“The private sector sees that this [ACCS] is cutting their costs and improving their efficiency. They can utilize their resources a lot better. People are clamoring to sign on because if everyone in the supply chain is signed on to this system, they have full visibility of the cargo.”

– Elliott Paige, Director of Air Service Development at Atlanta International Airport

Atlanta is home to the busiest airport in the United States. They aren’t just busy because of human travelers; they are a vibrant hub for air cargo as well.

As the growth of eCommerce continues to send shockwaves through the freight community, airports are on the front lines. Where there used to be fewer larger shipments going to a smaller number of locations, there are now many small packages going to a huge number of delivery addresses.

In this podcast, Linda Eshiwani-Nate & Elliott Paige tell Supply Chain Now Radio host Scott Luton what the Atlanta airport has done to handle this increase in small parcel traffic, namely their air cargo community system, or ACCS.

ACCS is a virtual integrator that makes it possible for smaller shippers to have the same access to air freight and tracking information as UPS or FedEx would have through their proprietary, closed-loop systems.

Linda and Elliott provide a behind the scenes look at how Atlanta Airport is rising to meet the challenge:

• Designing terminals for cargo – as well as passenger – efficiency
• Reducing the slack time traditionally associated with air cargo
• Predicting the warehouse capacity needs of the future
• Leveraging AI to keep operations running.

[00:00:05] It’s time for Supply Chain Now Radio. Broadcasting live from the Supply chain capital of the country, Atlanta, Georgia. Supply Chain Now Radio spotlights the best in all things supply chain the people, the technology, the best practices and the critical issues of the day. And now here are your hosts.

[00:00:29] Hey, good morning, Scott Luton here with you, Liveline Supply Chain Now Radio. Welcome back to the show. On today’s show, we’re continuing our Supply chain City series where we dove into a variety of supply chain stories with roots right here in Atlanta, Ga. But regardless where you live, work or play, we’re gonna be offering news, ideas, best practices. And some are really the neatest stories taking place in the global world. And then Supply chain quick programing note, like all of our series on Supply Chain Now Radio, you can find our replays on a variety of channels Apple podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, Greg White. Thank where you get your podcast from. As always, good to have you subscribe. Your messy thing. Quickly, let’s thank our sponsors. Allow us to bring best practices and innovative ideas to you, our audience. They range from the Effective syndicate to Vector Global Logistics, Spend Management Experts and many more. You can check out each of our sponsors on the show notes of this episode. So let’s welcome in our fearless, esteemed co-host for today’s show. Mr. Greg White Serial Supply chain, tech entrepreneur, chronic disruptor and trusted advisor to all. Greg, how you doing? I’m doing great. Thank you. Great to have you back. I know you’ve had some trials in recent weeks, but the beat has not stopped here. We’ve had it just too much to cover in the world of inane supply chain.

[00:01:49] Yeah. I have been a satisfied passenger of HDL. Always good. Glad to see it. I will argue one of the best designed airports never on the history of the planet, and I’ve been in hundreds and hundreds of them. So yeah, I’m excited to talk to these guys.

[00:02:04] And you’re foreshadowing. Exactly. We’re going to talk about. So today I did. Yeah. I went a little bit slow on the uptake, as you like to say, but I didn’t see that. And then. So today we’re really excited for the first time really since ah that the inception of Supply Chain Now Radio to dove Sandeep with the world’s best airport. Yeah. Hartsfield Jackson, Atlanta International Airport. We’ve got two business leaders from the airport with us here today. Let’s say low to Elliott Page, airport director, Air Service Development. Good morning. Elliott And good morning. Good morning. Great to have you here. And Linda aswani, Nate. Airport officer if air service development. Linda, good to see you again.

[00:02:43] Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, sir. I’m a regular here.

[00:02:47] We have our own series Say. Kidding aside, we were able to sit down for listen to this episode, may recall Linda business. Visit with us a few weeks ago with Donna Mullins. And we had a great, fascinating interview on their backgrounds and their journeys into becoming supply chain business leaders that they are so but really looking forward to diving more into the airport story here today. And Elliott learned more about you last time. We all were together. All of us together now was at the twenty nineteen Atlanta Supply chain Awards, where not only did the airport receive recognition, but y’all both played a part in presenting the other awards, right. Yeah. And that’s. But today’s episode isn’t going to be about everything else. This can be about the gem of a of a car that the airport is when it comes to not just the metro Atlanta business community. Yeah. But truly it’s it’s it’s an international it’s a cog in international business machine, right? Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

[00:03:48] If you want to get to heaven, you got to check points. Vetlanta.

[00:03:52] Patel.

[00:03:55] All right. So for starters, before we kind of dove into what takes place the airport from override different perspectives. Elliott, we want to open up and get no. Page a little bit better. So for starters, tell us about where you grew up and give us some anecdotes of you of your upbringing.

[00:04:10] Well, I’m from the island of Antigua, Antigua and Barbuda. And, you know, I grew up mostly there, grew up a little bit in New York because I was telling Greg Greg earlier, I grew up a bit in the Bronx, that some primary school there. But most of my primary school and formative years were in the Caribbean and in Antigua and at university in Barbados and also the Dominican Republic and Santo Domingo. So I had to learn to speak Spanish as a result of that. But I had a great time in the Caribbean.

[00:04:43] As Greg growing up in and in the tropics, I had many days because as a boy on the beach and, you know, building rafts with my friends and going sailing, pretending to be sailors cash and should get, oh, just just really having a good time as a.

[00:04:59] Kid and do a lot of silly, silly things. Yeah. So you do the same thing that we do when we go to Antigua. You do it every day. Transportation Logistics started with with your activities earlier. He was in shipping early and started shipping it and making rafts out of, you know, some old pieces of wood.

[00:05:18] Well, now I gotta ask you. So as you’re kind of painting that picture work, were huge fans of good food here? I think probably we all are. What what’s one thing that you can’t get really good versions of here that you only get when you get when you go back home?

[00:05:35] It’s difficult. I mean, Atlanta is pretty international. So you could get basically anything here.

[00:05:42] You know, if I want to, for instance, make one of my local one of our local dishes, something we call Duckula, which is grated coconut, grated sweet potato with some flour, sugar and raisins. I could get all of that. And and banana leaves and you wrap it in banana leaves and you boil this thing and people love it. Even my friends who are not Antiguan, not from the Caribbean, they love it. So sometimes I do some cooking. I love cooking because, you know, it’s it’s great stress relief. Yeah, great to bring people together. And so you think you could get everything? And I do. I’ve never had problems getting stuck.

[00:06:21] I agree that that’s one of my favorite parts of doing business here. And living, working and playing in Atlanta is, as you put it. It is such an international city. And if you are big fans of food, I am just back. You can’t just about get anything. And then from the folks that know it best, right? Yeah. Yeah, authentically. All right. So, Lynda La switchover gears. Okay.

[00:06:45] So our listeners may recall your interview that you had with us, which which really we found fascinating, especially how the Kenya connection, how you really want to protect that upbringing, not that your kids have. And we talked about last episode. Yes. But let’s talk about where you grew up. Let’s talk about some of the and just in a nutshell about yourself and about how you how you got here.

[00:07:09] Like I mentioned, I grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. Yeah. We used to like to pretend, you know, a lot of exchange students would come and ask us, what, you dont have lions? No, we did not have lions and I did not know. I grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. Third of six girls. So it was a very interesting, very fun upbringing. We I was a tomboy. I my parents really raised us to do anything and everything we wanted. And so I wanted to be a pilot. They said, well, fine, you can go ahead and be a pilot. I do not know that, you know, I could how there were barriers or, you know, that I could. You know, there will. What I came here, I learned other Abyei’s in Kenya. If you wanted, you could be it, you know. So that was funny. Was interesting for me. So I really grew up really not really naive in some kind of ways. You know, it really just I wanted it. I reached for it and I did what I wanted. So it was a nice living. I truly enjoyed it. It was all about community. There is no such thing as, you know, just me, my mom and my dad, my sisters.

