Kevin Carpenter: The Easy Button for Expedited Freight

Welcome to ON AIR with AirFreight.com!  In this first episdoe we get to know Kevin Carpenter, our host and Expedited Shipping Agent at AirFreight.com

Most companies overlook the critical importance of logistics in their daily operations—and that oversight can cost them millions. Kevin Carpenter, a seasoned expedited freight expert with over 20 years in the industry, reveals how high-stakes, time-sensitive shipments are truly the backbone of the economy—and how a single mistake can halt an entire production line.

Imagine moving a crucial machine part across the country in hours, not days, with no room for error. Kevin shares behind-the-scenes stories: from saving a manufacturer a $20,000 loss with a last-minute Learjet charter to catching a wrong shipment before it was loaded onto a private jet. These high-touch, critical cargo operations are more fascinating—and more vital—than most realize. You'll discover how dedicated trucking, air charters, and meticulous procedures keep global industries moving seamlessly, even amidst crises like natural disasters or biohazard scares such as the recent screw worm outbreak in Texas.

We break down the untold stories and complex challenges behind just-in-time deliveries for Fortune 100 clients, and why understanding these high-stakes logistics moments matters. Kevin also teases upcoming conversations with venture capitalists investing in trucking innovation, innovative logistics solutions, and stories from other industry insiders—showcasing the exciting future of transportation.

Whether you're in supply chain, business leadership, or simply curious about what keeps our economy afloat, this episode offers unparalleled insights into the logistics world. Get ready to see freight and transportation in a whole new light—and learn why this invisible network is more fascinating than you ever imagined. Perfect for logistics nerds, business strategists, or anyone who wants to hear how the most critical shipments shape our world.

Hosted by Kevin Carpenter, an industry veteran trusted by Fortune 100 companies, this episode sets the stage for a series packed with gripping stories and expert interviews. Don't miss it if you care about the unseen forces powering your everyday life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome to On Air with Airfreight.com. This is a new podcast that is all about business logistics and the high-stakes world of expedited shipping. It's brought to you by Airfreight.com, which is a premium freight broker specializing in those critical shipments when your money or your business is on the line. We have solved thousands of critical shipments for Fortune 100 companies to small businesses across America. And we believe that this is an interesting conversation that is crucial to everyone's everyday lives. So we're excited to bring this new podcast to you. And my name is Matt, and I am today's guest host because the actual guest today is our actual host, Kevin Carpenter.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Kevin, what's up? Hey, what's up, man? Thank you for having me here on my show. You're welcome. Welcome to your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

I'm excited. Yeah, dude. Excited to jump in and uh learn a little bit about you, learn a little bit about uh the world of expedited freight and even airfreight.com and maybe what people can expect from this uh this new podcast in the freight and logistics world. So let's just dive in right away. You are an expedited shipping agent. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

How would you explain that to somebody? Sure. I'm the guy that you call when you have something right here and you need to get it over there, usually pretty far away, as fast as possible. And I'm the guy you call that uh determines the best way to go about doing that, the mode, the carrier selection, and we execute the shipment for you. And then we uh take care of any problems that may arise along the way, and we keep you updated throughout the process. So we're kind of like that easy button for critical freight.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

