Expeditors International of Washington, Inc. (EXPD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. We are going to give everybody just a minute to jump on and join us for our Technology and Solutions webinar with our Cargo Signal team. So just give everybody a few minutes, grab some coffee, sit back and be ready, and I'll go over a few ground rules, too, in just a minute. I got everybody trickling in. Aaron, do you mind pushing to the next slide, and I'll go over some ground rules this way? Everybody is jumping on for me. Perfect. All right. Thank you again, everybody. I am Crystal Woods. I'm the Northwest Regional Sales Ops. I'm based here in Seattle. Thanks again for joining us. I'm just going to cover quick ground rules before we get started here. We're going to run about 50 minutes for this webinar, and we're going to leave about 10 minutes at the end of your Q&A. Everybody is on mute, but please feel free to put anything you have in that Q&A box, and we will answer them all at the end. If for some reason, there are tons of questions and we can't get to all of them, don't worry, we will have those recorded and we will reach back out to you, so we can answer those for you. Following the webinar, we're going to push out a short survey. We would love to get everybody's feedback on how it went, if there were things that we didn't answer that we want to get to. And then once you fill up that survey, it will send you to get a copy and download a copy of the presentation. So you will have that, too, as well. We'll also have some information on how to keep in touch with Expeditors, new webinars that are coming up as well. So with that, I am going to introduce our speaker today. We have Aaron Kromm. Aaron is the Director of Sales of Cargo Signal, and he's been there for the last 2 years. He previously worked in a traditional freight business development role but elected to shift his focus to supporting the digital transformation of the supply chain industry. He currently leads a sales team, who is also working with customers of all sizes to help improve supply chain efficiencies and reduce the cost by leveraging the Internet of Things. So without further delay, let's get started, and I'm going to turn it over to Aaron.