[00:08:17] I mean, anyone planning time here has us 20 people in her house, practically everybody, to be exact, but everybody has everybody.

[00:08:25] So coming here was quite a culture shock for me because it was just me, myself and I. It’s like I can’t do this thing, you know. So it is quite a different kind of living now because.

[00:08:37] Ironic, isn’t it? I mean, so many people in this country and you know, it’s like a while to get used to this.

[00:08:43] And, you know, now I feel like I’ve become a way on the other side, nominate for God. But when I go home, none of that.

[00:08:49] You’re an introvert. Now I find that I’m an introvert, OK, at home.

[00:08:54] Then introverts, you are part of this big community. So I love that, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:00] So I don’t want to take a hard right term. But we talked about some of the challenges on the previous episode. And if you could just give our listeners one. Some folks are a little hopeful. A lot of folks are going to talk about challenges and barriers. It’s going to resonate with them. What’s. Has there been one lesson learned that you did that since you’ve been here in the States, that the break right through some of those challenges and barriers?

[00:09:25] One thing you can share with our audience, challenges and bias. Oh, my gosh. You know, coming to America, I really I grew up I came here when I was 20, 20 years old.

[00:09:38] I came from a life of no limits to a life. I just call it the circle of life. And it’s like ever since I got here or everything hit me hard and it was like I was really not prepared. You know, it was like, you know, going to school became hard, you know, not because. I wasn’t smart. It was like, you know, tuition. Sure, as an international student, it was I had to work when I got here to work and go to school. Right. In Kenya, I do work. When I was going to college, it was my parents provided everything all of us said. And I have to work and study. And I was a pilot, by the way. So I started we will fly at five o’clock in the morning. You go to class with the rest of the day. Right. Then you go to work. Then you study. So for me, it was just. And then that’s a long day. And there’s nobody to talk to. So. Versus a lot. Yes. There a lot for somebody to take it. And that was not prepared. There wasn’t there was no training for that. So it was you know, the one thing that hit you when you were in such a situation is depression. Because you’re not prepared for it. So for a long time, when it first got here, I was really depressed. I did not know how to cope with all this changes. It took some time, but I had to learn how to be tough. Yeah, sure. And I remember my dad told me, well, you’ve been crying about being a pilot since you a 5 year or 5 year old Europe. You’re flying now. So what’s your problem?

[00:11:13] Parents can cut straight to the quick. That’s a wakeup call. Really.

[00:11:19] And that’s what it was. I said, yeah, actually, it had been great. I loved being a pilot. You said you didn’t tell us you wanted to sit at home with your sisters, did you? Well, that’s right, actually.

[00:11:28] You know what? What I found really interesting from that last episode. And we’ll move right along. But is, you know, as you’re going through the training and I think you went to Embrey, read every reader, it’ll always give that any meaning.

[00:11:39] So in Daytona Beach, Florida. Yeah.

[00:11:42] And you’re talking about last time that there was very few women in the program. Yeah. And so when do we talk about the pressing? We talk about things, the challenges. We we just face industry. Well, you can also be isolating. When the numbers are. Yes. What they are. Yes. But that’s just one more thing to fight through.

[00:11:59] Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, in Embry-Riddle, it was 50 percent women, 85 percent men. So not only am I the only girl in my class, I’m almost the only black person I’ve seen on a regular day today. You know, I have to go to the African Student’s Association to see another black person who will almost understand what I’m going through, because everybody else, if you tell them I am so lonely, they look at you like, just go home for the weekend.

[00:12:24] No, it’s not. I don’t understand. Is my skin, you know?

[00:12:29] So it was really isolating. And, you know, there was no there was nobody else like me. I needed somebody who looked like me was going through what I was going through to talk to, you know. Yeah. So it was really isolating. It was really lonely in those early days.

[00:12:43] You know, we’re not gonna do it justice that we covered a lot of that law. What? You broke through it in the first episode. So we’ll we’ll include a link and generative this EFT will go to the full access episode. But clearly you broke through and love what you are doing now and libertine that you all have at the airport from a leadership standpoint. And it’s just so important to making Atlanta the Supply chain City or the Logistics hub and, you know, the business capital that it is. On that note. Want to shift gears back over to you. We want to kind of move from the personal, you know, who you are as a person, where you grew up to your professional journey. So let’s talk about your professional background, your journey in to what led to your current role. Talk about your career in a minute. Let’s talk more about kind of what led to that now.

[00:13:29] Well, a lot of it is accidents, I think. And I wanted to be a lawyer when I was done. It’s good. I wanted to do my bachelors in law. I signed up with the University of Western D campus in Barbados to do law. And normally. Back then, you had two options. You had to have option one, an option two. And we had so many lawyers in Antigua as a small country that has so many lawyers really that they limit how many because they pay for your tuition. So they limit how many people go from that country to study law. So I ended up getting my second option, which was economics. And it was a great option in the end, because I ended up going back home, working first with the Bureau of Standards, which many people don’t know what the Bureau of Standards is in a country, but the U.S. equivalent is the National Institute for Standards and Technology Northeast. It’s located in D.C. and everything like that. You know that an exact gallon of gas that you purchase, that every gas station has to be calibrated, weights and measures has to be calibrated. So all of these things are monitored by a national institution to make sure that when you buy a gallon of gas, you get a gallon. It’s an actual gallon, not a half a gallon or a quarter gallon. All right. No one’s robbing the other. On the other side. So I move from there to two marketing industries in the islands of. Taking a lot of companies to the international market, taking them, exposing them to the international market, teaching them about how to penetrate tariffs. And what are the national requirements of markets that they’re trying to access. So I brought a lot of interesting companies to the market.

[00:15:16] And I remember one lady I worked with, Susie’s hot sauce, which is, you know, where I need to hear here is, you know, we helped her get her nutrition facts.

[00:15:29] When nutrition facts first came out or her barcoding and get her label, we actually drew her label. So it’s weirdly it’s a coconut tree with peppers underneath, which is very weird. But she still has that label today. Grand. She has an international product that’s all over the world. So we’re very proud of bringing a lot of these companies abroad. And then I shift gears a little bit to trade policy. I worked with the government renegotiating trade policy for Foto region. We have a trade agreement across the Caribbean with 13 members of the Caribbean. That’s called the Carrot Caricom agreement. It includes, you know, also all sorts of trade agreements. And and, you know, how do you trade goods between these countries? And then I’m I moved to Geneva, Switzerland. There was a position that opened where, you know, we had six small countries in the Caribbean that needed to have representation in the WTO, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations discussions on trade.

[00:16:35] And they had no representation. They were too small. And so they they hired me to go to Geneva and set up a mission, an embassy of sorts, and hire staff and get set up an office to represent all these countries in very complex discussions on trade. And it was tough because I didn’t speak French.

[00:16:59] And a lot of the interactions you had to do in French stuff alone, even if you were fluent in the language I but it was it that makes it doubly. Oh, yeah.

[00:17:08] Oh yeah. So I mean in the WTO itself, you it’s tricky work in languages, French, Spanish and English and at least I speak one of them and a little bit of Spanish at the time because I had done my master’s degree in Santa Domingo. So it wasn’t too bad. But then to interact with the local community, with a restaurant and just order food just to get around. You had to speak French. So I had to learn French and I speak French very poorly. But I get along. And so I set up this embassy and it represented, you know, all these countries, six countries at the time and trade negotiations. So we were one of the things that we discussed, which is related to our discussion today is something called the agreement on trade facilitation. And what that is for our audience is imagine at every port, what are its you see poor to your airports. There are bottlenecks to shipping, shipping, something when you right. When you ship something from one country to another. It goes for a lot of different points before it gets to your doorstep. You know, it’s leaving a factory. It has to go on a truck. There are a lot of documentation along the way to make sure that it’s the right good as nobody’s stealing it.

