Global Trade This Week – April 4th, 2023
What’s going on in Global Trade this Week? Today Doug Draper of Inland Star Distribution and Trade Geek Pete Mento of Mento LLC cover:
3:52 -EV Tax Credit Rules Change
12:37 -AI Could Be Applied to Logistics
18:38 -Halftime
26:37 -AI, Tech Hype, Failures, and Successes
29:56 -Is UPS Going to See a Teamsters strike?
-
Keenan Brugh 0:00
You're watching Global Trade This Week with Pete Mento and Doug Draper.
Pete Mento 0:10
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another wonderful edition of global trade this week. I am Pete mento. And with me almost as always, but never quite enough, is my good friend Doug Draper. And with him is we're gonna call this the AI version of Troy. Doug.
Doug Draper 0:31
Yeah. Yeah, we could. It's more of a paper version choice. A little old school like that.
Pete Mento 0:38
2d, 2d, two dimensional, 2d dimensional tree. I'm coming to you on location in beautiful Whippany, New Jersey. For those who don't know where Whippany is, neither do I. I followed the navigation on my phone to get here. I'm speaking at the PC SC which is part of the HDA. This is a pharmaceutical supply chain security conference. And we'll be talking a lot about economics and the state of economics tomorrow. Doug, I think you're finally back. I we've had a bunch of weeks where you weren't with us. You're in California. So are you back in Denver.
Doug Draper 1:20
I am back in Denver. And the funny thing is that I was in Fresno and you're in in Whippany, New Jersey. So we go to top nine a buddy. We're like top shelf liquor. There's no downtown Hyatt no downtown Chicago. Hi it for you. And I
Pete Mento 1:39
like when people say wow, you travel for work. It's so glamorous. And it's the one time I tell people you know, I was in Paris or I was in London for work. It's not like when you say I was in Bentonville, like no, you know, nothing wrong with Arkansas. Or like I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, there's a lot wrong with Tulsa, Oklahoma, or, you know, the the two weeks in a row I spend in Gary, Indiana or wherever, you know, auditing somebody in a windowless conference room. It's not so much the city. It's just the fact that usually I'm kind of like hidden away in some dark space in a warehouse with 500 pages of customs entries. Just basically looking down with a laptop. There's nothing glamorous about the travel that we usually do, buddy. So
Doug Draper 2:21
yeah, yeah, I will give a shout out to Fresno. So if anybody's listening and they're all pissed about Fresno is growing on me. You know, it's really close to a lot of cool stuff that I like to do. So you know, Fresno is not all that bad. And it's made a lot of a lot of news lately with all the water, snowpack and everything else. So alright, I'll get I'll give a shout out to pres now not not as bad as I had perceived it to be when I started my new job. So Fresno, you're alright, in my book.
Pete Mento 2:49
I usually find that I just need one good like place to eat. I need a I need a good coffee place. And if my hotel is clean, alright.
Doug Draper 3:00
Alright. Yeah, that downtown. Downtown Clovis is where I'm staying. And there's this coffee joint. And I walked in there 6am Because that's when they opened and it's it's like the, the needle scratched against the record because I was obviously out of town. Everybody there was local, and they just kind of turned around. I just sat at the counter, ate my food quickly and left but great place. Great.
Pete Mento 3:25
I forget the name of it. Thank you like the nicest guy. How could anybody not want you to be at their? At their coffee place? Like I would?
Doug Draper 3:33
Yeah, well, I went in looking something like this collared shirts don't exist in that place. It's all farmers and boots. And so you know, who's this cop? What's this guy doing?
Pete Mento 3:44
Your country boy. Come by. They just got to get to know you. Yeah, well, anyway, so I kicked off. So you're going to receive, and we got some pretty good topics this week. So we do. You go ahead and get started, buddy.
