Page 7 - BusinessWest January 23, 2023

built up between us and our customers because they know that
if we need to add extra dollars to a rate, there’s a good reason for that. They also know that if we can reduce that rate, we’re going to do that, and we do this as often as we can.”
Beyond rates, successful freight brokers and forwarders need to have a thorough understanding of the players in the shipping field, where they operate, and how, said Tim Kingston, adding that AST works with trucking companies across the country.
“And we need to, because trucking companies, by their nature, and by their history, generally service certain sections of the coun- try,” he explained. “Some will go anywhere, but a lot of them carve out a part of the country that they want to service for their business needs. You learn those, and when you have freight moving to South Carolina, you know where to start.”
Chris agreed, and said one constant for the company through the years has been to apply an established set of values and prin- ciples and to effectively partner with clients and communicate with them — another must in this business.
“If you have good news for a customer, give them good news; if you have bad news, something’s gone wrong, let them know early, communicate that, and try to work through problems,” he said. “We have so many great customers ... if you’re upfront with them, they’re going to be upfront with you. That way, you can work through things, because transportation is nothing if not problems that have to be worked through.
“Sure, 60% of your loads are going to go without a hitch,” he went on. “The other 40% ... that’s where the real work is, so we try to apply the same values across all our different sectors.”
Plane Speaking
This combination of experience, built-up trust, and ability to adjust to rapidly — and often profoundly — changing conditions, has enabled AST to not only thrive for the past four decades, but also persevere through this recent, and ongoing, period of heavy turbulence.
Indeed, as noted earlier, this challenging business has become more so — make that even more so — over the past several years
with the profound changes to the landscape brought on by the pandemic.
At the top of this list were supply-chain issues that could only be described as historic, said all three Kingstons, noting that the indus- try was seeing explosive surges in prices for shipping containers and backups at ports around the globe. It didn’t happen overnight, but almost.
Billy explained how it all happened. “When the pandemic hit, because there was so much uncertainty in the general economy, you saw companies all over the world closing down and canceling orders that had been in place for a long time,” he said. “Manufac- turers then began cutting back, as well as transportation compa- nies — steamship lines parked vessels all over the world because the demand wasn’t there. No one had an idea when it was going to come back, and that really kicked off the fluctuation in the supply chain.”
Chris agreed, and noted that, three or four months into the pan- demic, an array of colliding forces made the situation much worse. “A lot of people were at home, and they weren’t doing the things
they always did in terms of discretionary income,” he explained. “People were at home, and they bought many more things than they normally buy. And then, you had the stimulus programs, which gave people more spending money. Then ... you had a lot less interna- tional shipping capacity, but a giant surge in demand. Meanwhile, you had empty containers in the wrong places that took forever to get repositioned.
All this created a messed-up supply-and-demand curve, which would have resulted in a container coming in from China for $25,000, just for the cost of the container, never mind the tariff,” he went on. “It created a lopsided supply-and-demand curve, which pushed prices out of sight.”
This phenomenon, which has eased considerably in recent months but is still an issue, is just one of many that has contributed to this being what is considered the most volatile period ever for an industry known for volatility.
On top of everything else, the global shipping industry, like virtually every other sector,
AST
Continued on page 38
“It’s a super- competitive, time- sensitive, money- sensitive industry that changes on
a dime in many cases. You need to have a staff that’s dedicated; you need to have a staff that’s used to hearing the word ‘no,’ because they hear it a lot.”
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