[00:18:26] It’s the same good. Nobody’s replacing it with a counterfeit right now, especially if it’s pharmaceuticals. You don’t want fake drugs and you know, that sort of thing. So Indras. Yeah.

[00:18:36] So so there’s a there’s a lot of things that come into play along those lines. And so we were negotiating and I worked on this negotiation that all countries in the world wanted. They wanted a method that streamlined trade at the polls. They wanted customs. And some, especially in some poorer countries, you need like 37 signatures before you can get your good at the port. Right. You need 37 stamps and you need, you know, fifteen days for the good to sit there. And you have do you have to pay rent for it to sit in a warehouse. Right. While as a consumer waiting for the good. Right. That’s no good for trade. So everyone agreed that we needed an agreement that every country could should sign on to so that we had full transparency. Whatever regulations you had, you had to declare it so that everyone could could find whatever means that necessary to streamline that trade. And I was very happy to work on on that agreement.

[00:19:37] So is that happening before the goods that the agreement that you’re talking about? Is that happening then before the goods actually hit the dock or hit the customs clearance area or what? The declaration of the terms?

[00:19:51] Yeah, well it will it’s all of that is that it’s the customs declaration. So an example is that you want what they call a single window.

[00:19:58] Yeah. If you’re. Shipping something you want to go to one platform and you can do your customs declaration, you can pay for your system. You can find full visibility on where the good is going, where it’s coming from, who to consign me is, who to ship or is what the good is, is the damage is missing and everyone day Froome from the insurance companies, the shipper to consign me everyone in the supply chain. They want to have access to that information to see what’s happening. Where that good.

[00:20:27] Yeah. A lot of folks may not be as aware of the informational flow that power supply chain these days, right?

[00:20:33] Well in the concept of the single window, I’m interested in that. You write that this this is sort of clearinghouse for this information, little that allows this more efficient flow. Is that is that the intent of that?

[00:20:47] It’s all about efficiency. Yeah. I mean, exactly what it is is efficiency.

[00:20:51] I mean, we’ve been talking about the single window process for a long time, for many years. You know, today when you order something online, you know, you you you check on your your phone and you say hi is coming. You know, you can see the different spots of where it it stops. Ryan is going through some process. Who cares? But it gets do you get your doorstep? And that’s the important part, right. It just magically appears.

[00:21:17] And most people that’s what we know. But there’s so many things that has to happen for it to get from where you order it, from the shipper all the way to your doorstep. And, you know, it includes aircrafts. It has to find a plane. A lot of times it includes getting on a truck boat for a while we call the first mile, meaning from the factory or the warehouse. Jerai took it to the to the airport. And then last mile from the final airport closest to your home on a truck.

[00:21:46] They are a sprint van these days. It’s Amazon Prime. Yeah, to your house. And, you know, we’ve we’ve come to. We’re changing the way we expect goods to get to us as consumers today. We we want.

[00:22:03] We want it to be instant that I remember I was hiking with one of my friends, a group of my friends in Kennesaw Mountain one day. And we took the long, long route, you know, on one of them was really tired, this lady. And she said, can we order an Uber?

[00:22:19] Down, down the mountain. Yeah, she wants an Uber to come pick her up in the middle of the mountain.

[00:22:23] And and I thought of that and said, well, it’s amazing. We just want this this instant. Everything should be instant today. And, you know, everything from from dating to, you know, transportation to the way we we get our goods. Yeah. And because of that, everything and the whole process has to change. We have to think differently and how we get goods to people.

[00:22:45] Yeah. Read in the interim steps matter. Yeah, right. I mean, like you said, and in case any anyone in our you know, our audience doesn’t realize it’s not magic. But I think a lot of us think of it as magic. I know like you mentioned just now and earlier. I don’t care unless it doesn’t get here or it gets here damaged or it gets here late right now. Yes. So I think. But I think consumers are there getting themselves educated about the supply chain. I hear actual consumers saying supply chain, which to me is a pretty dramatic transformation. So this effort, effort to create some transparency, create some accountability and create some efficiency, as you were talking about in the process, that’s really valuable.

[00:23:30] And I think that’s the most important part. It’s important for consumers to know where the goods are at any point in time. They want full visibility and it might be late because, you know, things happen. But if you don’t know, that’s `where’s frustrating, right?

[00:23:44] Yeah. So I love how you’ve kind of foreshadowed a big initiative we can talk about here later in interview. So but it makes so much sense and it’s lost on a lot of. Even though the needle’s moving, right? Yes. Rumors are starting to get it more than ever before. And e-commerce is a great trainer for that. Yes. But we’re talking about a big initiative that the airport is leading, that that’s changed the game many ways connected to the concept you’re sharing. All right. So, Linda, same question, kind of in a nutshell, your professional journey up until your current role as your officer, airport officer.

[00:24:18] So I did go to Embry-Riddle. Like I mentioned. And that was to be a pilot. And, you know, things happen. Life became a mom. I became a mom. And quickly that changed my outlook.

[00:24:32] And so I went into business, aviation business, because at the end of the day, you love airport airports and airplanes and jet fuel in my blood. I ended up. And it’s good for your cholesterol. It seems like you know it, but it’s cholesterol. Yeah, but I don’t recommend that anyone drink it. Yeah. Yeah. So I ended up in airports.

[00:24:56] I intend. That’s an input in Dilan.

[00:24:59] That was my intro to airports and it was great. So it was a really small airport, but it was a good way to, you know, because with the smaller airports and this is also good for people who are looking to enter into the business. The smaller airports allow you to have your fingers on each and every aspect of managing an airport. So you really get to touch everything, because when you come into the bigger airports, you’re kind of, you know, sectioned into, you know, areas, which is still not bad because like I said, I got into the smaller airport.

[00:25:29] I did what I did and I learned where I wanted to be. But then again, like Elliot said, accidents happen. I came to Atlanta again on another internship and which was Maureen the finance side. But I I met somebody I met somebody who was about to become the general manager of the airport. And, you know, it’s. It wasn’t a coincidence. I believe in fate because when we met was very instrumental and it gave me the kind of exposure and that kind of that exposure gate allowed me to get into projects that I would never have got into. It would have taken me years to be able to do that kind of work that I did in that amount of time that we were together. I did the kind of projects that gave me visibility with my current manager, with Elliot, and we worked very well together. I remember one of the projects that I enjoyed doing was when we were getting ready to celebrate the 100 million passenger at the airport this week.

[00:26:32] Now, I would say that that doesn’t mean that I’ve made in a week oh, 25th 2015. Was that in 2015? Yes. And for 2015, we celebrated the first airport in the world to do that.

[00:26:47] It was and it was funny because I love math. It’s not not many people knew how much I love my wife. And I was given this weird project to calculate what day, what I would hit and what flight.

[00:27:02] And I calculated that I built a statistical model really to determine when we were gonna get that passenger. Wow. And there’s another moth within the airport. Other than that, general manager Elliot is a math whiz. And he was like, oh, my God. So how close did you get? We got it. I was audited, by the way, real by two funds. And they we hit it. We hit it on the aggressive. We hit it. And that’s how I started working with Elliot.

[00:27:29] So it’s you recall who that passenger was. I know you probably can’t reveal that.

[00:27:33] I remember the mathematical formula more than I remember the math. It’s so weird because he didn’t seem that excited. He won a car and he won ticket.

[00:27:42] Won a car? Yeah, yeah, he won a car. And he won a trip to anywhere in the world new in the world. His choice was Orlando, Orlando, Disneyland. Really? Anyone? The world and Delta’s neck could have driven his new card at Orlando. He said and then. And he got the car. I remember him saying all, but I have one of those already.

[00:28:02] Anyways, we were like, never give it to a lawnmower. And there was a lady there’s a lady right behind him saying, Give it to me.

