Grace Sharkey and I trade five cargo crime stories for Halloween: a missing Silk Road merchant, the 1982 Tylenol poisonings that led to sealed pill bottles, Henry Every’s raid on the Ganj-i-Sawai, the ghosts of the St. Lawrence River, and the Reno Gang’s 1866 train robbery.
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In 1982, someone in the Chicago area laced Tylenol capsules with cyanide and put the bottles back on store shelves. Seven people died. The recall that followed pulled about 31 million bottles, and it’s the reason the foil seal is on everything you open today. That’s one of five cargo crime stories Grace Sharkey and […]
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A customs entry might take minutes to prepare while the truck waits days to cross. José Miñarro, Managing Director at CustomsNet, explains what shippers need to settle before their first Mexico shipment moves, how proper onboarding catches problems before the border, and why accurate records matter long after delivery.
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from coal-fired furnaces in the 1630s → merchant ships → shipwreck → your beach find. The longest, slowest delivery in supply chain history has to belong to pirate glass
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A security policy can look great on paper, but does everyone handling your freight follow it? Joe Hurst, co-founder and president of Veroot, explains CTPAT, what it takes to get certified and stay compliant, and why training and follow-through matter after onboarding.
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If freight is lost in Mexico, whose insurance responds? Mark Vickers of Reliance Partners explains why carrier liability and cargo insurance need separate attention, what a self-insured shipper may really mean, and how contracts, carrier vetting, and tracking fit into cross-border risk.
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At the Mexico border the trailer can stay loaded while the driver and truck change. Matt Silver, co-founder and CEO of Cargado, explains why so much coverage still runs through LinkedIn and WhatsApp, and why buyers need to know which system owns carrier identity, rate, and custody after the border.
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Grace Sharkey and I talk about my trip to Sri Lanka: tea farms and the people behind them, cinnamon and the island’s trading history, and the Port of Colombo’s place in Indian Ocean shipping. This is the Sri Lanka segment from our July Freight Friends episode.
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Seven containers were waiting near the edge of an Antarctic ice shelf when a blizzard hit and the ice broke away, carrying the cargo out to sea. Grace Sharkey and I talk about resupplying a research station, Shackleton’s survival story, and operating on moving ice.
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A rocket launch is only one leg of the space supply chain. This solo episode follows five pieces of it: Rocket Lab’s GHOST deployable launch concept, resupply for a Moon base, Dawn Aerospace’s Loop refueling interface, Cascade Space’s deep-space communications, and Anatar’s advanced textiles.
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The rocket gets the glamor shot, but a launch is only one leg of a much larger network. I follow five companies working on the launch capacity, refueling, communications, and materials that would help make space operations repeatable. Rocket Lab’s GHOST concept would put launch equipment in deployable containers. SpaceX’s Moon-base ambitions raise the question […]
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TOTO, the company behind Japan’s heated toilets, also makes precision ceramics used in semiconductor manufacturing. Grace Sharkey and I talk about that supply chain, what we noticed in Japan, and the maritime details at Tokyo DisneySea.
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