Doug Draper 3:59
Awesome. Thanks. So last year, last week, we talked about cars, and the state of the economy related car. So I'm gonna keep that theme going this week, Pete and talk about the Evie tax credit rules that are going to be changing middle this month. I think it's like the 18th or 17th of April. And it's all related to the inflation Reduction Act back in 2022. And we've spoken about this as well. I can't remember how many shows ago, but it's basically the tax credits for electric vehicles are going to go away unless the car manufacturer is sourcing critical minerals and battery components from the US or US allies, rather than China. And that basically means in this day and age and right here and now. Very few electric vehicles will remain eligible, because the vast majority of them are sourced with Critical minerals from China. The other piece is that I think I get this right, is that any car that's over $55,000 in value or resale is exempt anyway, regardless of where things are soy sourced, there's no, there's no tax credit. So that the key thing here is, in my opinion, the word allies, right. And we spoke about this, and the US does not have a whole lot of critical minerals around Pete. So we better create a whole lot of friends, Uncle Sam maybe needs to get out there and create some alliances that are defined as allies, and find out where all the cool kids are hanging out. And the cool kids mean, what countries have these critical minerals. So here, here's a couple of deals. So if you are our audience hears of trade agreements that all of a sudden pop up with countries that you may not have even heard of, or didn't realize that we cared a whole lot about. You will shortly. So critical materials, graphite, here's where that stuff is sourced Mozambique, Tanzania, Tanzania, and Madagascar. Right, you need some graphite and graphite flakes to make these batteries. Right. So look for some, some trade agreements there. Cobalt, the Democratic Republic of Congo is the world leader in mining cobalt, not 100%. Sure what callmart does. Cobalt does for batteries, but it's important. Lithium, everybody knows lithium batteries, Australia, Chile, Argentina, are all companies. Here's the kicker on this one, Pete is that there's four companies in the world that control 60% of the global production of lithium, and shocker, a couple of those are primarily owned by Chinese businesses. And then finally, nickel is a big one. Indonesia is the largest producer right after China. So there's going to be a change in the consumer buying habit, with the credits going away in the middle of this month, but more importantly, specific to our show. And the title of our show, which is global trade, I think you're gonna see a lot of agreements come into play with African countries, and positioning themselves. So when these big automakers when the big three start rolling in. And start putting pressure on politicians to create favorable trade agreements, you're gonna hear those countries quite a bit in the future. So it'll be interesting to see how all that shakes out.
Pete Mento 7:52
Got a lot to say on this one. But so first and foremost, a lot is being said about cobalt because of old friend of mine, Mr. Joe Rogan, the greatest podcaster on planet Earth apparently, had someone on recently who had written a book, I think it's called Blood cobalt or red cobalt or something that effect discussing the abhorrent conditions in Africa in the Republic of Congo, where Cobalt is mined, so terrible, just absolutely terrible. It is in this the slavery conditions, the the forced labor conditions that these people, unfortunately are forced to live under, in order to mined cobalt, and the the ethical questions about the continued mining of cobalt in the People's Republic of Congo? So a lot of eyeballs are on that currently. Where else can we find cobalt, right here in America, I know, as a matter of fact, there are cobalt deposits, they're just not very big. And then beyond that, getting to cobalt right now, in places where we know that it exists, is actually difficult to do, because we haven't been mining those deposits in a ways that could be safe. And we haven't really gotten to that level where they are some of those other things that you've talked about Chile as an example, the United States is on the precipice of a free trade agreement with Chile, working hard at that Canada has a lot of these minerals, the United States has tons of them. But our environmental policies get in the way of us getting too many of these minerals. We mined for a lot of them, but are unable to retain them. Because of our mining standards, we actually allow them to wash away, or we don't retain them because of the heavy metals requirements of our mining. You think talking about Africa, much of the Belt and Road Initiative is focused on getting to these minerals. So China's already built the infrastructure you get to them. It's a really big question of how we're going to deal with this in the Eevee world. And because of policies that are mostly focused on green alternative energy, we're not even thinking about what we're going to do in the interim. So allowing Americans to manage that interim in between you using petroleum, of using the more standard gasoline diesel engines in the meantime, it's being curved to the side as we begin to focus on adopting UV. So this is a big problem, it's very big problem. And when we try to use taxes to get to it, I love this particular, very recent issue. In Los Angeles, you know, if you had a home that was worth 5 million to 9.9 9 million, there was an excise it was a tax that was gonna have to pay the transfer tax, if you sold it after April 1. And I believe it was an additional 3%. If you sold it after April 1, and then for 10 million, it was another 5.5%. and above, so people were just trying to sell these houses and all these celebrities are trying to just get rid of these houses. And it's similar to these EVs where people were trying to sell them as quickly as they could, in order to get that tax credit, you know, people were, were trying to buy them and sell them, and it was playing havoc with the cost of using V's all over the country. So it's the same thing there. You know, we're people realize what's going on. So they're waiting, you know, they're waiting for this to happen, in order to clear inventory to sell new ones. And it's like anything else, you know, capitalism is going to deal with this market more than trying to be altruistic. And I don't think we should be surprised by that.
