Global Trade This Week – June 21st, 2022
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Keenan Brugh 0:00
You're watching Global Trade This Week with Pete Mento and Doug Draper.
Pete Mento 0:08
Hello, everyone. And welcome to another blockbuster edge of your seat over the top edition of global trade this week brought to you by our good friends at CAP logistics. I am Pete mental and of course, as always is the irrepressible Doug Draper. Doug, how are you, buddy?
Doug Draper 0:29
Pete, I'm doing well, man. Thanks for asking. Do you want to Well,
Pete Mento 0:34
have we ever started this show where I've said like, or you said, Hey, how's it going? And we're like, Man, I'm awful. Does that ever happen?
Doug Draper 0:43
I guess it's one of those things. Like when somebody in the morning just says, Hey, good morning, how you doing? And everybody just says fine. Just checking a box to reply.
Pete Mento 0:50
Oh, we should start being honest. When people are like, Hey, how's it going? You're like, oh, it's awful. I don't sleep at all. You know, kids are idiots. I hate my job. Just like, well, you know?
Doug Draper 1:03
Now it's good. You know, Troy, he's on vacation this week. So I'm a little bummed about that. He's enjoying life. And we're sitting here how to net out on the show.
Pete Mento 1:12
So Troy has a life outside of hanging on your I don't know, Doug, I think I might. Might want to double up on the on the on the visits to your therapist, if you think he's doing stuff. Yeah.
Doug Draper 1:25
I was about to say if one of my best friends is a piece of metal that hangs on my wall, and I make references to them time and again. Maybe I'm in trouble.
Pete Mento 1:33
Maybe you're trouble, buddy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I know we got a lot to talk about this week, and I've got some stuff at halftime. I gotta get off my chest. So why don't you? Why don't you kick it out for us, pal. What do you got for us?
Doug Draper 1:46
All right, man. Well, speaking about trouble. I love to try to do good segues. But some are good, some are bad. But I saw over the weekend where there was, you know, there's always about shocking on news out there. Everything is breaking news now. And everything is is monumental. But the one one thing I caught was that monthly car payments hit record high, and the overall cost of vehicles is soaring. And the article was primarily focused on private and personal vehicles, cars, you and I drive and everything. But I started thinking that, you know, what, that has application in the commercial realm as well, specifically with with trucks, and I'm not necessarily saying trucks, 53 foot bands that you see going down the highway, you know, but this is delivery vans, smaller final mile type of equipment. And and here's the bottom line, right? Is that it, you got the long haul and the short, short haul, it's basically just that frickin money's expensive, right? And what's going to happen as these loans go up is there's going to be defaults, right. And if you're a trucker, who has been taken advantage of the high market and the high rates out there, you have ditched your corporate job driving a truck, and you said, I'm now going to live the American dream, I'm going to buy my own truck, my own trailer, and I'm gonna go out on the road because the rates are incredibly high. Well, what else was high, the cost of the equipment, the cost of the trailer, the cost of getting set up. And so now that those payments are getting higher and higher, there's going to be a whole group of these truck drivers that want to decide to go in loan. And now realizing as the market gets a little softer, and the money's not flowing as well on the loads they're carrying, and the interest rates on their loans is going up. It could be problems. So I think Pete that there's going to be a decent amount of mom and pops out there that jumped over to live the American dream, and rode the wave flew to heist, to the to the sun, whatever analogy you want to want to you want to play out there. But there's gonna be a lot of these guys that are going to fold up shop. And we're going to see it not so much on the contracted lanes segment, right? But it's going to be the small guys, the small companies out there that are on the spot market for full truckload and things of that nature, they're going to suffer because those drivers can't pay the bills anymore on this new piece of equipment. So they're just going to jump ship and go over to an asset based carrier, the Swift's the you know the primes of the world. And those guys are focused