Bourbon, Fuel, AOC Pt. 1

Instagram- @jeffdavis_bridgestone
YouTube- JeffDavis_Bridgestone
Twitter- @bridgestonecap
https://www.youtube.com/@ChainReaction-vh7rm
www.bridgestoneinvest.com

Transcript

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Oh, good. The beard and the point. Welcome to Whiskey Wednesdays. Whiskey Wednesdays. Not brought to you by Walcott, a gift from a sponsor at another event. Walcott, this is a authentic Kentucky made bourbon. Rickhouse Reserve. that's the only, Thing that can technically be called, but honestly better be Kentucky. So this is Fading out because it won't pick up with the background whatever but it's joseph magnus and then It's about nine dollars at your local retail outlet and it is worth every penny how much 90 bucks that's a decent price. I think it's about double what I'd normally pay for anything. But it's a beautiful thing. And it's it's just like I say that we get crackling from Billy's Boudin and Cracklin in Scott, Louisiana. That's it's love in a paper sack. I think that Joseph Magnus is love in a glass bottle. So it's worth 90 bucks. Yeah, this is 47. 49 on Instacart. You went for my second sip. Wow, I'm getting aggressive. So how have you been this week, Jeff? Kind of a kick in the nuts, I'm gonna be honest. I have had a few. Yeah, I have too. For legal reasons, I can't really get into it on any kind of a public forum. Really? Yeah. you'll have to tell me that offline. I'm I'll offline. I'll give you an update on on just how Global's doing this week, but it was a kick in the nuts. No minus sales related. It's always the pipeline and things that are, sure. Things never are. I opened up crusher, clearwater, Florida. So I was in, you were there. I was in Gatorland for the first part of the week. And there's a, an interesting thing about Clearwater I did not know, but apparently the life goal was supposed to be single by the time you're 45, so that you can move to Clearwater and have all the 20 somethings and 30 something year old women looking for a single 45 to 55 year old man. That is literally a thing out there. And I, and, but there's this other little caveat that the guys have to have a little bit of money, I there's a guy that we probably both know because he's in our business and he is. He's on the project side of our business. He was on the carrier side. Okay. For CMA projects. Oh, we're going to narrow it down. Okay. All right. He's no longer there. So anyway if any of this has ever noticed, yeah. If anybody listens to this in our industry, they're going to be like, Oh man, those guys are really putting us out there. Yeah. We're starting to call your buses out. we were catching up for some reason. last year or a year and a half ago, we're talking and he moved to floor. I think he moved to Clearwater. Oh my goodness. He lives in Clearwater. And he was loving life down there. I'm not gonna make any accusations, but I did see a lot of upside down pineapple stickers on a lot of cards. And Jeff, I gotta tell you, I did think about you while I was out there. There's there are all these areas of clear water that need to be re gentrified and it's not Like it's not go in and pick and choose this house that has that house It's you get an investment group together go buy a block of houses and fix the block And then you take this one random boat shop went out of business 20 years ago. That's just been vacant And you turn that into some hipster bar. I was gonna say, like a bar. It is ripe for the picking. And I think we could do it and turn and bring down the median age of Clearwater by 20 years. Wow. Because we could actually make it affordable, make it fun, make it somewhere where somebody that's 35 can have it just as good a time. And and then you're not, just looking at 55 year old dudes in Speedos. All right, so we're getting way off topic. This is not Anything related to the topic point is it's interesting. We had good weather. I'm happy to be home. Flight home was a beautiful thing today. Speaking of flights. Yeah, man. Cheers. Speaking of flights, air freight, air cargo market rides and incoming wave, are you doing a lot of air freight right now? I'm doing zero air freight right now, Jim. I'm doing a bunch. All of my freight is ocean freight right now. Yeah, I sent you some today. Within inches of beginning to move my rail freight. Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. working on that deal. We had to do a soft corporate offer as CEO. But we, I was on with the seller and helping them to get the cost model together so they can send it over to apparently a buyer in Egypt. So we have a buyer in Manhattan, a buyer in Egypt, a buyer in China, and we're going to let them fight it out and see who outbids whom and I've given them all the cost model of what it's going to take to actually do this, but I'm really excited about it, man. If we can get this going, once we get this going, it's the first time it's ever been done. It's literally groundbreaking logistics. Nobody's ever just thrown it out there and said, let's go do this. And we're gonna do it. And that's gonna put my little company on a map. Yeah. Whether or not I want it to be on a map, that's another story. But yeah. There's no such thing as bad publicity, right? Yeah. Until Donald Trump might be eating those words right now. No, I'm not gonna put anything on Twitter. Yeah, he's man, I'm a pretty big target and they're handing out 450 million judgments against me. Used to when you were on X, it meant you were like