[00:28:10] It was, you know. So I remember that more than you know. Yes. But those are some of the things that led me to where I am today. We could’ve treated given it to the next hundred and one. That was.

[00:28:22] So those are some of the things that led me to where I am today. Yeah, I know. And that’s the kind of work we do today. You know, it’s data driven. We angel. Yes. The business development side.

[00:28:32] Because before this I wasn’t protocol. Yeah. So anytime there was a dignitary coming into Atlanta, that would be me meeting them and giving them the official welcoming to Atlanta.

[00:28:42] And, you know, and but that wasn’t enough math for you, was it? No. I bet you’re you’re a great navigator if you’re really in to math. I bet you really excelled at navigation when you were in PI. Well, yeah, I don’t drive well.

[00:28:57] Yeah, I’m not in Atlanta. Oh, that’s that’s because you can’t see where you’re going. Yeah. Vetlanta But yeah. NEARY Well, just driving along, especially in Atlanta.

[00:29:06] Do you maintain your your pilot’s license? Do you still fly? Not really. And I guess I owe my dad a lot of money.

[00:29:13] He once was a full refund with interest. AZARA Yeah, just keep holding out. He’ll give up, actually. Oh, my God. Every time we got on the phone, I want my money.

[00:29:25] So. All right, so let’s let’s shift gears from from the background. From a professional standpoint, let’s talk about current state and what you do now. So, Elliott, in your role, first off, you can define your role and then tell us where you spend your time.

[00:29:43] So I’m you know, Sam, airport director of a service development. What does that mean?

[00:29:50] That’s really like business development. So I work a lot with the airlines and both the passenger and cargo side. So, you know, we’re talking. Primarily about cargo today, but I also work with with many airlines and trying to develop new routes, helping Atlanta to connect to many international and domestic routes. The idea being that once you have direct connections between two cities, it creates investment opportunities. Better for tourism is better for business. You know, business executives are able to travel directly between those two point to point city. Right. So it’s great all around. And for cargo, it’s the same whether it’s a hub or as what we call origin destination. The final point. It’s it’s Atlanta. And it’s great for that. It’s a. So the city itself is surrounded by a variety of of manufacturing industries and automotive and pharmaceutical companies and aerospace. You know, they are your knees Sunday.

[00:30:52] Keith Moto’s your Boeing or Hyundai, Porsche. And all of these companies attract a lot of cargo Reliant Industries.

[00:31:03] And so I found myself in Atlanta again, true to our I think one of my mentor, Miguel Self-will, who was the general manager at the time.

[00:31:15] He he wanted someone who had a little bit of background on international experience and had some background on trade. And I. And he said, you know, why don’t you apply to come and work with me at the airport?

[00:31:28] And I don’t know. I mean, I worked at an airport in Antigua with a little Caribbean airline called Lee at a long time ago as a job when I was young. And it was great working for an airport and airports. A great. It is just so lively that Madonna energy that so many and so much energy to people around is desire. So just moving all the time and also a lot of emotions. You know, it’s an airport and Apple is a place where people are sad and happy and miserable and super happy and just everything. Anxious, anxious, you know, all of that is just all that energy is at the airport. So it’s never dull. Never a dull moment and never the same problem twice. You know, you always get something new. So you have to be creative. You have to be innovative. And so I applied and ended up here and started to work with him on connecting Atlanta internationally. And when I when I started on the cargo side, I started to bring. We actually attracta that’s in about five years, about eight or so different all freight carriers. And by all freight, I mean, a plane now basically has no windows, it has no seats. It’s a big aircraft that just carries cargo. And so we have quite a lot of that that come to Atlanta. And, you know, they’re coming from Asia, from Europe, from from all over the world. And what I thought is that, you know, we have a lot of capacity in the air, but we didn’t have enough capacity on the ground.

[00:33:04] And what what many airports realize that what I came to realize very quickly is that the bottleneck is not in the air because planes are going to move the same speed when they’re moving cargo. Right. The bottleneck with moving cargo is when it lands on the ground, getting it off the plane, onto the road and to its consumers. So if you if you think about it, a plane lands. You have to get that cargo off the plane to a warehouse. Customs have to make sure that it’s safe. There’s no drugs or any contraband on on that end, that that shipment, they have to make sure there’s not weapons and that sort of thing. So it’s safe. And then you have to get out to the warehouse. Sometimes it has to be broken down. If it’s what we call a consolidated shipment. Right. It means that you have a piece and you have another piece. Right. But it’s all in one shipment. So we have to break that down and give you your share and give you your share. And that’s what the freight forward does. Freight forwarder breaks down the consolidated shipment and makes sure that everyone in that that that shipment gets their piece of cargo. And and so you have to do that. Break it down and then get it on a truck. And if ever anyone is driven to Atlanta and you see all the trucks on the road, that’s trucks moving cargo. Yeah. And so when that truck is stuck in traffic, that’s delay in you getting your good.

[00:34:24] That’s your order. Yeah. Right. That’s you.

[00:34:26] That’s why you that’s your Christmas gift sitting there on two eighty five. We just we’ve said this before if for no other reason.

[00:34:32] The reason to be polite and drive politely around truck drivers is that might be your shipment.

[00:34:37] Right. Yeah. Right. And he you you you imagined a life of a truck driver. Yeah. They have to work day and night, you know, moving those goods. Appreciate it. Yeah. Well, I don’t think we appreciate them for you. If you’ve ever driven anywhere and, you know, taken a road trip and you see a truck at 2:00 in the morning.

[00:34:54] Yeah. And sometimes it’s a little bit swaying in and out of the lane as that truck. I was exhausted. Yeah. So, you know, they don’t they don’t get enough love with that.

[00:35:04] The point you’re making and being empathetic towards what they do in the critical job they have. Making things happen. Watching standpoint, great points there. All right. Let’s shift gears for quick. And Linda, tell us about your role where you spend your time and then we’re going to dove more in town airport operations.

[00:35:23] So just pretty much like Elliot mentioned it, you know, the way we see our role, because, you know, I support Elliot in, you know, building the passenger and the cargo side.

[00:35:34] I tend to be a little bit MOLPUS passionate about the cargo side. But, you know, when our charge is to grow, the volumes come into Vetlanta.

[00:35:44] But before or as we grow the volumes, it is more we have to work on. What do we have to offer? What do we have to offer? The Grand Hundley’s? What do we have to offer? You know, the stakeholders. We have to improve the standards that we have on the ground. It’s not just about bringing more, more, more, more. When we are not providing the best of the best of the best on the ground, you know, so which is one of the reasons why, as an example, we are facilitators. We have to make sure that the facility, the facility that we have has the best in class of everything we can provide for them. Case in point, the air cargo community system, you know, we have to make sure that we are good stewards to all of the stakeholders.

[00:36:29] And that is one of the things that we are really excited to talk about. There’s a pretty good Segway on her. Yeah, I think so.

[00:36:35] Yeah. That was nice. And while she she was not she was not trained or prompted people.

[00:36:40] So but right before we get to the Atlanta Air Cargo Community System, which Linda was referring to. Let’s let’s let’s set the table right now. Let’s let’s set the table from a Consul General operations and the aircraft corps air air cargo operations on any of my 70p the cup of coffee this morning. You know what, do if you want to paint a picture for kind of the background of what gives way to this community system? What takes place? Talk talk to us more about especially air cargo operations a lot of folks may not appreciate now.

[00:37:14] Well, a couple of things happening globally. E-commerce is growing. More and more people, as I mentioned earlier, they want, you know, their goods to be delivered instantly and they want full visibility of this. What’s also happening is, is urbanization. They’re more and more people moving out of the suburbs, suburbs and into cities. And younger people want to be in cities. They want to be close to the restaurants and close to the nightlife and close to just life in general.

