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Comment by ludston | Hacker News Reader

Yes.

But can somebody help me understand? Flexport seems to be a 3PL (third party logistics) company marketing itself as a software company. There are literally thousands of 3PL companies though. What's the difference between Flexport and say DHL/DSV/UPS/Geodis Wilson/Toll/Yusen/<insert your local 3PL provider>, other than snappy marketing and a position in YCombinator?

For comparison. There are software companies that provide software to many 3PL companies, and don't do any actual 3PL themselves.

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Flexport is a freight forwarder. You tell them where you want your international shipment to go and they make all the arrangements with the various intermediaries to get it from origin to destination and through customs. I’ve worked with a bunch of freight forwarders and Flexport’s software is far and away the best that I’ve encountered. Most freight forwarders operate on email and Google Sheets. You constantly have to call and prod them to get updates on your shipment. With Flexport everything is in their app and they have good behind the scenes systems for keeping shipment info up to date. It’s kinda hard to explain how much better of an experience they provide to someone who’s never had to deal with freight forwarders.

So, an abstraction layer over freight with a good API?

Flexport started to "disrupt global trade" (in a positive sense) and ended as a global freight forwarder. The latter is impressive enough, just a tad short of the initial goal.

One software house that I like a lot in the logistics space is WiseTech, a lot of the big shots, e.g. DHL are using it.

Yeah, for sure, a lot of traditional freight forwarders and 3PL providers don't have fancy API's and tracking. But there are certainly a lot that do. And some of those have vertical integration (and therefore potential for massive internal cost savings). I'm not seeing the potential for market disruption in comparison to these players, other than perhaps the massive cash injection Flexport has that these companies don't.

To me, the story of Flexport is, "We spent 1 billion dollars, and now we have a profitable Freight Forwarder", which for sure is an amazing success story because that is not easy, but also all their competitors are in their own way pretty amazing.

You seem bitter. There are happy Flexport customers in this thread. Ask them why they are happy. (Not affiliated with Flexport myself)

He's claiming they enable clients to navigate the many 3PLs. He claims to offer you the client company, the software, that will let you ship your stuff through any 3PL. He's a broker.

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