licking somebody's eyeballs and listening to EDM and, bouncing up and down for no reason and sweating profusely. And now if you're on X, that just means you're venting 144 characters of whatever piss and vinegar is in your soul. Yeah. It's weird. Like how you got your joke. I just got it. Did you? Yeah. Now I get it on the uptake. I'm going to blame Walcott. If we don't get on topic, we're going to get drunk before we get to the point. Yeah, there's one. There's Mike Alexander's. How'd you escape that place without an accent? I had one. I only have it when I go back. I'm 20 years, half of my life has now been spent outside of Louisiana. I only have it when I come back from doing cell call down there. Yeah. When I come back talking like this and it comes back real shares. My house says, you better slap that shit out your mouth. I'm not gonna talk about, no, I'm more than New Orleans, so I'm a yak. Yeah. So New Orleans, what I've realized is that New Orleans accent. Is it's like work without all the tension. Yeah. We're laid back, but we talk like this. Hey, first to first time I met somebody from New Orleans. Are you from New York? We all going to New Orleans. I was like it starts with new. I was halfway there. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a when you listen to my mom and my sister, when they're talking, Oh man, I go, man, she is trash. Yeah. It's like when I talked to my brothers, I suddenly become a trucker. Yeah, I don't understand it. I just it's something about these Texas roots, so overall, your week has been good. Yeah. Except for this lawsuit that you'll have to tell me about. It's not a lawsuit. It's not a lawsuit. It's a legal issue over a contract. And it's you know, certain things that really pushed my buttons about, if I'm going to go through the trouble to spend 10, 000 to have a contract written to go into business with somebody, then I want them to follow the letter of that contract. Just as I am going to follow along. Oh, so that's a good point. So this goes into air freight. It doesn't, it pertains to me some of the chapped ass that I have. So I'm working on a deal. I was not anymore, but I learned right. So I go and I meet up with this dude cause I hadn't heard from him. He's moving everything on FedEx lately. FedEx. And these are what is that a good idea so hold up dude, so he had been moving primarily with our previous friends. Okay. Our previous friends previous owner baseball team. And Yes, I know Exactly. So so I was actually brandishing their brand in Florida not knowing that the Phillies You Are doing their spring training there. I'm wearing the star. Yeah, that's funny. Anyway, go ahead. So anyway he's all in, he wants to work with us as recently as like January and it's a lot, it's a driller drilling provider and probably eight to 15 tons a week, big boxes, oversized, about 12 feet long. Oh, the good stuff. It is the good stuff. My friend, it's a good stuff. The oversized charge stuff, going to middle East, all the right singing, all the rights to know exactly how I put that one. I go in and this is Monday he's moving with FedEx, You're going to have to walk me through why, Get this bro FedEx came to them and said, I've seen that you we see that you're moving our, your cargo on our planes. We think we can do it at a better price. We know we can't because you're just paying somebody else and they're moving in our planes. We'll do it better. Build him a tool. FedEx just back sold somebody? Our old friends. Yes. Oh, you know what though? That just came full circle. So I'm because they do that. They used to be the same thing. Our old friends. So I'm just like, I'm blown away by this. And he's telling me, he's an open book and he's not what I would call a, understanding exactly what he's telling me, but he's showing me the tool. He said, they built me a tool and I can put it in basically the same day that I need it picked up and spits out a rate. And he says, Jeff, I'm going to tell you it's anywhere from five to 10, 000 cheaper than anybody else. I'm like, Wow that's impressive right now. And they're handling door to airport, right? They're doing the pickup on a flatbed, the whole nine. But the key is they just back solicited. They back solicited, but they're also undercutting because they know what they were charging the freight forwarder. And I salvaged a very large importer. And I explained to them how that was going to be a terrible plan because they were a brand new importer. They had no idea what they were doing. And I said, I guarantee you no one that's going to get your file on their desk is going to know anything about you. I'm going to edit all that out just so you know, because I have your back and it's very easy to edit. I just have to. I'm gonna have to go, I gotta go refill this. So keep talking and because that was too good. That was too good. So since we're doing, since we're doing promos and we're not getting paid for this, just so everybody knows. Yeah. This is Joseph Magnus. So you want to talk fuel surcharges? I do want to talk fuel surcharge because we have what, nine minutes left? Oh, do we? I don't know. How long is this supposed to go? It'll tell me when there's time. Oh, that's delicious. I'll have to try that. You will have to try it. Maybe you can come over and we'll try it with cigars. I have some Cubans imported directly from Conroe. Anyway, um, so here's the deal. So I've long since had a problem with fuel surcharge. Fuel surcharge came about and I'm writing an