BY MARK B. SOLOMON, EXECUTIVE EDITOR – NEWS
AIR FREIGHT
Transportation Report
AFTER SPENDING DECADES WITH THE LEGENDARY
airline Flying Tigers and then with FedEx Corp., which
acquired Tigers nearly 30 years ago, Carl Asmus has forgotten more about air freight than most people ever knew. In
addition, as senior vice president of e-commerce for FedEx,
Asmus works for a company more closely associated with
air shipping than any in history.
So it might have seemed unusual that at a recent con-
ference, Asmus described pitching a prospective customer
For Memphis, Tenn.-based FedEx, keeping transport out
of the customer dialogue is standard operating procedure
from product availability to payment options—could gain
access to markets, and potential repeat business, it could
only have dreamed of before. Get it wrong, and a business
could watch a market valued today at well over $300 billion
and which could be worth three times that in just three
years, pass it by. In the latter scenario, the delivery prom-
ises of the world’s largest and swiftest airfreight network
wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans.
THE RISE OF CROSS-BORDER E-COMMERCE
The definition of cross-border e-commerce is in the eyes of
the beholder. Some make no distinction between cross-border and traditional international e-commerce, given that
they both involve movements from one country to another. Consultancy ShipStation, however, frames them as
different services. As the company sees it, cross-border
e-commerce is exclusively business-to-consumer (B2C),
while international can be either B2C or business-to-business (B2B). In a cross-border transaction, the “landed
cost”—the combined costs of product, customs duties,
taxes, and documentation—is paid up front; in an international e-commerce transaction, customs presents a bill
to the shipper or consignee after the fact, according to
ShipStation’s interpretation.
Today, cross-border e-commerce is, for all practical purposes, practiced in only a handful of countries—the U.S.
only for outbound deliveries, Japan, the U.K., Germany,
Cross-border e-commerce
is booming, and it may
be just getting started.
Will this trigger air freight’s
next generational surge?
Erasing
the digital
borders