more on regular business. And so the guys that are going to suffer are going to be the small shippers that rely on the spot market. So that's going to continue to impact the capacity situation. And with peak season coming around and some of the holidays and the ebbs and flows of the trucking industry in certain markets. I think if you rely on the spot market related to trucking services, you're going to be in a pinch there in the second half of of 2022. So anyway, unintended consequences that I guess nature of the beast Just to get things back in line with the economy, but that struck me when I read that article about private cars becoming more expensive. It's going to be the same for commercial vehicles and guys, and gals jumping out to live the American dream and try to go it alone. Maybe, okay, all right,
Pete Mento 5:21
like, so I agree with you, right. But I was trying to be a little more glass half full today. I was I was told by a friend of mine who watches the show religiously, that I'm a little to Dr. Doom, I'm a little too negative, that I need to be a little more Professor positive than Dr. Doom on the show. So here's here's on the face of it, Doug, I agree with you. But I want to I want to pause it. I want to posit an alternative notion, right? So just hear me out. What if we see what we're kind of seeing in the Uber space, where the rising cost of fuel and the rising cost of labor and the you know, all those things you just talked about? What they what they actually managed to do is increase the opportunity for these people to raise rates and make more money. You know, it actually creates an inflated market for them, where they can set higher prices and maybe make more profit. Now, it's, it's a, it's a far reach. I don't know if it's gonna happen. But it may be it could be just something that happens in pockets. You know, maybe in drayage, as an example, maybe in you know, certain markets in the country. I don't know if it would be a widespread thing. I think for the most part, you're right, I think in places where people were, were opportunistic, you're right, it's probably going to happen, where they saw a good thing, they're probably going to cash in their chips, and either do a short term opportunity before they retire. But, you know, this, this could be where we'll begin to see a changing of the marketplace. But I'm hoping there are some people who might be able to sort of ride a bit longer on that wave. But I'm trying to convince myself on this one, but you're probably right.
Doug Draper 7:25
Yeah. Well, Peter give you about a. So whoever your friend is that watches the show religiously? Thank you. First and foremost. Yes. Yes. And I would probably give you a b minus on being upbeat. So ask your your buddy or your your gal, what that first take was b plus b minus, but it definitely was more positive than negative.
Pete Mento 7:49
Yeah, speaking of negative, we get to my first topic. Yeah, see, see, that's a transition. I, I, I sat through endless buddy like endless, endless econ classes, right? Working on a master's degree and then a PhD. And they, it's almost like predicting the weather, they try to say, you know, a happens, and then most likely, either b or c is going to happen. And then depending on if B or C happens, D E, F, G, or h is going to happen, and then I J, K, L and M is going to happen, and then, you know, they, they try to turn it into a science, but honestly, man, it really isn't. And then you, you end up learning, what you're probably going to predict is going to happen next, based on what happened the last time. So, you know, here we are in this new economic paradigm, that everyone's pretending like they know what's going to happen next. So great example, right? We're recording this on what's today's date, the 21st of June, and there was a bit of a bounce in the stock market today. You know, and a lot of that is coming from the fact that everyone is predicting, hey, we're already in a recession, you know, you're hearing that and all these all this economic news and all the other news journals, so like, oh, well, if we're already in a recession, we must be we're gonna pull out of it faster than anybody realize. So let's get back into those speculative stocks. And then over the weekend, I just had a great time kicking the dog crap out of Keene and about Bitcoin, right, like, oh, man, look at it, just tank. Chew on it. Kenan, like I had a great time doing that to him. Right. But then, you know, he made the great point of what's buying opportunity. And he was right, like the, you know, Bitcoin made