Doug Draper 11:14
Yeah, it'll be interesting. You bring up a good point about harvesting or mining, right, it's all fine and dandy to get a trade agreement with Congo. But then you run into the conditions of the mines, and probably shocking to some individuals and how things are still operating out there. That's an excellent point that I didn't touch on.
Pete Mento 11:32
Yeah, I think, you know, anybody who's people would be shocked to just take a minute and go on Google, and look at photographs of people and the turn of the 1900s, all the way through the 1950s of black and white pictures of Americans, and British people and people from the UK, you know, English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, coal miners, Hungarian coal miners, you know. And then look at pictures of people who are mining now, honestly, the pictures aren't that different. And the problems that people in West Virginia people in Kentucky have of being in these very dangerous, scary, concerning places in regards to health, they've really not that change, the dangers are all still there, it's a miserable way to make a living. And those money conditions really haven't changed. They're just as dangerous. The technology has gotten better. But really, it's a miserable, dangerous way to make a living no matter where you are in the world. So we should, we should keep that in mind.
Doug Draper 12:37
All right, I'm serving it over the net to you, my friend, what's your first topics.
Pete Mento 12:42
So we've talked a couple of times about AI. And about check GPT. And I have gone down many rabbit holes done looking into this. And what I've what I've gotten to learn is that people are making these connections, these these add ons. Kenan is looking at his control right now saying, you idiots, we don't even know how to use the proper terminology. But there are these, these are these additional pieces of connections that people are making that go into chat GPT, that will work on websites that will work with technology, that everyday we're going everything from Orbitz, to Expedia, to regular pieces of applications that will deeply, deeply automate the process. And they're incredible. So an example of that would be you go onto Expedia. And you it will take care of your your search criteria for you. Give it certain information about what it is you want to do, how much you want to spend, and it will automate the decision making for you. And then it will tell you, you know, while you're here, based on your likes and dislikes, how much you generally spend at dinner, there's just perfect restaurant for you while you're there, like perfect for you and your spouse. You don't even argue about it like you and your wife can never decide where you want to have dinner. This is the one we'll make your reservation, here's the time you're there, we'll get your reservation at Wednesday. We know you guys usually like to eat it six years ago, like and you just automate the hell out of it for you. So I put on LinkedIn not long ago. This AI is a perfect platform to try to attempt something that seemed unattainable, which is classifying many things in the Harmonized Tariff code, which is a very difficult logic exercise where Customs has given us a number of criteria to get us to say six digits, and hopefully to some points to 10. There's a lot of information, all of it written down to help you with this logic process. And lo and behold, what we're reading more and more about is it's doing it. It's getting us there. And then beyond that, now this AI is filling in the entry. And then it's finding ways to figure out how to call people in order to, you know, data wise to do the pickup setting appointments, contacting the driver, having the driver ready to pick up detailing the people in the warehouse, when they should have that particular pallet ready, when you're picking it up and sending something to a warehouse, routing it, routing it, in order to make sure it goes to the right airport for exports, getting its pallet position ready to go onto an aircraft, picking out which carrier it should go on in order for the proper cost negotiating based on the on the type of negotiating window based on
Doug Draper 15:31
Doug, I hate to say it dude.
