CEO Devin Burke Candid Interview on International Shipping Industry – Part 2

Last Thursday, we posted a candid interview with Universal Cargo CEO Devin Burke. He sat down at a coffee house and spoke about the international shipping industry and how businesses – both importers and freight forwarders – stay alive in this tough market and these challenging economic times. Today we post what he had to say about survival.

Not only is the video here, but we uploaded it to YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram as well.

Of course, the blog is the place for an easy-to-follow transcript of Devin’s insights that come from over forty years in the international shipping business.

Q: How are your customers surviving through this time, and what is Universal Cargo doing to stay afloat?

DEVIN: Well, I think this time is good for everybody that’s in this industry, whether you’re an importer or you’re a shipping company ’cause what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. So it’s forcing everybody to evolve.

The importers that I’ve seen throughout the last couple years that are doing fairly well, considering, it’s because they’re evolving.

Of course, when the tariffs were high out of China, everybody moved to other countries. Of course, Vietnam and Indonesia, and Malaysia got the benefit of that. But you have a lot of companies have decided to just make better stuff.

Q: Domestically (or overseas)?

DEVIN: No, because it’s too expensive. Although I’ve seen an increase in a lot of things being made here, or at the same time, you see a lot of companies no longer importing. They’re just buying domestically from somebody else that brought it in that had bigger volume that they can afford to do it. And then you have a lot of manufacturing move to Mexico and stuff like that.

So a lot of companies are evolving, and then, of course, our business, which is freight forwarding, we have to evolve. So we’re getting more involved with other types of income from logistics, other than ocean freight: you know, warehousing, fulfillment, domestic moves, exports, of course air freight.

And then, of course, as my good friend in China, Jerry Wong, liked to say, “Cost savings.” We have to bring our costs down, and so we’ve moved a lot of our operations to China, where they do basically more work for half the pay. So DURRR.

We moved a lot of our data work and stuff like that to China, which I’m sure a lot of my competitors are also doing. And also, just, you know, if you’re in California, I’m sorry, you just can’t afford to have a lot of employees. It’s the most expensive state to do business.

So, as far as what’s happening in the future this year, I would say…

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don’t get too far ahead of us. For Devin’s outlook on the rest of this year, you’ll have to come back for Part 3 of this interview, next week.