[00:37:41] They really care about owning autos like they did lay like four generations there. I was like, can’t wait to drive. Can’t wait. Drive. Get a car. That’s not now the case these days. Everyone wants Uber.

[00:37:52] And you know, when Uber and Lyft started at the airport, we lost a lot of revenue in terms of parking because everyone most of the young people and they they all take Uber and Lyft. No one wants to drive and be stuck in traffic because, you know, quality of life is important. And being sitting in a car for for two hours, not going anywhere is not quality of life. So consumers and, you know, urbanization has caused consumers to just change the way the way they think and the way we have to look at new business. Manufacturing is also changing manufacturing today in the old days. You know, you’re at big factories with big clunky equipment. Today, you have a lot of high tech equipment with very small components, small parts of the super expensive suit as sophisticated with sensors and lasers and conveyor belts and that sort of thing. And, you know, I think a study showed that the the the what we call the beat to see that is the business, the consumer market for e commerce, such as Amazon shipped out to consumers is about almost three trillion dollars in in B2B. That is business to business. It’s about over 10 trillion dollars. So it’s manufacturers are now moving goods via e-commerce. What’s what that means is that, you know, traditionally cargo moved, as I mentioned earlier, in consolidation. So you had a shipment and, you know, different people had a shipment and it had to be broken down today instead of, you know, multiple shipments instead of a good example as a shoe store.

[00:39:34] Yeah. So in the old days, a shoe store orders a lot of shoes on one ship, melon one package, and then all that shoe comes in one big container. So that to that shop. And then they sell it, you know, in to a mall or a shopping mall, a brick and mortar store to two people. So you drove to the mall and you purchased your shoes. Today we order our shoes online. Yeah. So. You want a different shoe. You want a different one so each person gets a small package. And now we have to think how do we get instead of this big shipment, we have now multiple little packages coming to multiple different people. And to get that done efficiently and they want it immediately. And the same thing is happening in manufacturing. So the shipping structure has to change. And one of the biggest problems with the shipping structure in the past was that we didn’t have information. We didn’t know where our goods were. Customs didn’t know what was coming. Security didn’t know whether or not. Is it. Is it cell phones or is it guns? We don’t know. Right. And consigning the shipper to the the person who’s receiving the goods at the end didn’t know what it was. So now we need to overlay that system with digital technology and that digital technologies was, you know, what we’re going to talk about in the Ryder cargo community system and that’s where we’re headed.

[00:40:54] Well, let’s dove right in.

[00:40:56] Yeah, let’s define what it is. Yeah, I’m excited to hear about this.

[00:40:59] So the AHCCCS, the Atlanta Air Cargo Community System.

[00:41:05] So that’s a mouthful.

[00:41:09] So for starters, what it is and the why behind it.

[00:41:14] Ok, so we like to call it a virtual integrator. If you think I’ll give it two different definitions.

[00:41:22] If you think of U.P.S., for example, you know, U.P.S., they have their own trucks, they own planes, they own warehouse. So they know where the good is anywhere because they have what you call a close loop I.T. platform. No one else can access. This is Ryder just has a they have a number that you you punch in on line and it tells you where you or your product is.

[00:41:45] Now, the cargo community system, it’s linking a variety of stakeholders with their own trucks, with their own ground handlers.

[00:41:54] And the ground handlers are people that basically their job is to take it off the plane, put it on a truck, take it off a truck, put it on a plane.

[00:42:02] Got it. Also under appreciated members of the Indian supply chain right now.

[00:42:06] So they have a warehouse. And then on one side of the warehouse, planes pulled up to big doors. And on the other side of the warehouse of trucks pulled up to a big door. And they’re just transferring goods back and forth all day while at night. Yeah. So so so they have to do that efficiently. And the faster they can do that, the faster you get your good.

[00:42:27] And sometimes in the old days that used to sit on in that truck in that warehouse for eight days, seven, you know, 14 days today, you know, the chairman of Alibaba, Jack Ma, said that we’re moving an e-commerce on a whole what Amazon, Alibaba, all these these online platforms are pushing us to say that we can get anything anywhere in the world in 72 hours or less.

[00:42:55] If I haul Tom out just for a second, because in the warm up conversation before we delve into this podcast, we were talking about Alibaba. Yep. E-commerce is some of these things. And and I think there’s a lot of folks in Supply chain, certainly a lot of folks in the business world here in the U.S. that have a gap about Alibaba and just their platforms. Greg, weigh in, please. And tell us about why that should be on your radar if you’re listening this pop.

[00:43:24] Yeah, sure. I don’t know if Eliot and Linda know how easy it is to get me to weigh in on these kind of topics. Well, so, you know, Alibaba is orders of magnitude bigger than Amazon. They are a similar type platform with similar type technology with a much, much greater both digital technology and physical reach than Amazon. So they’re based in China. Originally, Alibaba, what their business was, was connecting people who wanted to build private label goods with the manufacturers in China who built those goods. And that has become such a huge marketplace. I don’t know if everyone remembers some years ago these little electric electric scooters. Right, like razor scooter. And then they started looking like actual little vespers and that sort of thing. That was quite popular some years ago. Well, many of the companies who made those many the companies would make some motorcycles. They get those motorcycles from old designs, old Honda motorcycle designs that are made in China in factories. And they’re hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of different products that are made there. But Alibaba has now become an e-commerce platform. They have a product called aliexpress where you can buy stuff. Lead time is substantially longer than what we’re talking about here, or at least right now.

[00:44:44] But it’s anyway, it’s a it’s a big platform units. I wouldn’t yet say it’s a competitor with Amazon or actually I should probably say the inverse. Amazon is not yet a competitor, a viable competitor for Alibaba. Because their volumes are so much higher and their volumes are so much more in many cases need to be, but they are business-to-business, but they are also becoming and have become business to consumer as well. But there they and jadie dot com, which is a company in India. They’re big players in e-commerce and in business to business as well. So, I mean, I think we become really insulated. Yes. We think it’s funny because we were just talking to somebody that we were interviewing. I think they want to be on the show or something like that. And they had hardly any idea what Amazon did because they were coming from China and because they were familiar with Ali Baba. They they had no idea what Amazon does. So that should give you some perspective of how the rest of the world sees e-commerce waitress’s just the states are just North America. Right.

[00:45:55] I think it’s fascinating because as as folks that cover the industry and cover in the end, Supply chain, you hear the Amazon drum 15 times a minute. Right. Yeah. But to into your point, here in the States, you don’t hear nearly enough about Alibaba. So it is it is this wist. It’s restrained dynamic that does exist. But I imagine well, just that we explained this to our audience.

[00:46:22] You two are clearly in line. Yeah. You’re the busiest airport in the world. Yes. Right. You shipped to and from virtually every right, every international destination. This is just second nature for you. But I think it’s important for us. I think that’s a good pause. It’s an important for us to introduce our audience to the fastness of other companies and entities that exist out there. Yeah, right. I mean, there’s another one just in Africa. I forget the name, but it’s Amazon ask as well. And it is ubiquitous across the continent of Africa as it jamir that that’s one of. This one was to get Malcolm on. It was I can’t remember if it was I was the camera if it was named after a desert or something. But anyway, I. My apologies. But but there are jamir as it is another good example of one. So anyway, there’s there’s a lot of scale here. And these folks deal with it every single day. So I think it’s important for our audience to recognize the vastness of the supply chain outside of North America, the small, relatively small world. Yes.

[00:47:28] From a consumer standpoint, that we we know that even in this global business economy, we can still get geographically have geographic blinders on. I think that’s kind of what we’re illustrating here. All that still continue and change, though. Yeah. And as you mentioned, Eliot, Linda are the enlightened ones. Yeah. I feel I’m behind the times a little bit even in the conversation this morning. But we’re here to, you know, kind of plant seeds with our audience that may not know about some these things that that that are active part big parts of the global. We lower hurdles and break boundaries.