Pete Mento 15:36
It could this this could honestly. And I'm i God, this is going to kill me to say, the rise the Rise of the Machines. It could do it man. I mean, we might be looking at a robotic overlords being able to take over a great deal of the decision making involved in global freight forwarding. I'm not saying it's going to. But I'm saying that software of this type could be used to vastly automate and hasten the decision making process of global freight forwarding. And if properly supervised,
Unknown Speaker 16:14
could
Pete Mento 16:16
take the place of people in many instances for more than mundane data driven data entry parts of our job, and could actually do some of the decision making what a won't be able to do yet is deal with it when things melt down. Maybe it could someday. I don't know. But this is terrifying to me dog when it's when it's making decisions better or at par with a customs house broker.
Doug Draper 16:43
That freaks me out, buddy. Yeah, yeah, it's, it is a crazy time. And it's just kind of like the curve has just accelerated since like November, right? It's kind of when chat GPT started getting getting some attention. And you're right, a lot of these tasks are going to be automated and analyzing data to make the right decision. Cole Hunter percent, and I think we're going to see that accelerate tremendously. In the next year, the application into our industry, or any specific industry, I think will be unique and determined. You know, industry by industry. And one thing that gives me kind confidence, right? Is there still a heck of a lot of human interaction that needs to be done to keep things moving from A to B, right? Where's that position on the plane? What's the best routing? What's the best classification all that is legit, and and very valid. But when the you know what hits the fan, and you need somebody to fix a problem, a computer and an AI bot can only do so much. So I think our industry is while pieces of it that you just described will definitely be taken over. I think that there's always going to be a need for somebody to be either yelled at on the other side of the phone, or figure out how the hell do you get off that plane in the last minute get on on something else to connect the destination because somebody that needs it on the other end, whether it's a surgery, medical, they could give two shits about an AI bot, they just need it there. And that's where a human can come in and save the day. So I think you're right on some aspects of our industry. But from a general perspective, I think you and I are still safe, at least in our lifetime.
Pete Mento 18:29
I can't wait till there's two robots doing the show dog. Yeah. Now that brings us to halftime brought to you by our great friends and sponsors at CAP logistics. To learn more about our wonderful sponsors go to Kevin logistics.com. We thank them as we always do for their unflinching support of our madness every week. And we couldn't do it without them. So please do learn more about MCAP logistics.com. Doug, who's going first this week,
Doug Draper 19:02
I'll jump in my mind is pretty short and sweet. But I just saw a news article that said there is officially I don't know if when it goes from unofficial to official but there's officially a tequila shortage in the United States of America. Do not panic. Do not panic. There's still tequila flowing. It's just a higher level. So basically, there's an agave shortage, Pete and I found out when I did a little research on this that a gobby plants take like 910 years a decade to mature before they can be harvested. And with climate change, weather pattern changes, and primarily the fact that everybody likes to drink tequila. Now it's kind of the cool drink is there's a huge shortage. So what's happening is that there's fillers and additives that people are throwing in there to dilute the consistent zuv the tequila or the potency or whatever, and then you're gonna see a big chasm between top shelf tequilas, and the Corvo goal that you and I used to dump into our our punch, trashcan punch when we were in college. So anyway, keep an eye out here. The prices are going up. There is a shortage, please do not panic. We'll get through this power to the people. But it is important to be to be aware of Pete So he'll shortage but don't freak out.