Thank you, Crystal. Welcome, everybody. Really appreciate you taking the time to join us. We are going to go through some pretty interesting stuff. Some of it may be familiar to some. You may have kept your pulse on the supply chain technology space for some time now as we have. But for others, it may be brand new. And it's really important, I think, to understand how this shift is occurring because it's happening very quickly. We're seeing it in real-time, and there are some things that you can do to kind of prepare your organizations to adjust to that and really leverage a lot of these technologies to stay ahead of the game in your specific business areas. I think that it's great for us to be sort of what we think of as at the forefront of this type of technology. And hopefully, we're going to display some stuff today that you'll find very interesting and helpful. So without further ado, let's get into what we're going to chat about, very simply put, what we consider smart cargo. Smart devices are everywhere. Everybody is familiar with these things. Oh excuse me, before I get into that, let me just preface one thing. Expeditors has done a lot of work to maintain the reputation of being innovative in this space. And obviously, again, technology is a big factor there. So Cargo Signal is what we're going to talk about today, is one of a handful of brands that we have within our portfolio. And you may not know this, but we've invested heavily again to help supply chains become more efficient, cut those costs and various tools that we leverage here, all third-party tools, not that we're not associated with Expeditors in any way, but we are subsidiaries. So what's nice about these is even if you do have lanes or you're not doing a whole lot of business with Expeditors, which would be great if you were, but if not, we understand that, and we can still support you from the digital solution side. So this is 1 of 5 that we have here at Expeditors. And we'll certainly be following up to talk about the others at some point. But today, we're going to focus on Cargo Signal. So smart cargo is a big buzzword right now. Smart devices, you have everywhere. You have smartphones, watches, et cetera. We're going to dig into that. The agenda today, talking about IoT in general, but how that really is a common theme in the supply chain space, and the shift is becoming more and more aggressive. The adoption and challenges that we see in this space. The devices themselves can be tricky to work with and how do you get people to help manage those devices. Then we're also going to get into the why it's important, the difference between traditional data and tracking that you have today compared to IoT. Some of the specific jobs to be done, so what kind of problems are we actually trying to solve here with this? Down on the map is great, but what does that do for me? And then lastly, we'll dig into some of the specifics about Cargo Signal itself and how it works. So if it is something that you're interested in looking into, we'd be happy to support that. But I think the biggest takeaway right now for everybody, just hopefully everybody walks away with just a better understanding of the importance of how IoT is affecting the supply chain today. So if nothing else, that's the big thing to walk away with. So we're taking a device, we're attaching it to your cargo, your freight, and now it's able to communicate to us via the Internet of Things, just like so many other items that we have in our household. This trend has been obviously taking place for many, many years now. You have smart watches, phones, you name it. What can happen when your cargo talks to you and tells you about its location and the condition that it's in really can be powerful stuff. So as we look at the trends, some of this might be a little text heavy. So I do apologize, but bear with me. I think it's really important to understand it really laid a context for why we're doing this and why people are starting to dig into this type of technology. So a recent survey was conducted by PwC. They looked at a couple of different things, and this took place for almost a year. They were researching and interviewing different leaders within their respective industries, supply chain leaders, C-suite executives, IT leaders, operational leaders. And the sectors that they surveyed were aerospace, automotive chemicals, other manufacturing, industrial products, consumer markets, retail, energy, utility, mining, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, technology, media and telecommunications. So pretty much everything, right? They wanted to really throw out a wide blanket and understand what the challenges were for these types of companies and how they were solving some of those challenges with technology. The results were maybe not too surprising to some, but I think it's interesting to understand how technology can solve some of these problems. The first thing that they wanted to focus on was increasing efficiency, right? Who doesn't? Especially with the chaos we've seen in the last couple of years, how do we make sure that we avoid feeling too much of an impact from that? Managing reduced costs, same thing. How do we reduce any waste that we may have? And then automate processes, analytics, increased responsiveness, resilience and digital upskilling of employees. The first two are jobs that we can do with this type of technology just in generality. So increasing efficiency and reducing costs, that's the key focus. That is exactly what any technology should be doing for you if you're adopting it within your supply chain today. Another trend here. KPMG did a study as well. This was in 2023, 6 in 10 plan to invest in digital technology and bolster their supply chain processes, data synthesis and analysis capability. So