The easy button for critical freight. I love that. Um, how did you end up in this? How did how did you end up in in expedited freight?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Sure. So I'm going on my 20th year in expedited freight, which is pretty crazy. I was uh that just kind of hit me the other day. I started in 2006 uh as just entry-level as a dispatcher in the expedited freight world. The company that I worked for was called Panther Expedited Freight. And if you're involved in the industry at all, you've probably heard of Panther because they were and still are uh one of the premier expedited uh companies out there. Uh I start, like I said, started off as a dispatcher, slowly, well, actually pretty quickly worked my way up to where they would send me to work on-site with a customer for well, I had a customer that I was on-site with for three years. I moved my family to Detroit and was an on-site rep for three years with a company in Detroit, just handling all of their expedited shipments on behalf of Panther. Um, I decided that we my family was going to move to Hawaii in uh 2012. I just kind of one day bought plane tickets one way and told my wife, and I already knew she wanted to do it. So, you know, I gave us about three months to figure it all out. I and we did. Um, in that process, I found or connected with Dan Boaz here at airfreight.com. We hit it off pretty quickly. He he loves Hawaii. He he thought it'd be cool to have a guy in Hawaii, and and also there's there were some time advantages, some uh time zone advantages that you have being six hours behind East Coast time. So I would, you know, not to jump ahead, but I'd be answering calls at 2 or 3 p.m. in the afternoon, and it'd be 9 or 10 p.m., you know, in on the east coast. So we were able to uh start with Dan. And one of the cool things about Airfreight.com, all of us here work remotely. We all work from our home office, maintain a professional setting from our home. We were doing it way before it was cool to do it. Like I said, I started it with Air Freight in 2012. So it was actually a way more unique thing to be working from home uh during that time. Obviously, during COVID, that normalized it quite a bit, but we were well ahead of the of the curve at that point. Uh and yeah, so what would that be 14 years? Uh I've been with airfreight.com, and you know, I have a large base of repeat customers that call me that I've just kind of accumulated over the years because I'm that one that one call, that one call solution. Now I'm not the right call for every single shipment that my customers have, but I am the call for their most critical ones. So that's a good place to end that.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Nice. So you guys live in the world of expedited freight, and then within expedited freight, you really specialize in this like high-touch, high level of service uh for kind of like those most like critical freight needs that people have.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Sure. Because even in the expedited freight world, there there are still volume customers and volume providers. There are customers that have 10 to 20 expedited shipments every day. And we'll back up just a little for uh maybe people in the audience that don't know, but expedited freight, the hallmark of it is that it's a dedicated truck that's handling the shipment from point A to B. It's not moving through a network, it's not just going, sharing space on a truck with other freight, getting transferred at a bunch of different terminals along the way. Expedited freight is a dedicated truck picking up, you know, at a specified time, time definite, and then going straight to delivery in most cases. So, but again, even within that expedited freight world, not all expediters are the same, not all expedited service providers are the same, especially when it comes to there are asset-based companies, there's asset light companies, and then there's totally non-asset-based companies like airfreight.com.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

So in this world of freight and logistics, um, I guess what is something that you feel like people just like don't know or or misunderstand or don't don't know about it?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Yeah, I I I think that people don't uh take too much time to appreciate the fact that literally, well, look around in the room you're in right now. Everything in that room rode on a truck at some point in the process, unless you handmade it right there. But uh that's not that's not a very large percentage of items. Uh everything in the room you're in rode on a truck at some point. So I think people often either forget or under underestimate the importance of transportation and logistics as a whole in our in our world.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

It has a massive impact on our day-to-day lives.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah, absolutely. It does. And, you know, Airfreight.com is not handling that everyday stuff. We're handling the stuff that uh, you know, like you said at in the intro, that somebody's business is on the line, or a very important customer is on the line, or in the case of, you know, certain manufacturers, they have an assembly line that's going. If if a machine breaks on that assembly line, there's now a fixed cost that they're losing every minute that that line is not is not running. So that puts uh you know our a high a high cost of a premium freight shipment, like an expedited uh truck shipment or an air freight shipment or an air charter for that matter, uh, puts it in perspective.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

So, well, uh a couple follow-up questions for you. First of all, you said that you moved your family a couple times, um, and that you've been doing this for 20 years. When you first started in in in in logistics, you had zero kids, is that right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