Pete Mento 20:32
Big tequila guy Doug accepting margaritas. I do like margaritas drinking that much anymore. But like It's like shoot to kill that makes me Rach. I don't know what it is. I am I'm just about anybody who knows me knows I'm a drink brown liquor. And I am a big fan of, of trashy cowboy bourbon. You know, as much as I do like nice bourbon. I'm more often than not going to be found drinking real bourbon, the kind that men drank before it became trendy. To drink bourbon. Just I think it's hysterical. That what really was just gas station trash whiskey up until about 20 years ago, it's now suddenly hip. You, you and your silly mustache and go ahead and keep at it. So I do I do see though a lot of younger people, swilling tequila, and it makes me wonder who raised them. So
Doug Draper 21:37
keep an eye out for that one. All right. I like your halftime because I have a personal experience with it in the last 48 hours. So
Pete Mento 21:46
yeah, so on Apple Plus, there's a great new movie called Tetris. Did you see it yet? Doug?
Doug Draper 21:52
I saw it 24 hours ago, Wednesday. What is today when I saw Monday night or Sunday night?
Pete Mento 21:59
I thought it was great. I really liked it. I thought it was great. And so there's a recommendation for everybody. I did like playing Tetris. When, when it came out. I had a for me. Tetris was was a college thing. So everybody in college seemed to have a Gameboy. And where I went to college as freshmen. Game Boys were verboten. You were not allowed to have one. Because I was a military military school. So we were only allowed to have a clock radio in our room. No television. No Game Boys. No anything. So you had to hide the Gameboy. And it was fun. It was fun to play. It was also nerve wracking. It was very difficult to do. But it wasn't my favorite game. But recommendation was everybody do watch the movie. It's fabulous. It's not what you think. It's fabulous. And it's a lot of really cool. 80s What would you call it like nostalgia? Throughout it? It's a lot of fun. But anyway, so for me, though, I was saying to my daughter. The other day we drove past the building where the dream factory was in Manchester, and the dream factory Manchester was our arcade downtown. So I would go with my friend Sean and we would play arcade games. Were one of the greatest feelings on Earth. Doug was walking in with a $10 roll of quarters. I felt like Donald Trump walked into the dream factory with $10 worth of course 40 quarters. Are you kidding me? That was that was a lot of game time back in the day, right? I did have an Atari. So my 2600 So I did play games at home. I was not a PC gamer. I did not have a PC. But for me, my friend Sean and I would play Double Dragon together. It was like you know a two player game where you go kick some gangster ass. We play quartet a lot. But my favorite games that I would play by myself growing up. I love Battlezone, which was a tank game, you put your eye in there and you drove your tank around, blow crap up. I was a big fan of that. I was also a monster fan of asteroids. If you remember that from the 70s and 80s. I loved asteroids. But the two games I played the most were Dig Dug. I absolutely loved Dig Dug and I was a huge fan of Donkey Kong. So those were my two big games I played all the time. And as I got older, I also was a massive fan of hanging on the motorcycle game. So those those were the those the big games I played in the arcade day game done. So when I say that to my daughter now she looks at me like what were you doing? What was this her games in the arcade? And I've taken her to arcades before. It's just not the same for her but I don't know if you and I are pretty close in age. I think we're almost the same age. What Were your arcade games that you would go and play back
Doug Draper 25:02
in the day. Yeah. So the two that come to mind is the sit down version of Pac Man and Mrs. Pacman not to stand up. It was at this. There's a pizza joint, I can't remember the name of it, but you'd work. And then you'd put your pizza on the side, the whole thing was like glass, and then you're trying to play and eat and the whole thing would just get all greased up. But it was Pac Man. And this is Pac Man. And then I think it was called defender, where Federer was awesome. You just kind of went up and down and all this stuff came at you. And it was a little bit like asteroids. But part of this was hard enough Defender game and the sit down Pac Man that was covered with greasy pizza. Those were the two
Pete Mento 25:45
and I don't see them that often anymore. You know, you don't like you don't see video games like used to. The last video game I probably played played a lot was Mortal Kombat. And I would see Mortal Kombat around that I used to love I used to love playing that. But now you'll see like Buck hunter with the gun. You'll see that around and the golfing one golden V. You'll see that around. But that's about it, you know. So I'll go to Dave and Busters with my daughter sometimes and most games are right, but it's just not the same. I just loved it when I was a teenager. Because I am a comic book reading Dungeons and Dragons playing dork I loved going to the arcade. But yeah, my Atari my Atari. I love my Atari games, too. But it was nothing like going to the going to the dream factory.