again, this shift is happening. It's happening very quickly. Key actions to take, 2023, for companies, they predict to prioritize technology investment: supply chain planning capabilities and end-to-end visibility enabled by real-time analytics, what we're going to talk about today; fast track your data management policies and capabilities, again, speed to data and then understanding what you can do with that data are very important; consider how you can invest in automation to replace redundant manual supply chain activity. So I'm sure there are folks on this call who are still doing a lot of things manually. Maybe you have several spreadsheets that you're working with, and you're doing a lot of the stuff that could potentially be automated and make your job a whole lot easier, free up to do other things during the day that could be more valuable and help that bottom line. So again, these types of tools are all designed to do those things. Now if we look at the visibility space specifically, things have really gotten interesting this year. A couple of articles just to call out from Loadstar in March. They had 2 of them, and they were talking specifically about smart labels. So the ability to track individual parcels at such a high degree of accuracy [ besides ] disputes by not relying on diligence of carriers to keep location data up to date, but the additional visibility afforded by trackers will empower customers to hold carriers and forwarders to a higher standard. Again, one of the jobs to be done is going to be helping you to maintain that visibility in real-time. But what can you do with it? Well, we're talking about helping -- hold carriers and forwarders accountable, speed up processes. Smart label is something that we're going to discuss a little bit. [ K&N ] also looking at this. So they've begun investing pretty heavily in this space rather than providing frequent updates to label,the labels notify users when the parcel situation occurs -- changes, for example, when it leaves a preprogrammed geofence facility or when the temperature spikes. So a label is attached to your freight, that label is able to be picked up by a gateway device or a reader. So when it enters a warehouse, for example, then you know exactly when that piece of cargo has entered that facility or left that facility. That's done today, to some degree, with what we consider conveyance data. Maybe you have one GPS device on a truck or someone's manually entering that stuff. This is much faster and far more accurate. And then most recently, this is just a few days ago, another article came out, talking about the adoption of smart containers. So location tracking is fast becoming a standard. So the use of sensors for cargo monitoring, cargo compliance safety is next focus. Shippers will select carriers that can meet their data needs. What's happening is these carriers are starting to embed these devices in their containers. And it's growing very quickly. To predict by 2027, roughly 30% of carrier containers will have these devices in them. The challenge is if you're not working with one of those steamship lines that's actually using one of those smart containers, how can you leverage these tools? Well, that's something that we could potentially support because we're able to monitor regardless of the carrier. And then something real quick to call out as labels become kind of a hot topic, [ Cargo Ease ] has been ahead of the game. Expeditors has been ahead of the game in this space. We've been looking into and developing label technology for over a year. Lots of testing going on behind the scenes. No idea when that's going to be ready just yet. But without a doubt, it is coming. And again, it's going to be the standard. So those companies and organizations who are able to set up the infrastructure for this type of challenge, are going to be -- they are going to have an edge on your competitors. All right. So why is this even a topic? Why is it even important? And why is this shift occurring? There are some very simple elements to this. First being data collection. If you're dealing with the traditional data collection that takes place today, very manual, you're talking e-mails, again, your spreadsheets. With IoT data, it's all automatic, right? It happens in real-time. Communication time very slow. So it's all word of mouth. You call up someone, who is your forwarder, and you call them up whenever where your shipment's at or is something damaged. They have to then contact the carrier or the airline. There's this long game of telephone, takes quite some time to actually get some answers. Whereas with IoT and these devices, it's instant. So it happens right away. Condition monitoring. So can -- traditional ways of monitoring freight, even track something like temperature shock, any of you have quality concerns about cargo in transit, can you monitor that? And with traditional milestone and conveyance data, you can't. Even if you're using the data loggers, it's still passive. So you're not really understanding what happened until it gets to destination. You have no idea what happened in real-time. IoT, not the case. It happens in real-time, you can see it in real-time. And so can you make decisions in real-time? You can't with [ myosonic ] advanced data, traditional processes. IoT, you absolutely can, you know exactly when or where something has occurred, and you can address it right there in transit, be far more proactive. All right. So before we jump into the specifics of Cargo Signal, I think we'd like to take a really quick poll here. So question is, which of these visibility challenges did you experience in your supply chain last year? Or were you the unicorn of the group and just didn't have any of these problems, which, you know what, good on you, that's fantastic?