a bit a bit of a recovery back to about where it was before it made that dip. And people said this is a speculative, this is all speculation. And this is long term speculation for the people that are interested, which we've said all along. It's a long term speculation. And people are buying it just as much for the bet on its technology and its promise, as it is for what you're trying to get today. All these things that they taught us, as academics may not be applicable. I'm gonna give you three solid examples. Everyone says, Before a recession, right begins to come. When it gets to its doldrums before its recovery, you have a huge sell off on energy. It's just, it's what happens, right? So, before you see the doldrums and the recovery, energy, Craps, its pants, it's just what happens like, like, oil goes in the toilet? Well, yeah, but we haven't had one of the major energy producers in a land war in Central Europe before. And the whole world basically saying, we're not gonna, you know, no soup for you. And people kind of, you know, buying distilled energy products through India. And, you know, coming to America with it, and like, it's never been like this man. So maybe that's not going to be the case. And that's going to have a massive effect on transportation pricing. So maybe not, you know, number two, you usually have a huge, huge deflationary pressure on agriculture, because people are making less. And then you know, you have a recession, which causes unemployment and blahdy, blahdy, blahdy, blahdy, blah, well, we've never been in a situation ever, where you've had a huge recession, and massive inflationary pressures happening at the same time as what looks to be a massive food crisis between blights and droughts, and grain crises and blockades and land, get land wars with Russia, and all this other crap happening at once. Fertilizer issues, you know, I mean, Hillman, probably not going to happen. And then third, people usually rushed towards commodities like gold, silver, platinum, copper, and all those things, in these instances, and it's happening, but it's not happening with the same gusto that had happened before. People are looking at all tentatives they're looking at real estate, they're looking honestly, at energy, you know, they're looking at Bitcoin and Kryptos. They're looking at all kinds of things, where normally we would see them going towards commodities. So we could be looking at one of those moments where the paradigm shifts towards economics, and the things that we have been normally told to run towards safe harbors. And the things that we've been told we're probably going to be great bellwethers to teach us about what's going to happen next, might not happen this time. So as much as that should scare the hell out of me. I'm an academic. So I'm going to sit back, like I'm looking at a roach under a microscope. And I'm going to get excited to watch what happens next. Because I am a sick and twisted person with no social life. And this is my idea of
Doug Draper 12:43
fun. You know, the other indicator unemployment, or employment or lack thereof seems to be flipped a little bit as well. So yeah, I don't know, different era. But you're right, those, those Bellwether signs are not as Bellwether as they have been in the past. And crypto as a method of long term storage, obviously, based on your rants over the weekend. That is not trend trending either. So
Pete Mento 13:15
shut up. Kenan? Yeah, yeah. And as far as employment goes, the government has to start a recession. That's what all this is about. It's why, you know, I go to the coffee shop, and I hear people talking about the economy. And I just want to walk over and say, I don't know how much time you have. But I would really like to educate you about what's going on. Because you sound so ignorant. And I want to, if nothing else can give me 10 minutes, just try to set you on the right course. And I know if I were to do that, they would lock me away. So I just sit by myself. And I drink my iced coffee. And I just I just say maybe it's time for you to lock yourself up somewhere on Grinch mountain and not talk to people
Doug Draper 13:59
all right. Well, that rolls us into to our our halftime show. Obviously as you know, it's brought by by calf logistics to give Keenan a hard time but you and I wouldn't be here buttons lovers and sound video. So you know he's done a great job and cap Logistics is a good group to help support us. So anyway, I always say who wants to go first? You were me on the halftime so I'll say that again? Who wants to go first? You or me?
