eh world, you have multiple options to route your freight.

you also want the lowest amount of handling for speed and safety.
You want only BUP (build up units) from forewader CFS to forewarder CFS. No loose handling at airport terminals
On airport warehouse at origin with runway access is prefererred to avoid an unncessary airport transfer trucking leg.
Late delivery cut off at origin and delivery straight into the planes.
Runway pickup at dstination: the truck is staged on the runway next to the airplane parking for immediate transfer onto the truck witout touch ing the airport terminal (no risk of forklifts damaging the crates). If runway pickup is not legally allowed, then dedicated bypass door… (he changed the slide)

Hong Kong setup - you can deliver cargo all th way up to midnight. Starting again at 6am. This allows the true best in class next flight out service.

the warehouse in HACTL (HKG main airline terminal) ther eis no double checking of document and cargo weight/dims
direct landslide access within 30’ ULD can be
full CCTV recording of all the steps (offload, build up, airside transfer)

Dedicated specialized white glove trucking service (checklist for trucking)

want a truck on standby ready to go.
same team of drivers trained on client SOP as a client. hope it’s the same person and they know it well.
high value truckers with over $2M of insurance; commercial invoice value average $1.5M and can exceed $5
GPS localization and active monitoring system for route deviations
Absolutely shock-free handling and driving: only air-ride trucks, airbags around the server racks
High security hardware: high security bolt seals on all trucks and container, hardware cloth on component pallets
Hazardous material trained drivers that know how to segregate & load dangerous good and confirm that picked up goods are allowed by air (some DG components such as battery packs are ocean only)

LOL this event it alking about SHIPPING AI stuff, AI suppplies, not using AI for efficency, right? hahah It’s so fast paced I need to keep typing.

you want CCTV surveilance cloud-accesible so 24-hour security is possible.
All shipments scanned in/scanned out with full damage verification

Your team - you need a 24/7 dedicated account team of expert fully empowered and supported by digitized SOPs

one accoujnt manager as single-threaded responsibly party. This is a senior leader with deep operations expertise
24/7 operations coversage with dedicate team in all geographies with deep expertise in the account
Team is organized as a multi-disciplinary fully empowered structure, for example, tehy can bypass the procurement team and go procure a charter directly for an urgent project
all client SOPs are digitized and surface actions needed and exceptions in forwarder… (next slide)

SOP configureation platform. Any language, run through this form, and rules of how to execute on this account.

Need status visible to the client, do we keep shipping on this shipment? Do we hold it? Watch events. All transit exceptions are immediately surfaced and resolved.

Flexport has an example of how their system can share a public link to a site manager or client. They can track the shipment wiht control on the visibiltiy. They …

Okay, I’m going to leave a bit early. I have a few interviews soon and want to make breakfast for myself. Peace out, Flexport!!