[00:48:01] That’s what we’re doing. Right. Let me please. Yeah. To that.

[00:48:04] Because, you know, when we talk in this line in the U.S., you know, the U.S. is the world’s biggest economy, right. In airports in the U.S., there is no other airport in North America that has kind of a community system. However, in Europe, they have had kind of community systems for years. In the Chicago community systems are even older than European cargo community systems. Asia’s airports are so far advanced that in the 80s there was so Adwok, we are still trying to catch up with them pre 1980s.

[00:48:39] Wow. Why is that? Why? Why are they so far ahead?

[00:48:44] Well, because, you know, we typically when we benchmark, we look inside ourselves. We don’t benchmark. We don’t see outside ourselves as being greater than us. Whole world is not our kind of Veridian that exist out there. You know, once you go out and see what is it, you start to realize that we really need to wake up, you know? And so in a lot of the work that we do when we go out and we do business development. You know, we really start to see what when we do all benchmarking, we need to benchmark not with the U.S., but with the best in the business. Yeah. You know, hands, you know, some of our partnerships, it is with the best in the business, not the best in the US. Yeah, I think that’s good.

[00:49:21] Programs like these are very important because typically in the U.S., the whole cargo industry, both both sea and air doesn’t get a lot of exposure, you know, and the average person’s not doesn’t take it seriously. So what happens is that when when, for instance, when you develop an airport in the U.S., the focus is on passenger focus on it is on making sure that it’s superefficient. You know, Atlanta’s a superefficient airport when it comes to passenger on the cargo side. We we you know, it’s almost like it’s an afterthought. And this is to out most of. Of the U.S., and only today, both airlines and airports are starting to recognize the value of cargo and adding adding to it and making it more efficient. And that’s because of the e-commerce push. But in Europe and in Asia, trade has been what, you know, made these countries develop. Right. Countries like Singapore. They don’t have any resources. Right. But trade is super important. They know everything. Yeah. So if they focus on, you know, how do we get the goods in them? Goods out? How do we add value to it and get it out pretty quickly? How do we trade all these countries focused on trade? They pay a lot of attention to cargo on all sides and they pay a lot of attention to increasing efficiencies. So that’s why they started, you know, a little ahead of us. The beauty is that we have a huge consumer market here. So a lot of what we produce, we can consume here. We just need to get it in. And it’s one of the you know, since we’re a big consumer market, we’re going to consume anyway. What do we get it efficiently or not? Right. What what’s with a game changer is e-commerce know and the fact that, you know, younger consumers want it instantly and produces one. Want one. Goods just in time. Yes.

[00:51:13] So you’re speaking to the what and the why of the Atlanta air cargo community system. And I love the fact they are trouble. I mean, once again, the Atlanta airport is a trailblazer here in North America. And clearly the world as well, but particularly in this system as all speak of, you know, other continents that have kind of had the jump start on it. But you are leading the charge here within the North American airport system, airport community, I guess. So let’s talk about this, the stakeholders for a second. And then you all had a variety of support. This helped get this system off the ground. Speak to that a little bit.

[00:51:51] Well, the beauty of the system here is that we we approach. We introduced it to a couple of private sector stakeholders. So so a sport, for instance, where there are ground handling company that’s on our airport. And as I mentioned, the ground handlers, basically a company that moves it from the plane to a warehouse onto a truck and also brought to plane. So so Swiss ports, one, we had a couple of trucking companies like JP Hong. You know, very interested southeast in southeast and south eastern was another company. We had some freight forward is like agility, C.H. Robinson siege.

[00:52:29] All these folks get how important it is. The project here, they do building digital bridges. And the visibility and the transparency is so it’s in demand from a general business source supply chain standpoint. And these folks got that he did and wanted to help make it happen here. Is that right?

[00:52:49] Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, it came from solving a problem that Atlanta’s been very successful, what, with regards to cargo because of its location. And. You know, highway networks and it being the world’s busiest airport. And, you know, with success comes sometimes some challenges. You get very busy, you get congested. And that happened to us around the airport, got very congested with trucks, trucks. It was very difficult for trucks to get to the warehouse in time for their flights. And sometime in the past, we developed a bad reputation. Truckers used to avoid Atlanta rail because they would say, well, Atlanta’s too busy. We can’t get in to even pick up or deliver cargo. So let’s just bypass Atlanta and go to another airport.

[00:53:35] Nobody goes there anymore because it’s always too busy.

[00:53:37] Right.

[00:53:39] So so we we did a couple of things first. We built a truck staging area so that trucks could park a little bit away from the warehouse. And we we installed a technology where they could get assigned a dock door and then they only go go to that to the warehouse. Once they got an assignment to go to a doctor. And now we’ve added even higher level technology with the air cargo community system, where you can not only book a doctor or you know, exactly when your cargo is going to be ready. It’s it’s the ground handlers who’s going to give you permission as a truck driver to go sit, go go to the doctor and collect your cargo. You know, as I was talking to a trucking company the other day, I think it was airfreight a forwarder and freight forwarder. And he was saying, you know, when he in the old days, he would come to the airport, send a driver to the airport, and they didn’t know what our not doing to get any cargo. So they go and kind of fish around. They have their big stack of documents, airway bills, and they they go and they stand for three hours in front of a desk in a long line front of a customer service desk. And then they get to the customer service. And he says, well, I’m sorry, sir, there’s no cargo here for you today. The cargo didn’t arrive.

[00:54:58] So if this stack of papers that they came with, did they go through these? Yeah.

[00:55:02] Not here. Not here or not. Oh, my gosh.

[00:55:05] So you. So they would have driven a truck through on 285 and all that traffic, get to the airport, get, you know, wait for three hours, go through the documents, not to pick up anything. So, you know, that that and that happened about, you know, 30 percent of the time. Wow. Wow. So today that truck will go on the platform and the ACARS platform and it will look for that specific airway bill number and the air and the grain handler will say, OK, the cargo is here, but it’s not ready for pickup yet. It’ll be ready around 2:00 p.m.. So around 2:00 p.m., not only customs would have checked it, but we’d have, you know, unpacked it and have it ready at the dock door. See fifty five and you can drive to dock. We’ll see. See. Five at 2:00 p.m. and then you pick up the cargo.

[00:55:53] Wow. Love it. Such a game changer. So you don’t even go to the airport to know that it’s ready. Yeah.

[00:55:59] So the driver can be utilized for something else. Yes. Up until 2 o’clock.

[00:56:03] Yeah. Let’s save on fuel. You save on time. You know, you don’t slam a bunch of trucks at the airport just waiting now.

[00:56:10] So. OK. So this launched November 14th. So by the time this publishes a couple months ago. Let’s talk about impact. I mean, clearly we get it. But I want to say what it could be. Yeah. To hear what it is. Yeah, but but how can you or any projections as you fracture head around the impact of this? This this really is game changing platform at the airport.

[00:56:35] Well, that day impact is guided by the take-up that we’ve seen from the private sector. The private sector sees that this is cutting their cost as is cutting their, you know, efficiency. They can utilize resources a lot better. So people are clamoring to sign on because if everyone in the Supply chain is signed on to this system, they have full visibility of the cargo. There’s also I mean, I forgot to mention is also a payment component. So pay cargo is connected to the company that’s connected through the systems we pay right through this.

[00:57:08] You pay as you patroness system is. Is it? Sorry. Yeah. I’m curious about this. So. So is it. I show up at C 55. I pick up my stuff. I verify receipt.

[00:57:22] Yeah. And then processing through the system so that you don’t verify it’s been verified in the system. Yeah. You you can’t get a doctor until you’ve paid.

[00:57:31] Oh ho. Yeah. Really. So.

