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Comment by bobjordan | Hacker News Reader

My main issue with the product was pricing. For example, they quoted me to ship a load for ~$1700 USD that only cost me ~$1300 USD to ship with my own FedEx company account. That kind of pricing delta is not sustainable. They might get a few kickstarter customers that don't know any better. But, if they are going to sustain that valuation, they'd better figure out how to get pricing that sounds good to clients that know what is going on. [Edited pricing].

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I guess it's little too much overblown ... As a professional importer as you may sound. Airfreight unlike ocean freight ridiculously varies for instance you can ship the same load for $2/kg and if you choose EK Emirates they may charge $3/kg. I am not saying you are wrong. You would have paid more than with FEDEX also at this point I am not sure what Origin and Destination were involved .. was it an international shipment? China to US?

But I also feel they need to give customers options of pricing choice in their dashboard... It normally tends to be via one Airline only. And it does result in confusion... Traditionally freight forwarder offer at least 2-3 airlines options with varying pricing, routes and transit times ... For a good insight you should have mentioned actual transit times comparison for both services too.

However I do humbly disagree with you giving an impression that are kinda not hardcore guys they are beast ... And I have been in this industry for the past 20 years. Yeah they do need to improve pricing options in their dashboard... And very quickly. They should give customer 2-3 options based on slower faster and service reliably of air and ocean carriers.

What kind of load? My understanding is that they really specialize in loads that would be far too large for FedEx. Think shipping containers.

My experience was a large air shipment. Can't remember the exact details but probably on order of 100 cartons at 10KG each.

spot on. I think bobjordan has nailed it. Why can't people like Raubacher see this point. As brilliant as Raubacher, Mehta, and Petersen are, not to mention Founders Fund and Susa Ventures, they just don't take the time to see it from the little guy's perspective.

Is that their normal use case though? Why would you hire any freight forwarder to do nothing beyond what FedEx does? Aren't there more complicated logistics problems they ostensibly solve?

For international air-shipments, many times Fedex is just booking space on commercial carriers that they don't own, just like any other freight forwarder. So at that point, it mainly boils down to whichever freight forwarder has relationships + negotiated pricing + know how to get your product from point a to b with the best mix of cost/quality/service. Fedex isn't always the best, that's why UPS/DHL/any-other-forwarder exists. Air shipments are a major part of the supply chain. Any major forwarder is going to offer some air service. So that must fall in their normal use case.

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