Pete Mento 14:25
Go ahead. I'll bring it on. All
Doug Draper 14:27
right. So this thing you know, I always talk about catching my eye and I saw this one but it blew me away for a couple of different reasons. And it's not only with real estate, but rock'n'roll if there's you know baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet if there's one thing two things that go together it's real estate and rock and roll. So first of all, the childhood home of the Van Zandt boys is up for sale in Jacksonville and if you don't know who the I know you know who they are But essentially it's it's the crew that started Leonard's scanner and so Ronnie Donnie, I think Johnny so a lot of a lot of ies and wise on that thing but Van Zandt boys who started lettering scattered our house, childhood home in Jacksonville is for sale. And this is what blows me away this next statement so that was one I thought the rock and roll. Hey, that's pretty cool. Let's go check this thing out. Jacksonville, Florida, nine bedrooms, seven baths 5000 square feet, and it's on eight lots, and they're quadrille plexes have manufactured double wide homes. There's no better description of the place that the Van Zandt brothers would have grown up is exactly what I just said. Florida double wides eight lots The Whole Nine Yards love it. And then the thing that shocked me and I was like, Wait, why don't I just read the sell price? $629,000.06 29k Are you kidding me in this day and age with real estate with that pedigree of a house even though it's a little bit shambles and it checks the boxes of all the stereotypes that you have down in Florida $600,000 for the childhood home of the boys it started monitored scattered. I cannot fathom that and I had to share it with with the group. So what do you think little underpriced
Pete Mento 16:24
by it and we should start a museum. Call it like Van Zandt land. And you know, we could have he give rides and like, you know, dodge demons. And we could we could have we could have perhaps on tap. And it could just be the I mean, it'd be the greatest experience ever. Yeah, I would go if someone did it. Yeah, I would know, but but I'm a knuckle dragger. Anyway, so you know me, man. I'm ready shooting up in a white sheet of trash. I'd be all about it.
Doug Draper 16:58
Anyway. Yeah. So everybody out there, Google it. I don't know the address, but it's in Jacksonville. You can pull the story up and check out. It's on Zillow and they're selling it and appointment only and all that stuff. So anyway, that caught my attention in this day and age where you and I live in, in in towns that have astronomically high real estate that just blew me away.
Pete Mento 17:19
I'm all about it. Yeah. All right. Well, did you have a good Father's Day, Doug?
Doug Draper 17:28
You know, we're gonna be honest, here it was okay. Not nothing too monumental.
Pete Mento 17:33
Did you feel like everybody really went out of their way to make you feel special? On Father's Day? No. Like, so let's let's let's just start with you look at the way it's it's marketed right? Mother's Day. for Mother's Day. It's like by mom jewelry. You know, there's a Lexus commercial for Mother's Day. It's like, Don't Don't forget to buy mom that new SUV. You know, it's like, for all the things mom has done for you. Jewelry cars sent her on a trip to Vegas, right? What do we get? Right? It's like, like, you get a text from your oldest so you don't forget to where to where to send the red check. You know? Like, we get we get nothing, right? Crazy, but I've been on a diet forever. Right? I've lost 160 pounds. I'm like, the giant ball is sexy. And hey, where are you? Where are you? Where should we take you for lunch? I haven't eaten lunch. In like, almost two years. I don't eat lunch. And I take me to lunch. And for breakfast. I have a shake. I've had a shake for almost to be talking about right. Like, Father's Day sucks. Sucks. I didn't No one. No one said Happy Father's Day to me. Until I was sitting in church and someone brought up that it was Father's Day. And Amy was like, Oh, Happy Father's Day. Micah. Yeah. Thanks. If you don't, if you don't make a Mother's Day reservation, a month in advance. Good luck finding someplace to have lunch on Mother's Day. You could walk into any steak restaurant in America at 12 o'clock on Father's Day like oh right this way. No one gives a damn about fathers. Were just like, you know, but I'll tell you right now. You You better have your crap together. When it comes to doing father's crap like whoa, you mess up one step and you're the worst ever. But Father's Day. A fungal you get nothing you get no love on Father's Day, maybe a card and go take a nap for 30 minutes. But go have dinner. Go have a big dinner that you pay for. Or go have like go barbecue that you do. Right there's no rest is the love on Father's Day. Father's Day sucks. I want a wholesale changed the concept. You know, and I don't want to hear about you didn't carry a baby for nine months now, but I paid for it for like 20 Some years for them, you know, like, where's the where's the where's the equity in the entire concept of this holiday? You know, I did however get a fantastic Last Crusade piece of cookware for which was just, you know, but I didn't get a single card. I got a couple of texts and phone calls. That's about it. You know, Mother's Day house is filled with flowers. There are brunches. There are gifts. There's love. No, you know, but the tuition checks come to me. You know, the request for CO signers on car loans come to me. Fathers yes sucks.