And now you have I have eight kids now. Um, yeah. And what I tell I mean, what I tell people is uh I I no job held my interest for more than a couple months. Um now then my wife was pregnant with our first kid. That probably helped me lock in a little bit, but it definitely helped that I started with Panther during that time that my wife was pregnant with our first kid. So I've never looked back since joining the expedited freight industry. And, you know, thankfully uh I've been blessed with lots of kids, lots of mouths to feed.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Nice. Then you've got lots of mouths to feed, and you've got a homestead to attend to, right? You got your guessing amount of farm.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Yep. Yep. Um we have 40 acres here in central Alabama and uh mostly wooded, but we try to raise our own meat. We do chickens, we have laying chickens as well as meat chickens. We got some goats running around out there. We like to run pigs through the woods every year. So, you know, we provide our own chicken and eggs and pork.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

That's awesome. Um, and so I know that, you know, you said that airfraight.com specializes in the world of like high touch, critical cargo, expedited shipping. But even in this podcast, for the sake of this conversation, you know, we're gonna be exploring kind of more in the world of like freight and logistics and transportation. So my question to you is like, well, A, does the world need another podcast? And B, why would uh someone want to listen to this one? What uh what are we hoping that people get out of it?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Well, I've always uh thought it was interesting. And I I I don't, you know, not just because that's what I'm doing, but objectively, I listen to plenty of other people about what their jobs are, and I can almost find interest in anything. I can figure out a follow-up question to ask or probe it a bit. And I I think what we do in the situations that we deal with on a day-to-day basis and the ways in which we're saving the day for our customers, in many cases, we're handling the most important shipment that they've had all year, or maybe in their whole career, you know, maybe in a person's entire career, they are stepping in to handle a situation that they've never dealt with before. Um so yeah, it's really fun. Uh, and I love talking about it. You know, we've had the idea. I've had the idea. I've been pitching it to the other members of the team for years because we'll have just these really interesting conversations. Every now and again, I'll step back and say, Man, if somebody else could listen in on this, I think I think it would be pretty interesting. Uh so hopefully we can let people into our world a little bit, but I don't think it's just gonna end up being about expedited freight. I think um just transportation and logistics as a whole right now is really in the forefront more than more than it has been in a long time uh in the consciousness of of the nation right now. So uh I think it's a good time to, like I said, let people into our side of transportation and logistics, which I happen to think is the most exciting side of it.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah, I agree that like it's it's it's an important part of the conversation and like the country and the economy, and getting the chance to uh to interview and hear from like thought leaders in this industry and kind of breaking down some of what's what's happening and like transportation and logistics it at large and in general will be really fascinating. But also hearing these, I guess, like cool stories from the world of like expedited freight is like you said, like objectively interesting. So I'm looking forward to uh to hearing more of those. Every time there's like because I I feel I feel like you guys always share these stories that to you just sounds like, oh, it's like an everyday thing that happened. Like, oh, we saved the day for some company or something. And I'm always like, well, that's amazing, though. Like that's so cool. But uh every single every every single guy who is a uh shipping agent for Airframe.com is like, well, that's just what we do every day. So it's not that true. But it is, it is that interesting.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

And and they do, like right now, if you were to say, What's an interesting one you've had, I I would uh I'd I'd be like, oh, let me try to like figure out what's the most interesting because they all do kind of uh like I said, they're usually all high stakes. Um but here just right off the bat, and since I know that we're gonna air this episode soon, uh I could say like in the news right now, there was a uh a screw worm, a possible, they may have located a a possible screw worm in South Texas. And this is a this is a flesh-eating worm that uh hasn't been in America for some decades. They eradicated it some decades back, but now they think it's creeping back in, coming from Mexico. The screw is back. The screw worm is back, breaking. Um, so well, and again, I I actually don't know for sure because I didn't follow up on the news article, but there's there, I mean, this this was in the headlines uh this week. Yeah. But what's interesting is we actually handled uh an air charter just yesterday for a sample of what is possibly a screw worm. We moved a small canister from South Texas to the USDA testing facility uh via dedicated private airplane. You know, I I don't know the reasons that they wanted that particular thing on an airplane, probably probably because it's something that they didn't want to let out of containment. Uh, and that that's just one of the many reasons why you would use a dedicated uh trucking service versus putting putting your shipment through a network. Even if it's an air network, it's still gonna, you're not gonna have possession of it the whole time or visibility of it. So yeah, uh Steve Jansen on the team is actually the one that coordinated uh a Learjet from South Texas to Kansas, I believe. Uh and it's just kind of neat because we're we're we're we're dealing with that on this side, and then on Google News, it's like top three headline that that they're gonna do the test. They're you know, they're gonna be testing this, and it's like, yeah, they're gonna test it once we get it up there.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