I'll give everybody a few seconds, Aaron, to answer. Then I'll launch it, so you can see what the responses are. All right. Let's see what we got. There you go.

The winner, lack of interest, visibility from beginning to end. Yes, that's often the winner. No notification when a shipment is delayed, it's a big one. You think about -- and we'll get into this a little bit. But for us in the forwarding space, you as our customers are always our primary concern. But you have a customer as well who is expecting a shipment and expecting the shipment to arrive on time and in the conditions that they purchased it or they expect it in, and so we understand that there's a lot of pressure that you get when there are challenges that come up. And so in order to communicate that as efficiently as possible, these are the types of things that we can do to support. All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for participating in that. Now we're going to get into more of the specifics of Cargo Signal itself, right? And I'm done with my terribly text-heavy slides. So thank you. They're pretty here. How does this all work? Very simple. We take our devices, sensors, we're going to apply them at the pallet level, box, carton, you name it, whatever you want to monitor. We have various devices that we work with. What's really nice about Cargo Signal? We are device-agnostic. So we're not manufacturing our own devices. Some of our competitors are, and it can create some challenges. Let's just say there's a chip shortage out there. Okay, well, how many devices can they actually offer you? Also, too, it allows us to be very flexible in terms of finding the best technology in the marketplace. If we see a device that is cutting edge, which is evolving all the time, labels are a perfect example. We went from -- in just a few years, we went from these big, bulky, very expensive devices that had to be returned to now the label technology, you have it down to the sticker, essentially. So we're always investigating the best options on the marketplace, so that we can offer that to our customers. So we attach our devices. The devices immediately start reporting a lot of data. Okay? They're able to capture anything and everything, and they're very powerful. Some devices are going to capture everything from temperature to location, to shock, to tilt. How do you really filter this data down into something that is important and valuable to you? That's where our alerts engine comes into play. So the alerts are automatic notifications that you receive when something does occur in transit. So you want to know, for example, when the temperature has gone out of range, we're going to notify you, or you want to know when it's entered or exited a warehouse or as it's approaching its destination. Those are the things that we can notify you about in real-time, so that you don't have to constantly log in and see, "Okay, where is my shipment?" It's really [ automated ]. So the idea is that you can manage by exception. You're only waiting for those alerts to come in, and then you can address those things as they come up. Now when those alerts are coming up, those are things that you can manage internally with your team, it's fantastic. Or if you need an extra hand there, our command center can provide support. So our command center is an extra layer of service, it's optional. They are operating 24/7, 365 days a year. These are security professionals, logistics professionals. So if something comes up at, say, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning and no one at your organization is able to [ field ] that issue, our team could jump on that for you. Extremely important to consider, if you have anything that is security-related, we'll get to it in a little bit, command Center has contacts with law enforcement globally. So if we needed to really pull out the big guns, we could. But just simply to understanding what's going on and making sure that you have the peace of mind that someone is there to address it at any time is really, really valuable. Okay. And lastly, once you have all this great information coming through the system, what do you do with it? Well, certainly, there are internal stakeholders are going to want to know what's happening in transit, helping to improve that efficiency. But these could also be external stakeholders. Again, you as our customer, it could be your customer who really has a concern and wants to know where things were at, when they're going to arrive in the condition [ threat ] et cetera. You can share this data with them with limitations, but you can share this data with them so that they're always in the know, and it helps them to have a better customer experience when they're working with you. Okay, so that is how our system works, in a very simple nutshell. So what other problems that we're even trying to solve with this program? Some of them are very easy. So we have security, quality, those are a given. Carrier accountability, it's a big one, and also transit time management. When I think of these two, carrier accountability today, how do you do that? You certainly -- you may have scores or different ways of valuing forwarders today. But again, a lot of it's very manual, and we'll get into how the program works. And you'll see as those, say, alerts are occurring, you can really start to understand how to keep them accountable from a better source of truth, so to speak. So you have the controls on what's going on. You're not simply relying on them to communicate this to you. And then transit time management. This, I think, is a no brainer for anybody who has any type of product or in an industry where destination is -- there's anything that's potentially project-related. So do you have people on site? Are those engineers? Are those maintenance folks? Are those installation teams who are waiting for this cargo to arrive so that they can complete that project? Because we know if they don't complete that project, there's going to be very expensive penalties there. Helping them to forecast exactly when they should be there, when to expect something, be more efficient at destination, that, I think, is an extremely big value to having this type of a program. All right. So digging into detail here. Security. As we know, theft is on the rise, right? 