Doug Draper 20:48
A lot of tick tock dad jokes. And my father sent me a text and said Happy Father's Day. And it was a picture of a baby in a diaper bouncing off the dad's head while he lays on the couch. I'm like, beautiful. And I'm sure some of our listeners. Yeah, they know exactly the one I'm referring to.
Pete Mento 21:07
Here's the other thing, right? Dads get it like, like, there's like the secret society of dads you're like, Oh, I know. I know. But I will tell you one thing, then I'm starting to get that grandpa itch. Like I'm starting to, I don't want it yet. But I'm starting to understand it. Like I'm starting our mutual friend marks actually he is he has two grandkids. I want to hear him talk about it. I'm like, I'm starting to understand it. I'm starting to get it like I can wait a couple of years. But the whole idea of having kids that I give to someone else to deal with when things get difficult. I fully understand it now. I want to spoil something rotten. And then leave it there once it starts to get fussy for someone else to deal with. And finance. Yeah. With it.
Doug Draper 21:49
Love it. Yes, please take this thing it smells and I'm adding
Pete Mento 21:56
it, finance it and deal with it when it's bad. I just want to feel it for the sugar and buy it crap and leave it. Yeah.
Doug Draper 22:03
There you go. All right, yeah. Well, hey, now that we're in the third quarter, I'm going to jump in here. So my second topic is about the bipartisan infrastructure investment and job act. Right. Always got to make sure you have bipartisan I think literally, that is part of the of the act, you got to put that in there. And I thought of that, because it's something I saw about something that Houston is doing. But my take is, is that a new era of funding? Or is it just pretty much hype? So here's the just for a quick recap, in our specific industry $17 billion for ports and like 25 billion for airports. So I started reading the fine print, here's what that equates to repair and maintenance of backlog. All right, that's kind of infrastructure Check, check that one offense legit, reduce emissions in airports. So the key thing there is reducing the admissions has nothing to do with fixing stuff, right? We need to fix the stuff to move to things. But it's important. So that's kind of a check. And then another one they spoke about is to promote electrification, and low carbon technology. Now the concept of promoting it, to me, that means ad agency hyping up what potentially could happen and what you should do as an individual. So again, nope, that's not in check. So I'm disappointed. We've talked about this before. But the thing that really is important with this topic right here p is what the Port of Houston is doing. Because they're saying eff this, we're on our own. So the Port of Houston, the Houston Ship Channel expansion, it's like a billion dollar plan over 10 years. But what's happening right now, and it is literally happening right now is to dredge and widen about 17 miles, excuse me of that section to 26 mile terminal ish, and they're gonna take 17 miles of it and make it like 150 feet wider and a couple feet deeper. And the most significant thing about that, because I read this, and I did research because I don't want to get this one wrong. The Port of Houston and local partners have committed to directly fund the construction of widening widening the channel. That means they're not waiting for bipartisan infrastructure investment JOBS Act. They're saying in classic Texas, fashion, we're doing this ourselves, boys, let's get it done. And I can applaud the fact that, you know, waiting for the government. It's it's not going to happen, you know, go America, I love it. And I applaud the fact that they're trying to do something, but 17 billion isn't going to do anything. And I think you're going to see a lot more forget public private partnerships. I think it's going to be more private partnerships where they can own the rails, like you and I've spoken about that are really going to make and drive revenue for that entity. So anyway, kudos to the port. If you Used to, they're not waiting for the government to fix it for him. They're taking it. bull by the horns and they're getting it done. So I thought that was kind of cool. And I want to give them a shout out. And I think you'll see more and more of that as infrastructure desperately needed at the port level.