article about this, and I'll post the article on LinkedIn, and when I do, I'll put a link to this. Okay, you should be putting a link to this show anyway, but Have a reason when I post this article on linkedin i'm gonna i'm gonna route it to This show as well because I want people to hear You know in in just true talking back and forth on what how this affects us in the world in the world of logistics, but how What people don't understand is everything that affects the world logistics ultimately affects them You So when they hear about something on the news, or they hear about something in the. Media, or whatever that says, fuel surcharges going to this feels doing that. Everybody just ignores it, the common person that works at, S and H manufacturing, which if that's a. Actual company. I apologize. I didn't I'm just making up letters abc company. Oh shit. That's a building supplier Anyway, there's really nothing we can make up anymore that hasn't become a company name. Even the word google became a company So we're screwed on trying to come up with fictitious company names But any person that works in a regular world they see something on the news or they hear a snippet about A fuel surcharge or this surcharge or freight rates trans pacific eastbound is becoming so expensive And they're like that doesn't matter to me and they change the channel or they scroll past and they move on And what they don't realize is that all impacts you personally Because everything you own everything you purchase everything that you get from amazon everything you get from walmart Everything you get from target eggs Costco fertilizer man Hours Flowers There's an entire airline called aerofloral That was built upon bringing flowers in from central america for years and years. So everything you purchase came from somewhere else because The united states is the world's Customer and no one realizes this everybody says why does the usa have to get in everybody's squabbles? Why do they have to get involved in all these skirmishes and all this? And if they want us to be we come in and we say this is how things should be in areas of a wire. Why do we have to trust your opinion? And it's because the customer is always right. And the United States is the world's biggest customer. Like I put, we're the largest customer. Yeah, it is. It is interesting. Yeah, we're the largest customer. If you know if you use that transitive property of the customer is always right. That's why the United States gets to do what we get to do. Now, let's carve out what's happening right now where we're pretty weak in all of those areas. But but the point of all these years, we've been that person, right? We've been that customer. Anyway, people don't realize that everything that you hear on the news, everything that you see that's affecting the cost of importing something, the cost of manufacturing something, the cost of the fuel that it takes to transport something, it all comes down to you. The consumer it's all getting passed through because if I the freight forwarder have to pay that rate I have to pass that on to the importer has to put in Their landed cost goes into there what their profit margin is going to be their profit margin gets put above that And then they put that product on the shelf and you the customer Get to see nine ten twelve fourteen percent inflation and everybody's like how did that happen? You remember those ocean rates you saw in 2021 and 2022 You There were 25, 000 a container for a container that used to cost three grand. Yeah, that's how that happened So it's a it's I hate to use the word the phrase trickle down economic But that's really what it is. That's literally what it is. It trickles down to the consumer So everybody that says they don't care about economic policy. They don't care That there was a 25 percent up charge put on all chinese imports. They don't care It's all getting paid for by the consumer It's not, anyway, back to the topic. So as we noticed in our last podcast, I have a hard time staying on topic because I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things. I was going to show you something as you were sharing that. How do I share the screen? Go to share screen. Here it is. Share screen. Cause you're exactly correct. And look, you know, I was going on podcast as you can see, and having these conversations. And stating that very same theory, David, that's why we're friends. Yeah, that's right. Supply chain challenges is going to affect material prices. Absolutely. Absolutely. It affects everything, right? Investing during the financial crisis and balancing work life. But I went on about 15 to 20 different podcasts talking about that. After, how global supply chain and interest rates are impacting investors, because these are builders, these are developers. They were dealing with these inflation costs, these inflationary costs. And the. the backlogs. And so everything that you're saying is absolutely correct. And it's not just fuel. It's everything from lead times from overseas, from manufacturing. So absolutely, you're a hundred percent correct. We are aligned. And a lot of people don't understand what the term leading indicators means, and leading indicators is. It's an indication of what's going to happen to the economy and leading indicators start with manufacturing and manufacturing always has to order packaging. They have to order crating, packaging, pallets because as they're manufacturing goods, they have to. Order all this