Doug Draper 26:34
Yeah, it was. Anyway, man, hey, we're gonna take your second topic. And we're gonna, we're gonna focus more on that one, because I just realized my second topic is similar to your first topic, which is all about AI, I was talking about it. So mine was specific in my industry with with warehousing. I think that there's the, you know, the robotics and the things that are coming around. So I'm not gonna go into the whole AI and all that kind of stuff. But what's going to happen P is, is kind of what we saw in electric vehicles, as far as commercial, and driverless technology that was hip and cool. And kinda was like a flash in the pan. Right. And, you know, like Nikola came out of nowhere, they had a billion dollar valuation, and they had made zero trucks, right. And then the guy got into trouble with the law and the whole bit, and I think he's in jail or going to be in jail or something like that. So I think my prediction is that there's going to be a similar explosion of AI technology, and investments, acquisitions, and in propping up some pretty cool technology. But we need to be careful of who are posers so to speak, and who is going to come through because there's going to be companies that kind of have a product kind of don't, that they can market the hell out of it. Somebody could buy him, you know, unicorn, the valuation, and then maybe fall back to Earth. So it's coming, you spoke about it with data, I'm speaking about it with moving boxes through a warehouse. But the key point here is, there's going to be investment, there's going to be some cool stuff coming out there. But be careful and be aware, because some of that is really not going to materialize. And I think we'll see some companies out there that are a flash in the pan, and may have some, some funny business behind them where there may be some, I don't know, corruption, maybe he's too aggressive of the word. But just be forewarned, when you see everybody run into the, to the well to try to get their take on on AI and robotics and moving product in a warehouse.
Pete Mento 28:43
I think that that's going to be representative of all industries. With regards to robotics and AI, I don't care if it's, if it's soft serve ice cream, or sending rockets to the moon, everyone is going to try to make a foray into it. They're going to try to get investment, make some money off of it, and then sell it into a bigger enterprise. And because Logistics is so tied in to everything, particularly commerce, there's going to be so much grift it's going to be embarrassing. Yeah. And so many companies are looking right now, to shave seconds off of what's happened. There's going to be opportunities for people to take a shot at it. You know, I still have my I have a couple of mp3 players hanging around my desk at home from companies like I River and you know, that didn't make it they didn't make it. They were perfectly good technology, but they didn't make it because Apple came in there like the 500 ton gorilla and just stopped on their heads. Yeah, so great ideas that just didn't make it but their technology ended up another things. So it'd be a lot of you were never going to do a topic and you just did.
Doug Draper 29:54
Oh I know. I know. That sounds good. We are Pete we can just pivot.