Pete Mento 25:16
Yeah, buddy, don't mess with Texas. A big shout out to Houston and the Port of Houston, the Houston ports authority, they you know, not to bury the lede here with just Houston. But the port authorities all around the United States deserve a particular amount of pat on the back attaboy admiration for just generally always doing what's best for their port and what's best for their state. Whether it's the Virginia port authorities, Georgia, port authorities, New York, New Jersey, you can name them all, you know, all but on the East Coast, and on the West Coast. These are autonomous groups that are working hard day and night, generally speaking, to find some kind of an edge. They're constantly in competition with one another. So if you're LA, which is a great example, particularly now with the labor stuff, you're thinking to yourself, alright, we got an edge biggest, huge, we're closest to what's going on in Asia? How do we make sure that we've got some way, you know, with all the regulations that are against us working against this to make the environment better? To find some way to deal with the East Coast, which is starting to get a leg up on us? Let's face it, and Savannah and New York, New Jersey, and then you've got Houston is like people don't think of us as a container port. What do we do, we're gonna dredge, we make better road infrastructure. And then they have a very, very supportive business community, Houston, extremely supportive. And they've got a very supportive government infrastructure between the governor, the state legislature, and again, I cannot stress enough the business environment and Texas, of billionaires and you know, individual investors and huge corporations that are just saying, We will help fund this because it matters to us as a state to keep our internal infrastructure, because the central location of that state, they believe that it can matter, you know, it can matter all the way up through Canada, all the way down to through Mexico. Then you look at just how little was invested by the federal government. They don't have a choice. They've got to they're saying to themselves, we have to come to our own rescue, much like Savannah did 1015 years ago, you know, we don't have a choice. And when I saw you put this down for one of your topics, man, I just thought to myself, this needs to be what airports do next. We have to come to our own rescue when it comes to cargo, because no one else is coming in, nobody else has come in, they've got to take that same attitude that ocean ports are doing. And this is just the first step. Ocean ports are going to take that next step and say, that next connector beyond our gates, we have to consider what's going to happen beyond our gates to lessen congestion, make it easier for the DRE carriers make it easier to find storage for containers and empties and take that next level beyond the gates of our port to make it easier to work with this. What do we have to do to make this even easier? So yeah, I agree with you. You know, golf clap for the port Houston and every other ports been working hard Norfolk it doesn't get enough. Enough love. Charleston doesn't get enough love. Certainly Georgia ports. My God, what Savannah has done in the last couple of years. Absolutely incredible reporting Jersey in New York. How about Boston, my local port who managed to get aligner carrier back in there. Oh, my Lord. You know, all the work that they've done there. Portland, Seattle, all of them. I can't say enough about all the hard work that they've done to get people to care again. Yeah, man, just that the work that ports individual ports and terminals. Do they deserve all the love in the world,
Doug Draper 28:45
man? Yeah, yeah. Agreed. So bring us on, man.