[00:57:33] So and to pass and to pass the drone handler would say I’m going to give you a little bit of a favor. We make a lot of phone calls. I need the cargo right away. Could you come in? So you get to the warehouse and he gives him the cargo without getting payment for a delivery order. And then you’ve got to chase it and then you got to chase him to get paid. You know, sometimes months later on, the boss is screaming down your neck for screwing up your accounts.

[00:57:57] So. So the companies that benefit from this, obviously the airlines, obviously the carriers, the ground handlers, you know, is every member of the supply chain that is involved in this is benefiting.

[00:58:09] You’re getting your money when you need to get it in advance. The ground handler is not swamped with trucks. Right.

[00:58:16] And not enough stuff. Right. You know who is coming? Then you can stuff for it. So the truckers, you don’t have to come to the airport and wait. You are not stuck in traffic. Even we as consumers, it helps us. Why? Because these not a thousand trucks on the highway trying to get him to dump truck, to dump cargo. Just because, you know, it’s, you know, peak days. Fridays, they need to come in dumped cargo because it’s kind of day. We don’t have that anymore. Everything is scheduled now.

[00:58:44] These order and the beauty about it is that it’s using your existing technology. So whatever system you have, you can continue to use that system. It’ll integrate with it. And they’re using things like cell phones. So you’re using the cell phone camera to scan a QR code and you scan the code and it shows all that information on that that that shipment.

[00:59:06] So no additional heart, no additional hardware then integration.

[00:59:09] Oh, yeah. A C Sheer. Yes. Yeah. Just does integration.

[00:59:13] Just get just get the app on your phone and on and on your computer. And so a trucker has the app on his his or her phone. They go to the warehouse. They scan the document. This kind of QR code and it populates onto the ground handlers system.

[00:59:28] So they know they have everything that the truckers arrive. And so there’s a as an update on the inventory. You know, in life time. In real time. Wow. For each shipment.

[00:59:40] So it’s in. And the stages of that inventory. I mean, so can somebody know that it’s off the plane but it in the ground handlers. Yeah. Yeah. Carriage or whatever. And now in their warehouse. Now in customs they can know every stage of.

[00:59:56] Yeah, and insurance companies love it because, you know, who do we sue if it’s broken? Who’s responsible?

[01:00:02] Right. And see every one of those gandolf loading images. Yeah. Wow. And customers loved the idea of having images as well because you can take a photograph of the shipment.

[01:00:12] The actual boxes or whatever. Yeah. At Origin. Attach it to that file for that shipment. And at the end, customers can review that or that the latest photograph with the original to see whether or not there are any differences. Has the package changed?

[01:00:26] They didn’t answer gnashed. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

[01:00:30] So this is this is gonna be transformational for folks that use the airport from a supply chain, a cargo business side of things. Let’s let’s move on beyond the A C C S, let’s talk about what else is next for the airport now.

[01:00:50] Well, um, a couple of things with regard to the ACARS.

[01:00:56] There there is an artificial intelligence support for it. Okay. That and as we use this system over time, Microsoft Xur is supporting cocain that this is hosting it here in the US. So it’s it’s it’s it’s hosted on U.S. servers and. And so it’s learning all the stakeholders as we go along and suggesting improvements and how we can make it more efficient as we outstanding. Yeah.

[01:01:23] And so that’s a lot of numbers which you must love.

[01:01:28] I want to dig in. I bet you do. You want to see how it’s working, know, because it’s gonna give us data. I want to share what we can do with this data and how we can learn from them.

[01:01:38] Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah, that’s that’s fast. So she isn’t built for continued improvements when I’m here. Yeah. Yeah. Which is outstanding. Exactly. What else?

[01:01:46] As you look at your crystal ball and in terms of, you know, capacity. So we have right now we have three warehouses that are about one hundred thousand square square feet that are operational. We have twenty three grown handlers mentioned Swiss port earlier. We also have lines drawn international and also funds cargo. They handle own their own operations. And then we have a foot warehouse with another hundred and hundred thousand square feet that’s going gonna be handled by a company called Worldwide Freight Services W F Worldwide Flight Services WFTS.

[01:02:23] And they they’re scheduled to start around, you know, early the first quarter of twenty, twenty, twenty. And they are also going to take up the cargo coming into system. So we’ll have two operators with that system on the airport.

[01:02:37] And then we we we we have an hour, if I are a request for information right now out, which is due around the end of March next year and in 2020.

[01:02:50] And the point of that is that we want to have a partner to come in on the airport. We’re leasing the land south of the airport. But but with with airport access, which runway access? And we want to have a company come in and develop a state of the art facility, a facility that can that has material handling systems, you know, full automation that takes and control a digital cargo and cargo community system.

[01:03:18] And, you know, bring all the latest technology to play into this this this facility. And we always talk about we want to we want to be able to move cargo at the speed of baggage. And Al, tell you why that’s important. And it’s not just, you know, a fancy cliche. Yeah. Most of the aircraft, if you think of Atlanta, we have over 150, 160 domestic connections to Atlanta daily. We have over 70 international collections daily. Wow. So it a point to point connections.

[01:03:57] So faster than U.P.S., faster than FedEx, we can deliver e commerce faster than anyone else because of our connection. Yeah. On Beli cargo, on a passenger aircraft.

[01:04:08] It’s under your feet if you’re in your seat. On their ground. Yeah. Your feet down there with your luggage.

[01:04:12] Yeah. I mean that’s a good point for that. For the sake of, you know, many people we think of when we go on a plane, we’re sitting at the top. And if you think of the plane as a cylinder, it’s kind of cut in half and you’re at the top and your luggage is at the bottom. Well, along with your luggage is a lot of cargo. Yeah. You know, as well as, you know, your cats, your dogs and bright pets and so forth.

[01:04:33] All right.

[01:04:34] So so a lot of things move underneath that plane and at a bottom. And if you can get e commerce on that plane, meaning that you have to be fast in how you move cargo. Because because passengers are not going to wait. I can’t delay a passenger flight. So you have to move cargo faster and then move baggage. As fast as cargo. As fast as baggage. Yeah. Then. You get e commerce on the plane and you is a game changer and it’s a game changer for airlines. It is because, you know, cargo can make up as much as 20 percent of a of an airline’s revenue. And I think for many, many airlines in the U.S., we’re not utilizing it enough. The betti enough.

[01:05:14] We’re just packing it with luggage and luggage is getting less and less because of, you know, charges, people using more on carry on luggage and carrying less goods. So how do we make money with that? That’s money on the table. You know how the airlines make money.

[01:05:31] That’s that’s a great transformation.

[01:05:33] I mean, if you have if you can if you can align those two supply chains, the human and baggage supply chain and and the cargo supply chain, then, oh, my gosh, that’s so powerful.

[01:05:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So how can our listeners reach out to both of you all and really learn more about Evidence.com Airport? That was the best places to go.

[01:05:55] Well, there’s our Web site, eighty-year-old outcome, which is, you know, Atlanta’s the airport’s Web site would does a right that we all saw on Linked-In, on Facebook, on Twitter. We do publish a lot of these our new activities and new initiatives online on these social media platforms.

[01:06:14] We have a lot of articles out there about all our initiatives. If you Google Atlanta Airport and cargo, all kinds of things pop up. Yeah. You see some pictures of me and Linda maybe in a couple of all of our stakeholders. And, you know, the thing is, we’re not doing this alone. We’re doing this with the private sector, with a lot of stakeholders. So it’s exciting because everyone else gets excited about it and about the potential and the possibilities. And and it’s great working with the Atlanta private sector that’s involved in the SUPPLY CHAIN because they’re they’re very involved. They take ownership in the very beginning. You know, when you talk to all these stakeholders, they say this is our cargo community system.

[01:06:56] Yeah, it’s theirs, you know. And I love hearing that. And that’s the way they talk about it.