packaging and pallets and packaging, all the crating to get their product their supplies, their tools move to to producers, right? So leading indicator means who's on the front end of that line. Who's going to get the first phone call when there's an order placed? So if somebody makes a big order from Walmart for a bunch of toys or whatever it is, then Walmart has to reach out to a manufacturer of toys and say, Hey, we got to do this. And so yeah, so Are we related? Oh my god You are our fathers So so, It you know people don't understand what that means. What's the leading indicator? You know if packaging suppliers or crating suppliers Pallet builders say that their income is down, their revenue is down. That's bad. That's a leading indicator that like, that means nobody's ordering anything because nobody's building anything. Nobody's going to ship anything. And that's bad. And I'll tell you what I've learned. I've learned something new too. I've learned that when inventories are high, I know you've known this, but I'm on the import side, like the higher that inventories are that's also a leading indicator of the import side being slowing down and manufacturing over there, slowing down. And so when, during the kind of real estate boom cycle, there's a lot of different booms. There's numerous. Cycles that were going right. Segments. And one of them was warehousing. Everybody wanted to build these new warehousing. So I was getting all these guys coming Hey warehousing. I said slow down there, Tonto. Why Tonto? I don't know. You don't like that one. No, I'm good with it. I didn't, Tonto was a faithful friend. That's why I'm telling him slow down there. Faithful friend. What would be a better one? Boudreaux. Oh, Boudreaux. Slow down there, Boudreaux. But slow down. The only reason, so you're going to go build a whole bunch of warehousing. Why do they need warehousing? Because right now there's no space because they brought all this crap in because they were rushed buying. Yep. So everybody's going on these numbers that are inflated, but everybody was panic buying. They were panic buying, that's what I was about to say. They were panic buying because of the shortages created by the supply chain shutting down in the first. So I was not on board with these warehouse new builds and you can drive around Houston. And see a lot of empty warehouses that haven't leased. There's a couple by beltway and 45. I have seen them all, man. There is a gorgeous. Ooh, I wish I had the money. 256, 000 square feet. Off of Imperial Valley and the area. They've got a dock plate at every single dock door and they've got a thousand dog doors and I toured that facility thinking that we were going to open a PPE warehouse. Oh yeah. When you were working with an old girl, not to be named, everyone thought they were PPE business. And I went and toured that warehouse. And it is still vacant today. That's a lot of money that has been spent with no return. So I just was not on, there's a lot, that's all pro forma stuff, right? You know what the builder got though? Paid. 100 percent tax write off in 2020. Yeah. Which we don't need anymore. So that's another, that's a leading indicator, right? Yeah. The high inventories that are, they're still bleeding out. It's terrible, dude. It's terrible. But I don't understand. So talking about the air freight, I don't get the pride in that, Red Sea, I don't know, because air freight is high right now. It's weirdly high. Ocean freight is weirdly high. It's weirdly. Okay. All right. I think that this is actually I think this is, Okay, I'll go. I don't know how public forum this is because I think we have tens and tens of listeners, but that plane in the background is a Ukrainian owned. Yeah, at the time there was two, right? That plane that night was going to Africa that picture was taken. It was going to Senegal. That plane cost me, I believe, 785, 000 that night. That plane, if I call for that plane right now to get that same flight, would be 3. 4 million. And what they're hiding behind is the fact that they can't home base in the Ukraine anymore. They're having to home base in Germany. And when he, when, anytime you call for the plane, they have to leave Germany and come to you and then take your flight and then go back to Germany. So they're charging you for the round. And it's a, it's bullshit. Jeff Ukraine is in my opinion, internet, the largest money laundering operation on the planet earth. Yeah, I'm down with that. How many other countries in the world tax their residents so that they can send money to the United States? If you do that math compared to us and give me like a reasonable balance, then maybe we can have a decent conversation on it. But if you can't figure it out, maybe it's a theory. But that aircraft right there is a complete ripoff at this moment in time. And if we could get our U. S. government to declassify a C 5 Galaxy, we wouldn't need that piece of shit anymore. All we need is something that has a way to sit on the ground, load from the ground. and carry 120 tons and the C5 can do that. So if we can get the U. S. military to just declassify some of their 25 year old C5s, McDonnell Douglas, reliable aircraft, totally reliable, GE powered, just declassify five of them, just five of them. I'll start the company. I'll start the chartering company, global. We'll start the chartering company. It'd be great. It'd be great. And then we can put the Ukrainians back on their ass. Hey, go join this other meeting. Okay. See you