The Freight Buyers’ Club podcast is a new home for anyone with a professional interest in international trade, container shipping, procurement, logistics and air cargo. Each episode your host, award-winning journalist Mike King, will be speaking to leading decision-makers, analysts, journalists, operators and shippers to get their take on current freight and logistics markets and the challenges and opportunities ahead. You can subscribe to receive each episode direct to your inbox at: thefreightbuyersclub.com
Brandon Fried: 45 Years in Air Cargo, the Pan Am 103 Legacy, and Retiring as 'VP of Lunch'
In this extended interview from Air Cargo Unpacked, retiring Airforwarders Association Executive Director Brandon Fried looks back on a career that started almost by accident: a relative in the forwarding business, warehouse work, fine art logistics, legal document delivery, and eventually his own operation in Washington DC before joining AfA.
Brandon reflects on what he's most proud of: helping build the modern cargo security framework in the wake of the Pan Am 103 bombing, working with the TSA and Customs and Border Protection to create the Known Shipper Program and canine screening. Neel Jones Shah, who worked alongside Brandon from both the airline and forwarder side, pays tribute to his impact on the industry. Brandon also shares his biggest concern for the future of air freight forwarding (uncertainty and poorly informed regulation, "you're either at the table or you're on the menu"), and his message to whoever succeeds him: stay engaged with companies of every size, not just the big ones. And yes, he confirms his next title: Vice President of Lunch.
From The Freight Buyers' Club Podcast.
#AirCargo #FreightForwarding #AviationSecurity #Logistics #SupplyChain
6 Oct 2026
Intra-Asia Container Trades, Port Congestion and Rising Rates, with Elaine Low, Area Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Maersk
Mike King travels to Maersk's Southeast Asia head office in Singapore to talk with Elaine Low, Area Managing Director for Southeast Asia at A.P. Moller-Maersk, about the intra-Asia container trades. It's the world's biggest container trade, and one that rarely gets the attention it deserves, even with Drewry's Intra-Asia Container Index at three-year highs.
Elaine explains how manufacturers expanding across the region and fast-growing Asian consumer markets are driving demand. She highlights automotive and EVs, electronics and the semiconductor ecosystem as key industries. She also argues that the real constraint is landside infrastructure at Southeast Asia's many smaller ports, and says every port in the region is effectively full.
The conversation also covers how Maersk's Gemini hub-and-spoke network has helped it deal with typhoons and geopolitical disruption, the balance between contract and spot demand, how surcharges have been passed on, and what Maersk's integrator strategy offers shippers in Asia.
#Maersk #IntraAsia #ContainerShipping #PortCongestion #SoutheastAsia #FreightBuyersClub #Logistics
1 Oct 2026
Reimagine Your Supply Chain First, Then Add the Technology, with e2open's Pawan Joshi
In this extended clip from The Freight Buyers' Club, Pawan Joshi, Chief Strategy Officer at e2open, digs into how far AI has actually taken supply chains, and where the real opportunity still sits.
Pawan explains that a lot of supply chain processes and company structures were designed decades ago, in a world before the internet, before cell phones, when even desktop computing was limited. Technology has moved on dramatically since then. His point is that the real opportunity isn't just adding AI on top of existing processes. It's rethinking them with today's connectivity and compute in mind.
He walks through a real example: monitoring temperature in real time on a refrigerated shipping container. Catching a broken cold chain early gives a business weeks of lead time to plan around a shortage, rather than finding out only when the container arrives. He calls this closing the loop, a concept borrowed from control systems. His argument is that closing the loop matters more than which specific technology, AI included, does the work.
Pawan also explains the logic behind e2open and WiseTech's CargoWise coming together. He breaks the supply chain into three groups: the people who make products, the people who sell them, and the people who move them. CargoWise was built for the movers, e2open for the makers and sellers, and bringing them together aims to connect the whole chain rather than stopping at the handoff points.
Finally, he addresses what actually blocks companies from sharing supply chain data across their networks. His answer: not a lack of standards, but a lack of trust.
Who has been a guest on The Freight Buyers' Club
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
John Pearson
Kathy Liu
Mark Chadwick
David King
Amadou Diallo
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
133,567
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
419 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 75 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
92
Social presence
0
YouTube
86
Engagement
60
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