That's just such a great example because yeah, again, it it's part of the national conversation. Anything that's like happening in the world, the backbone of it is logistics and transportation and sometimes sometimes high-touch critical cargo is even part of the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

So I mean, take take uh disasters, take hurricanes and uh, you know, the floods and the fires. I mean, people need to move uh supplies, amenities, you know, equipment to an area quickly, they're not gonna call normal trucking for that. So yeah, we're we're you know, it's not unusual to be in the to see our work in the headlines.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

That's awesome. Um, well, I know that one thing that uh, you know, we're doing every episode is uh is taking people through the on-air gauntlet. So, Kevin, are you ready for the on air gauntlet? I think I'm ready. Okay. I might ask you maybe one more question. I think you're asking everybody three questions. Um it might be it might be one more, who knows? Just to throw a little curveball at you. Um so you know, we're we can't use copyrighted music, right? But if the podcast had a theme song that was like a real copyrighted song, what would the theme song be?

SPEAKER_00 15:58

I think that would it would have to be danger zone Kenny Loggins, the top gun theme. Yeah. Hell yeah. I mean, that's what I'm singing to myself as I'm scrambling a learjet for a customer.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

I don't know if I whistle it, is that copyrighted?

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Thank you, thank you. Um awesome danger zone, little Kenny Loggins. Um, what is uh tell me on for this podcast, who would be your dream guest?

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Um Elon Musk.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Why not? I mean, we're talking dream guest here, right? Uh let's let's bring Elon in. Let's get his take. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Let's get him, man. Let's get the richest man in the world. That's your job, by the way. Okay, all right, done, done. I'll reach out. I'll see if see if my people get in touch with this people. Why why Elon?

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Well, uh, he's at the forefront of the self-driving revolution. And I mean, it doesn't take too much extrapolation to see that we are we're truck the trucking industry is gonna get shaken up. Because you're talking about now a truck that can drive cross-country, it doesn't need hours of service, it doesn't need rest, it doesn't need to use the restroom. If it's programmed correctly, it's not gonna even make any mistakes. Um, so and it's gonna give you maximum you know fuel efficiency, uh, it's gonna lower costs. Uh, and and that's you know, that's one thing we know is that that's the way the market works. If something's gonna lower costs that drastically, companies are gonna go with it. So I think it's inevitable that that's gonna happen. And yeah, I think it would be interesting to get his perspective on that. Because what are we gonna do with all these truck drivers? What are we gonna do with uh you know the most popular profession in the country? By by what is it the is it the most popular profession in the country? Yeah, by like by number of employees, there's there's more people in trucking, yes. Wow. Should we fact check that? Yeah, we'll fact check that later.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Asterisk, we're not we're not back. Yeah. Maybe we should. Um let's just say roughly, let's say it's one of the topics.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

It's really close to the top. It's really close to the top. Yeah. Really close to the top. I researched it some time back, and I mean there might be some technical depending on how broad you go with your criteria. Trucking is I mean, a lot of people are in the trucking industry that are drive specifically drivers.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Yeah, makes sense. That checks out. Fact-checked. We just fact-checked it. You're right. Um uh so Dream Guess is Elon.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