Pete Mento 28:50
Yeah, you know, I've, I don't want to I don't want to put a pin in it too fast. I don't want to give too much. Credit to it too quickly, either. But you start to see the Twitter stuff, you start to see things in the Journal of Commerce. And it there's like some shot in Florida, which is one of my favorite words ever. It's that German word for taking pleasure or joy in the pain of other people. It's like, you know, there's that that that 90s word haters, you know, like I get off on watching other people be miserable, you know, but there's a certain degree of shot in Freud that people are getting after really being miserable the last couple of years from these ocean rates like all Is it finally happening? Is the market turning? Are we finally going to get them? Are these ocean carriers finally going to take it right? And you're seeing it particularly in Twitter, which I limit myself to 20 minutes a day. And I pretty much read nothing but but ocean stuff. You know what's going on in ocean because that's such an important part of my job. But man, people are starting to get fired up like Are we? What's going on to Maris can hapag Lloyd the CMA finally getting there, as I'm like, You guys have got to calm down. Yeah, there's been there's been an adjustment to rates because of what happened to COVID. But, you know, there's a six to eight week change that happens. And there's bonkers and I don't believe that we're getting this wholesale change to rates and wholesale change to the marketplace. And I think that we should never forget that you're dealing with an industry that can control capacity. If they want to take chips off of voyages, they will, they want to limit the number of ships that are moving, they will, many of them control a tremendous amount of support infrastructure around the world. And they can control the number of new containers that are coming in. And they can take the old ones out, they have a tremendous amount of control. And if you think for a minute that they're not going to use that control, to maintain the level of profit that they have enjoyed, and to take all the lessons that they have learned through this pandemic, and to apply them with intent and intelligence, to maintain that level of profit on behalf of their shareholders, you're crazy. All of us, everyone that listens, I imagine you and I, we work for companies, the people that we work for expect us to make money for them, just like these ocean carriers do. And to be brutally honest, as someone who buys a crap ton of ocean space, I want my vendors to make money. Because it's going to give them something to reinvest into their business, so that they're more efficient, that they maintain modern fleets that they're, you know, that they're constantly modernizing safer for their I was a sailor man, I want that I want safe environments for these men and women that are at sea. And I want to make sure that my stuff gets from one place to another in the condition that I handed it over to them. So, you know, I'm not I'm not sitting here, wishing horrible things on these ocean carriers. Do I hope that the market gets a little more reasonable? Of course I do. But that will happen. As the market changes with the economy. I don't think that we're going to have some wholesale collapsing of the marketplace, because these carriers are never going to let it happen. But I do think that we're beginning to see a normalization of those rates. And that normalization is happening before it arrives. It is not a collapse.
Doug Draper 32:14
Yeah, agreed on a couple reasons. One, the normalization is now here, right? Used to be here, so you can renormalize but it's not where it's it's going to be. And like who's the oversight, right? We talked about this, that they're essentially they meaning the steamship lines. And I don't know if this is a term of endearment, because it's a weird one. But it's like the mafia man, they get together and they can do whatever they want. And who's the oversight the government, the US government has zero. So in my opinion, anything that is out there that says we're going to fix the high prices of ocean, ocean freight is a little naive. If I see, they also and we just spoke about it in mind, you spoke about it earlier, they own the rails, right, we've talked about how that and you're seeing you're seeing Amazon and all these companies target Walmart, trying to buy some of the infrastructure that has nothing to do with their core business, but is really starting to become their core business and transportation and logistics and getting stuff to their customers. That's owning the rails. And those guys are, you know, own it, or the proverbial rails, which in this instance, is ships. And so the line has been set high, it's not coming back down and 100% agree with you.
Pete Mento 33:28
I mean, how realistic do you think it is for someone like Amazon or even the company I work for, to go out and buy 30 container ships? I don't think it is, man. You know, I don't I don't think that maybe it could be but if these ocean carriers wanted to freeze you out of that marketplace, they could they could freeze you out of the shipbuilding business, the ship repair business, the bunker business if they so chose to do it. So it's it's a tightrope, man. It's a tight rope.
Doug Draper 33:55
Yeah, it'll be interesting. Well, I think that wraps it up for good topics, some phenomenal halftime, and some good feedback from your friend that watches the show will stay positive and always forward thinking and forward looking. We don't talk about what happened. We have the guts Pete to talk about what will happen and you know what will be wrong some of the time, but at least we're moving forward. And we're right. If you look at some of our older shows, we're pretty spot on. So forward thinking that's what we're giving our listeners and we appreciate them tuning in every week. And obviously, Cap logistics. We wouldn't be here without you guys. So as I say in my post, Namaste, and that's a wrap. Pete, thanks so much. I think it was a good show, buddy. Have an awesome week. All right, man.
Pete Mento 34:41
You too, pal. Thanks, everybody.
Unknown Speaker 34:42
Take care