Pete Mento 29:57
We can borrow
Doug Draper 30:00
Oh, yeah, pivoted. So your your last topic touches every single person in the entire country. So I think it's important to end with this, Dude,
Pete Mento 30:11
I gotta pull it up because I didn't realize how big these numbers were like, I didn't think they were real. A couple of weeks ago, you talked about a possible UPS strike and FedEx, and FedEx was going out there saying, Hey, listen, you might want to negotiate rates now, get in now. Because if UPS goes on strike, don't come crying to me, you know, you want to get in now. Because the people that come to us now and work it out with us, now they're gonna get special treatment. And if UPS goes on strike, then you come to us, then you may be at the back of the queue. You know, I'm like, I've you know, we had a conversation about it, you know. So there's a couple of articles that came out between yesterday and today, where Sean O'Brien, who apparently is the president of the Teamsters, was in Boston, over the weekend, just stirring the pot beds, like, just stir the pot, like, you know, what COVID hit you. We were essential. But COVID was around and everybody needed their stuff on you just, we had to be here for you. People were working 1216 hour days, seven days a week, we didn't get a raise. And when we asked for help, you guys said listen, the world's in crisis. And you're under a contract that we didn't we had to do. Time to pay. Don't think that we're above striking, you know, he's just like stirring it up. At 340,000 employees dug in the drivers and package I had absolutely no idea there were that many people at the end. So he said, don't think that we're afraid to strike. Don't think that we're you know, don't think that if bought, it would bother us to strike. And then you start reading the article and people like we're preparing as an organization, to not work in order to get what we're owed. Based off of what happened to us during COVID, where we put our lives danger, we put our family's lives in danger that nobody cared about us or give any consideration to like, it's you read this, you're like, Whoa, you know, and I had absolutely no idea that were that many people that were that were engaged in this first of all. And then second of all, you start to think about what FedEx said earlier with that don't come crying to us. Looking for help. Because we gave you that chance. And now that half of the world's will a third is let's I know you hate counting them. But Postal Service, when a third of the country's small package services are disrupted because of a labor negotiation. FedEx is going to be there like, Well, are you on the list? Because you're not getting the club? If you're not on the list? It's gonna be insane, man.
Doug Draper 33:22
It's gonna be insane. Well, I'll tell you what, nothing like a guy named Sean O'Brien stirring the pot in Boston, Massachusetts, right?
Pete Mento 33:30
Yeah, that's perfect.
Doug Draper 33:34
I love it. When I said that, um, like, there couldn't have been. And I heard that he was playing, excuse me Sympathy for the Devil from, from the stones to get to get the audience. So it couldn't have been, you know, a better perspective. One thing on the one specific thing that popped out of me is that the whole personal vehicle drivers like when things were getting nutty, and there were so many packages during COVID, they kind of like the Amazon model, just show up for a bunch of crap in your car and just make some deliveries and keep it going. That's a big challenge, because those are not union. And where do they? Where do they fit in the equation because it it didn't go away. It's smaller than it used to be. But that's still kind of a what do you do about this group over here? Because they're unnecessary evil. But yeah, this will be fun. And you know what a guy named Sean O'Brien who lives in Boston, there's going to be a lot of creative stuff going on. And it will make headlines because there'll be some funny rallies, some funny comments, and they ain't back and down. That's not what an Irishman from Boston does. So, so look out.
Pete Mento 34:43
Think about the Longshoremen situation right now. We're in April. And from what I've been reading, they're nowhere close to a decision. You think these guys are going to? I mean, they're going to be white knuckling it. They're holding on, they're going to make sure that this thing I think if they weren't, so we could be in a situation we're in negotiations for months on the small package deal where everyone's kind of worried about what happens next with UPS, or we're still worried about a West Coast port strike. You have inflated rates on East Coast with ocean freight. It could be ugly. It can be really ugly man with regards to labor and transportation, this country, and that could keep inflated rates on various types of transportation costs, because of labor concerns. This thing, this thing just doesn't end, man. Just
Doug Draper 35:32
it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I think that's it, buddy. You got to get back to business in Whippany, New Jersey. So God bless Whippany
Pete Mento 35:41
Never underestimate the drawing power of the Garden State my friend.
Doug Draper 35:45
That's right. That's right. I won't even go anyway, we're gonna wrap this show up. And I got some Jersey tacos. I was out there a couple of weeks ago. But first and foremost, I want to thank cap logistics for giving us the platform to get out and basically talk about whatever we want to talk about Pete That's the beauty of the show. And I love doing it with you. And I think our audience enjoys it. And we really appreciate them listening. So camp logistics.com Take a look. Take a look at their website for the services they support. Thank you for listening to the show. And Pete. Thanks for coming and bringing the heat in Whippany, New Jersey.
Pete Mento 36:19
Thank you, buddy. I'll see you next week. All right, everybody. Thanks