What is uh um what is maybe the most unhinged logistics problem that you've ever had to solve? Um well and if that might be too much, the most unhinged, but she knows.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of unhinged things going on. Um I I'll give one that at the time I just couldn't do anything other than shake my head at. Uh, and that was um we handled an air charter shipment for a I believe it was a meat company in Wisconsin, and they had a they had a packaging machine go down. They needed a very specific transmission from and they and they found it at an obscure parts warehouse in New Mexico. And again, as I discussed earlier, like when a company goes down, when their manufacturing goes down, when the when production is halted, when they're not putting product out, they are losing money. The only question is how much money they're losing. And the bigger the company, the more money they're losing per hour. And and so that means every every hour that they don't have that transmission, they're losing, let's just say, twenty thousand dollars. So you don't have time to to do normal trucking, you don't have time to do expedited trucking in that case from New Mexico to Wisconsin. So they uh called us, we found the appropriate aircraft uh to charter for that. A car, it was a it was a Learjet, actually, uh, which we've already talked about. That's one of the more popular um sizes, especially for small parts that need to be charged. Sponsored by Learjet.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

Not really, no.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Well, we have a nice video, you made a nice video about the Learjet, I believe. We did, we did. Shout out our YouTube channel. Um so we uh yeah, we picked it up, you know, we send a driver and we did we did it door to door. That that means we picked it up at the origin location, uh, take it to the airport with you know with a with a van with an expedited van. Then we have the aircraft waiting there to receive the part, they take off, and then there's another van waiting at the destination airport, passed to that van, and then it moves on to delivery. So that's a door-to-door air charter. So we picked it up at the origin facility, we take it to the airport. Um, the pilots called to uh as part of the procedure for these types of shipments, we make visual contact with the freight and the paperwork. And we did that, and I immediately, well, the pilots sent me pictures of the the item. They sent me pictures of the paperwork. I immediately wanted to get the okay from the customer that this was the right stuff, um, which again, nine, you know, 999 times out of a thousand. Uh, when you're doing this type of shipment, everybody knows what we're there to get. In this case, this was not the right item. So we almost you know chartered a learjet across the country with the wrong transmission that would have done the the customer no good, you know, done them no good. So we caught that error and saved, you know, a lot of time. Um, you know, took it back, got the right one. I I at the time I remember thinking that was pretty unhinged. That's wild.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

So it was uh, can you imagine if they would have oh someone would have come to receive a a package from a dedicated private jet charter and it's the wrong thing, it's the wrong things in the box. Yeah. Yeah. Someone would have gotten fired. Good thing, uh, good thing you caught that.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Yeah, and and that's uh that comes from having good procedures in place because we've done this enough times to know what to check for, know what to ask. But again, you don't want to just go through the motions because every nine, you know, one time out of a thousand, that's not gonna be the somebody messed up and gave you the wrong part.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Alright, last question in the on-air gauntlet. What do you want to be remembered for when you're gone?

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Uh I march to the beat of my own drum, and I think everybody that knows me would would agree. And uh I just I kind of figure that's what I'll be known for.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Nice. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Well, Kevin, thank you, and we're excited to hear um what's to be coming from the on-air podcast very soon. Uh, actually, just give us a quick preview of like maybe I guess the next month, four or six weeks, next couple months of of guests or what we're gonna be hearing and and talking about.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Cool. It's a nice smattering uh of industry experts. Uh one guy's a we got a venture capitalist that for a venture capital company that owns one of the larger trucking companies in America. Uh, we've got a customer of mine, personally, that was so happy about the job that I do for them that they wanted to they wanted to tell people. Um, a packaging company out of Cincinnati. And then we've got a few expediters as well, uh, shipping expedited shipping agents like me here with airfreight.com. They're it's a fun group of guys that we have here. So we would be remiss not to showcase the cast of characters over here.

unknown 24:08

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

So all people in like the logistics, business, transportation world. Um, it'll be cool to like to get a a wide variety of people, like a s a smattering, like you said.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

And uh and even you know, maybe there maybe there'll be people that aren't in logistics, you know, but they'll have something to say about it. Uh, you know, that's just a that's just a hint of things to come.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Awesome. Well, Kevin, thank you. Uh and again, I'm Matt, your guest host, and this was Kevin, your actual host. And uh thanks for listening, and hope you will join us again for on air.