[01:07:01] And and they’ve been very insightful. I mean, we are very blessed to work with the kind of stakeholders we welcome because we had our initial meeting for these kinds of community system in January and then for January, the end of January was end of January right before we traveled. We went live in November. This is how committed, dedicated the ideas, so thorough the effort, you know, and those yardsticks. So it it has been such a joy to work with them. And we’re just looking forward to any of the other collaborations we have. It’s been a joy. They definitely need coming to work that much better.

[01:07:39] And they continue to sign up the U.S. and the United States Senate. They sell everything that go they call the greatest ambassadors for this.

[01:07:48] That’s great, including the airports. You know, there are the airports in the U.S. that are starting to look to sign on. So we’re leading. But there are others.

[01:07:56] And that and that’ll be critical to this long term is because the connectivity with many airports is what what makes it work even better.

[01:08:04] We look forward to. Imagine our listeners can be a to find out a lot more information about the airport. Did all the coverage you get for the a._c._c? Yes, I got the acronym. I love our acronyms and SUPPLY CHAIN and let to bring you back Gonksi. You know, I love how you’ve built in that case improvement element and very intentionally so that, you know, you get better as you move in 2.0 and 3.0, what have you and your gathering feedback feedback sounds like almost instantaneously from your partner. So we’ll have you back on talk about what you’ve learned as this now is launch and is being actively used. Can we imagine some case studies and new studies? Yeah, you see cases you’re going to get from industry.

[01:08:46] So and we know you’ll have metrics on it.

[01:08:49] What kind of improvements? I love it. I love that. I love your passion, too.

[01:08:54] So it’s been too long. Come and love to have really enjoyed have an elite page, airport director, air service development and Linda Ashwini, N8 airport officer, air for Air Service Development with the world’s best airport. Busiest for sure. Best for sure. Hartsfield Jackson. I can clarify the international airport. We can’t you know, we have to make a a five installment conversation here. We can’t cover enough in one one simple hour. But thank you both for your time. Yeah. Thank you for having us. Really appreciate it. So standby one second. As Greg and I. Wow, what a project is setting the bar. Yeah. In North America after setting the bar and so many other different ways when it comes to aviation. But exciting for anyone to use the airport for business purposes.

[01:09:42] Yeah. In case there’s anybody who doesn’t know, this has been the busiest airport. Almost every day since 1996. Right. So this I mean, before that it would kind of fluctuate between a couple different airports, Chicago and. And Frankfurt. But when you put the accomplishments of this airport up against the timeframe, I mean, it seems like a long time, but we are talking about, you know, air travel. So, so dramatic improvements over a relatively short amount of time. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that, you know, we were we were still flying little bitty jets under this.

[01:10:22] Yeah. All right. Well, great story.

[01:10:25] Love it. And also love there. The the airport’s participation in one, the events we’ve got coming up in first quarter. So here in the year, we’re we’re we’re we’re in studio through the remainder of the year. It’s upon us. But then comes January and we’ve got events and then we’re going to take the Readers Digest version of our events. So good WREG. Some of these may have passed by the publishers, you know, Latin around. So see SCMP, Atlanta, what’s coming up in January?

[01:10:52] Yes. So that’s the that’s the Atlanta roundtable. Right. So they’re going to have a guest from mass track speaking there. That’s what, the 15th and 16th. Correct. Just 15 UPS are just 15 days.

[01:11:04] Dave Maddox is don’t saying was was night said NASCAR track is coming.

[01:11:10] We’re talking about transportation regulation yet from twenty nineteen what it might mean for your business in 2020. And working folks learn more about that organization. See s SCMP dot org. Right. And that’s the parent organization. Or you can go for the local chapter. Atlanta, CSC dot org. And then we’re going out to Vegas with you.

[01:11:31] Yes. So we’re going out there with Tony Serota and the Retail Logistics Association RLA. Org. So that is a couple days. That one’s a couple of days.

[01:11:40] Right. February 4th. The the six. Yeah.

[01:11:43] Yes. So that’s good. That’s all about reverse Logistics. Circular economy returns, avoiding returns. You’re welcome to you at the airport. You know, when returns come, as if as if consumer air cargo is not not fragmented enough, returns are even worse. Right.

[01:12:00] Hundred billion is what is projected to hit from Thanksgiving. Twenty nineteen to New Year’s. One hundred billion just in the states in terms of return returns. Right. And that’s six billion up from last year.

[01:12:11] And only 20 percent of that will be reused. By the way, this is this is important. We learned this from one of your supply chain.

[01:12:19] That’s right. You get a lot of work doing that in that regard. OK. So then Mode X and then I know if anyone knows that Mode X is coming to town, I’m sure the folks at the airport does knows it’s coming. The largest supply chain trade show in the Western Hemisphere, March 9th to the 12th.

[01:12:36] Thirty five thousand of your closest material handling friends. These people are going to build little warehouses and factories on the show floor. It’s amazing. It even if you just come because you love Tonka toys, it’s worth seeing.

[01:12:50] So the place for you. Yeah. And go haunch to do it. March 10th, our second annual 20, our second annual Atlanta Supply chain Awards taking place hosted by Moad X. Couldn’t imagine a better host for our award. Tuesday, March 10th, we’ve got Kristian Fisher, president CEO, Georgia-Pacific serving as our keynote. Shane Cooper, executive director with the Atlanta Committee for Progress, serving as our emcee. And we’re as tickled as we can be to move in a jail serving as a as a. Absolutely right. Absolutely. We are a big part of the first annual was recognizing the aviation supply chain excellence, I think was the award that the Atlanta airport received this year. I think we’re gonna be talking about a lot of the partners that both Elliott and Linda spoke to, that you are standing up this big transformational project. But that’s gonna be one of the stories that we celebrate across again, across the in the in Supply chain for companies that have some sort of presence here in a 8:58 County, Atlanta metropolitan area. Good news is is free to attend Mode X, mode X, show dot com MDX, show wsj.com.

[01:14:05] To register for that, we’ll charge to A to attend the Vetlanta Supply chain awards. And we’re also limited to our three hundred, not thirty five thousand. Right, but three hundred closest friend. I think we can actually draw three hundred people out of thirty five thousand, don’t you think? Last year sold out. We expect to sell again this year. You can learn more nomination’s registrations. Sponsorships all open at Atlanta. Supply chain Awards WSJ.com. And one last final event, A.M.E. Atlanta is also coming here, bringing the lean summit here May 4th to the 7th. Amy is all about the Association for Manufacturing Excellence. This is a precursor for their international event, which bring thousands more to Atlanta through the airport next year. So look forward to that. A.M.E. dot org for more information. Okay. I was almost like a light. But no shortage of things and for for folks like us that love sitting down with these types of stories, these these things that drive innovation, efficiencies, improvement and ultimately business across the global supply chain community. Let’s do it.

[01:15:12] So much happening. Yeah. Right now and happening so fast. It’s good to see, you know, one of the great facilitators of this hubs of commerce really moving forward like this and driven by and in conjunction with their their stakeholders. Right. That’s right. That’s fantastic.

[01:15:30] So once again, one thing, Elliot, Paige and Linda, Ashwini, Nate, both with Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, thanks for joining us to our listeners. Check out other upcoming events, replays over interviews, other resources at Supply Chain Now Radio dot com.

[01:15:50] As funny as other dreg can say this sleep. Yeah, it sounds like catching up. You know what I was thinking about here? Here’s what I think I was thinking about Susie’s hot sauce. Oh, so. Well, man, I’m gonna go find a place to buy. Love it. Love it, too. Laurie had already moved on. Supply Chain Now Radio dot com. That’s right. Suzanne. Thoughts on our list as follows.

[01:16:13] An Apple podcast. SoundCloud, YouTube. All of you in size work. Podcasts can be found. You’ll miss anything. Yeah. On behalf of the entire team for Scott Luton and Greg White or both. Wishing you a wonderful week ahead. Happy holidays. Happy Hanukkah. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. And we will see you next time. ω Supply Chain Now Radio thinks your body.