Ryan Petersen

their anxiety to like get these things signed off with us.

So we got a good deal, but it did kind of turn Flexport into a cargo airline.

And we've had those planes ever since.

So it's not our, it was more of a tactic than a strategy.

Like our goal is to be an asset light technology platform for freight forwarding and work, be like more neutral and agnostic and move the cargo on anybody's planes.

But we, we saw that.

We could serve people and no one else could.

It was really an education about asset ownership and logistics in that it kind of turns you against your customers in some ways that can be unhealthy.

You have to really overcome that.

Because your job when you have a plane or a ship is to fill the plane or the ship, right?

It's not to serve the customer anymore.

Like if the customer's cargo needs to go to a different airport, you'll try to convince them to fly it where your plane is going and then truck it a long distance.

Or, you know, it's like, oh, you just wait three days.

The plane's leaving in three days instead of going, hey, let me find you a different option.

So you have to overcome that culturally.

Like if you're an asset owner, it's pretty hard to be customer centric because your job is like,

Yeah, so COVID, it did some interesting things for us.

It made us kind of famous in part because of the hospital stuff and some other things that we did during that time when supply chains got dislocated.

So it helped the business and the profile of the business.

Financially, we turned profitable.