20% increase in 2022. It's frustrating. Pilferage is not the least of it. We have whole containers going missing at times. I have a customer right now speaking with, a very large company moving different meats actually proteins, and they're losing whole containers. So it's rough out there, and we have a solution to help at least mitigate the risk of that. So for starters, the challenge is not only you're experiencing theft, but where do we -- where is this happening? How are we going to identify the risky areas, okay? What are the threats that are happening in real-time? We have no idea with traditional monitoring today. And if something is stolen, how do you respond to that? What do you do? Can you even attempt to track it down right? It's very difficult. So with something like Cargo Signal, first of all, we can be a lot more proactive, right? We're going to try to avoid those high-risk areas to begin with. We have, within our platform, a way to do that. We know where lots of theft occurs globally. And we can say, "All right. Well, we need to maybe reroute this a little bit or don't stop in this area." I know that may happen to some degree, but this is an added layer that's a lot more specific, and we have a lot of data around this. So we want to make sure that we, if we can, avoid the threat of risk, a threat of theft altogether. What kind of things can we do if it is happening in transit? Well, those were -- that's where alerts come in. So a light alert, for example, someone opens a container or a trailer when they shouldn't, light comes in. Get a notification. "Hey, this is being open. Now we need to follow up and understand why it's being opened, shouldn't be open." Stationary. So it is something sitting on the side of the road in an area. First of all, it shouldn't even be sitting on side of the road, but it is an area that is high risk. And if it hasn't been sitting for too long, what's acceptable to you, okay? Is it someone just grabbing a bite for lunch? Or is it an overnight? Or what's going on there? Route deviation. Is it being routed properly? And then door open. So some of our devices actually have a pressure sensor. So we know, again, if that door has been opened, when it shouldn't, we can notify you. We also have the ability, as I mentioned, to leverage our 24/7 command center. So if we needed to, we can connect law enforcement for really just having that extra set of eyes on your cargo round the clock. And if something is stolen, we can help support recovery, and this is something that we've done. So the device was still in the cargo when it was stolen, we were able to track it to wherever destination the thieves are taking it, and we can potentially recover that cargo. So things that cannot be done today without this type of technology. So next one, quality, right? So you may have product that's prone to damage due to the humidity, temperature, impact, you name it. Today, you're unable to identify when and where that cargo is at risk of damage or spoilage. Passive data loggers require data transfer, a destination, okay? That's a very popular device, been around for a long time, passive data loggers. Throw it on there. Download it. Is it getting to you quick enough? But even if it is getting to you, you don't really know where anything happened in transit. And then if something is damaged, you have that claims process. And this also could be part of the security play. The claims process is something you have to go through, not likely someone is going to raise their hand and say, "Yes, I smacked that pallet with a forklift. That was me." You're going to have to do some investigating, some digging. It takes a lot of time, could be very expensive, not something anybody wants to go through. We can help speed that process up. So solution, as I mentioned, we have our alerts. So something like temperature excursion. You know exactly when something has gone out of range. Humidity, same thing there. Shock as well. So that forklift did hit that pallet, okay. Well, let's take a look at the cargo, see if anything was damaged. We know exactly where it happened. You can contact your service provider to address the risk in transit. So okay, can we check on that, that damage? We do think there's damage there. Can we take a look to make sure that it is still intact before we put it on a container that's going to now take a month before it gets to destination? And our client is going to be upset with us. So we can proactively support that delivery process if we know that those issues have occurred. And then lastly, you speed up that claims process significantly, so we know exactly where something went wrong, and we can address it quicker. Also, it can help you to evaluate how your cargo was being moved. Do we need to adjust the packaging, okay? Carrier accountability, right? Do we need to maybe talk to our team who's moving this stuff, who has custody to this stuff, to change some things and how they're handling the cargo so that, that damage isn't occurring? Is there anything that we can do to that? Carrier accountability. So certainly, beyond just the security and the quality, but also just where is the stuff at, right? And as we talked about, today, we're relying on manually-entered milestone events. It's prone to human error, not something anybody is doing on purpose, but it does and can happen. You have multiple layers of communication. You have that long game of word of mouth, right, before you actually end up finding the cargo itself. And virtually, you have no way of validating that information. So we've had numerous customers that we work with, where this has been an issue. We had one customer specifically moving product out of Europe, was destined for Minnesota. And it should have been a direct shipment, but the cargo was actually rerouted and ended up in Dubai. Well, the customer had -- it was put on the wrong flight. Customer had no idea. Forwarder was communicating to them that it was in -- where it needed to be, but we could see very clearly that it was not. We were able to resolve that much quicker than it would have been, had we been relying on that long game of telephone. So solution. Different alerts that we could set up. Waypoint entry, waypoint exit, something enter/exit the port, the warehouse, you name it. Has it deviated from its route? If it's deviating, okay, how do we get everybody back in line? You're avoiding the reliance on those manual updates completely. You can rely on the device technology. And then it allows you to evaluate service provider accuracy in communication. So again, we're going back and we're looking at these things to make sure that everybody has been communicating properly, accurately. And if we need to make changes, we can. All right. And the last but certainly not least, and again, the one that I think is certainly applicable to many, many industries, transit time management. So you have multiple layers of communication, as we've discussed. Time-sensitive shipments may have expensive consequences, if delayed. Any of these scenarios, project cargo, AOG, line down, labor destination, liquidated damages, any of those scenarios, if you have a product that is meant for those industries or those types of projects, we know that delays are not cheap, and having labor around is not cheap either. So helping efficiency at destination is critical. And then another factor to this is how do you recognize revenue in your business today? Do you have to wait for a proof of delivery, POD, from your customer? And if so, is that done in a timely fashion? If not, that's something that we could help you to solve. So different alerts we configured in this scenario. Again, any waypoint entry/exit. This is the destination. So as the cargo is approaching destination, you can get a notification, "Hey, it's 60 miles away. It's 100 miles away." Whatever it is that you want to make sure that you're aware of, so that the team can be prepared there. Even if you're just simply expecting deliveries and you have a team on hand ready for that cargo, you don't want them standing around [ tolling ] that time, right? That's expensive for you. Going back to our first couple of slides, cutting those costs, improving that efficiency, it's exactly what this is designed to do. Predictive delay. So our system can get a rough estimate of whether or not we think this is going to be delayed, okay? Sending you an alert. "So hey, we think this is going to be delayed. I need to get on the phone and start talking to the people at destination, so they're aware of what's going on." So we improved that delivery efficiency and planning. Speed up that AR process, so you know when delivery has occurred, okay? You're not -- no longer you're relying on the POD. You see that cargo, that device crossed through that geofence, that waypoint. And you know exactly when it's now arrived. So you can expect that for your AR team. You can even contact the customer to just double check, but it's far more automated. And then you improve your customer experience. So your customers, again, they have deadlines that they have to meet as well. They have customers. It's just a long line of folks who are dependent on this information. And so you provide a better customer experience with this level of detail. All right. So those are the jobs to be done. And again, we try to categorize those in very simple overview. But now let's look at the platform itself and some of the functionality. So if you were to log into Cargo Signal, you're going to see this essential -- this is essentially your hub, right? All our shipments on one really nice map. Okay. You have the list view on the left. You have all the shipments on your map on the right. And then you can either just click on the link to the shipment, which the shipment can be associated with any tracking number that you choose, click on the link to the shipment directly or you play around with the map, and you can click on the shipment that way. And once you've done that, we get the individual shipment detail page. So a lot's going on here. The map certainly understand exactly where something is at. But if you were wanting to know, for example, where -- for example, how the temperature is looking, how the humidity is looking, any shock that's happened, all this would show up right down here in this lower section in the sensor data, okay? Any alerts that you have configured as a complete shipment, but any alert you may have completed -- excuse me, you have set up, they're going to show up right here. So you want to know when something has arrived. You're going to know exactly what alerts are set up for each individual shipment. Now if I click on the map, I'll show you just how specific we can get here. So dots moving, these blue dots are any time a device pings. The software letting them know, "Hey, I'm here at this location." We have a different view, where you can actually get it to like Google Maps view, and here's an example of that. So the origin here in Florida. You can see, okay, here's the warehouse, sitting at the warehouse. That's exactly where it needs to be. And then you have, in transit, a ping, for example, here in Arizona. This is how accurate you're getting with your coordinates. Okay. And this is all real-time, live data, not coming from word of mouth or conveyance, the device itself, cellular device. All right. And as you're getting this data, you can really analyze it and evaluate it, and this goes back to that carrier accountability piece. Okay so here's an example of a customer who had -- that signed up at Cargo Signal. Lots of alerts being triggered. They were specifically concerned about theft, lots of theft happening. And you can see in the early days, these theft alerts are pretty significant. We had a lot of shipments coming through, and they keep getting light alerts or it could have been stationary or maybe it's deviating from its route. Okay, the customer is getting all these, and they can contact the forwarder to understand what's going on. We're getting these notifications. Who's in custody? Let's call that driver, let's talk to the folks at the warehouse. And over time, you start to see these alerts come down. So they -- the forwarders started changing their behavior. They wanted to make sure that they were keeping their customer happy. So some of the things that were going on that were triggering some of these alerts, made some changes. And that's exactly what we want to see so that you get a better experience with your carriers and forwarders. And this can be done beyond security, certainly, location alerts. You also have the -- obviously, the quality alerts as well, one of those things happening, who's in custody. All this can be extracted and lives on the platform in your account. All right. And then last but not least, and we're coming to a close here, I'm way ahead of schedule, so lucky you, this is mobile-friendly as well. So if you're ever on the road, you're at a warehouse, anybody on our team wants to be in the know, customers want to be in the know, all this stuff, pull it up on the mobile platform, it's all visible right there and all in your hand. So that brings us to a close with my information. I hope that was informative for everybody, and we're going to go ahead and open it up now to some Q&A.

Perfect. Thank you so much. I'm going to stop the recording here real quick. Okay. Okay. So we did have a couple of questions that came in before the webinar. So I'm going to start with those, and then I see a couple of them in the chat box as well. So there was a question on how long battery life is on these devices.

Yes. So it depends on how frequently the device is reporting to the platform. So for example, if you have a shorter air shipment, say, 72 hours, we can have that device reporting to the platform every 10, 15 minutes, okay, very frequently. If you had a longer ocean move, we want to adjust that. We wanted to report maybe every few hours. But in general, I mean if we wanted to really extend the life, these could last several months. So any shipment is going to be a fair game for us. It's just going to be a matter of adjusting the ping frequency, the reporting frequency to accommodate that transit time.

Great. Are there any customer requirements when shipping internationally?

There are. It does vary, depending on where the cargo is moving to, moving from. So we want to look at that on a case-by-case basis. The nice thing about Cargo Signal, because we are associated with Expeditors, we've had requests from every corner of the globe. One of the things that I think is a big advantage that we have over our competitors is our network. So we've done a ton of research upfront, not only to get approval to operate in most countries, but also operate with airlines. If there's requirements by steamship lines, we've done the research there. We've gotten the approvals. So people are familiar with our devices. I think you'll find in some cases that if you do start to implement this technology, you may have limitations in terms of where they're acceptable. We'd like to think that's not the case with Cargo Signal, again, because we've just done so much work on the front end to expand our network and make sure that we're compliant everywhere we go.

Great. Okay. So I have a two-part one coming up. So besides on the ocean or in the air, are there dead zones where pings aren't picked up? For example, near Laredo, Texas area seems to be a dead zone. That's the first part. And then the second part -- oh, sorry. I'll let you answer.

Well, I would say, yes, there are. And so the devices themselves, they are -- they rely on cellular signal. They can also use WiFi. So if there's ever a scenario where you can't use your cell phone, that's an area where a device is going to have challenges as well. But it should be pretty few and far between, but it is possible. And then in the air and the ocean, what's nice, just to cover this real quick, our system will default to the aircraft or the vessel itself. So long as we have that information, so you can still keep tracking it. I didn't have an ocean shipments display. But you'd still see the vessel, for example, as it's crossing the Atlantic. And then as it approaches port, it's going to flip back to the device because the device now has signal picked up from the port. Same thing with the aircraft.

Perfect. The second part of that question was, do all airlines allow Cargo Signal monitors?

Not all. I'd say, I can tell you a percentage, but most major airlines we've dealt with for many years. So if there is a unique, maybe smaller airline that you're working with, we'd love to chat with you about that just to see if maybe we do already have it in our system. And if we don't, then we just go through the approval process. Some airlines are very quick with that approval process, others take more time. They want to investigate the device and all the specs and make sure that it's not going to be harmful. But again, we've done so much lab work upfront that it's unlikely we don't already have that airline in our system.

Okay. Moving on to the next one. Can any tracking equipment devices be used in conjunction with your services? Or are there any exceptions? And how are the devices set up with Cargo Signal?

Yes. So right now, we have our own device inventory that we've done a lot of research to understand -- to find what we think are some of the best in the marketplace. If you have your own devices that you purchased, we can certainly take a look at those and see if they are -- if you need the kind of caliber to start adding to our inventory as well. So it's possible to integrate them in the system. But I will be transparent, that would be time-consuming. We want to [ get ] the manufacturer. We want to review the device. It's got to get integrated into our system. So those things -- if we can move through those things quickly, it's possible. We want to look at each device on a case-by-case basis.

Perfect. And...