Narrowbody passenger aircraft are considered the wasteland of the shrinking landscape of U.S. air cargo.
Most shippers and freight forwarders shun the aircraft type because, by definition, it lacks widebody capabilities to handle larger volumes. Like their widebody counterparts, narrowbodies are beholden to passenger schedules, which frequently don’t conform with shipping needs. In a domestic environment dominated by surface transportation, narrowbodies are seen as a square peg in a round hole.
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Chris Guggenheim begs to differ. In his world, one man’s trash is one other man’s treasure. In July 2022, the serial entrepreneur (pictured) launched Clearjet, a parcel delivery company that mixes regional ground transport with the nation’s narrowbody air fleet akin to Boeing 737s. The planes provide the long-haul, middle-mile transport of lightweight packages. The aircraft are bracketed by regional carriers that handle the first- and last-mile portions of the move.
By leveraging the roughly 9,000 each day nationwide narrowbody flights and the low cost rates offered by the airlines to fill their bellies with revenue-producing cargo, Clearjet goals to supply two-business-day deliveries at ground-delivery prices, Guggenheim said.
Under the service, Clearjet’s regional surface partners sweep the primary mile at customer locations after which truck to any of the nine airports within the Clearjet network positioned within the East, West, Midwest and South. Clearjet manages the on-airport sortation after which moves the parcels to the respective airlines. Upon the flight’s arrival, Clearjet either tenders the parcels to regional partners for final delivery or it meets the flight, and the shipments, with its own delivery vehicles.
Clearjet’s model is akin to a zone-skipping service, a practice wherein package volumes are delivered to a carrier’s hub local to the package’s final destination. Doing so allows the shipper to diminish its costs by skipping many of the eight carrier zones that divide the U.S. transportation market. Zone skipping is usually most cost-effective when it involves large package volumes.
Clearjet’s focus is on zones 6 through 8 because they involve the longest delivery distances. Nonetheless, Guggenheim said that regional truckers also can pick up their very own shorter-haul parcels after they make their initial sweeps for Clearjet, thus turning his company right into a de facto zone 2-8 provider.
The everyday narrowbody has an available payload of about 3,000 kilos. Still, that’s enough to maneuver a good amount of 10-pound or lighter packages, which is Clearjet’s sweet spot, Guggenheim said.
Customers include third-party logistics providers, apparel, fashion and cosmetics corporations, and e-commerce sites managed by Shopify, Guggenheim said.
Clearjet has also found passenger airlines to be a receptive audience, Guggenheim said, because the U.S. Postal Service continues to shift more parcels from air to ground as a part of the agency’s “Deliver for America” campaign, thus siphoning business away from all kinds of airlines.
Clearjet has no problem using widebodies in the event that they weren’t spoken for by larger users, Guggenheim said. “Widebodies get taken up quick,” he said. Clearjet doesn’t accept hazardous materials shipments. It also eschews the airlift of integrated carriers like FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) and UPS Inc. (NYSE: UPS).
One in all the risks of the model are the potential disruptions brought on by dynamic passenger schedules. To counter that, Clearjet stations employees at each airport to shift parcels onto other flights if the unique belly lift is scrubbed, Guggenheim said.
Guggenheim founded Clearjet as a by-product of his longtime work within the e-commerce music achievement space, where he still is a serious player. (Guggenheim’s music company, OneLive, fulfilled all the VIP ticket packages for Taylor Swift’s The Eras megatour.)
His music company was an exclusive user of FedEx, UPS and the Postal Service. While he was satisfied with their on-time performances, Guggenheim chafed on the dense, complex contracts, especially from FedEx and UPS, that at all times looked as if it would put parcel shippers on the back foot. He also grew uninterested in rate hikes and increased accessorial charges that became an annual and onerous event for him and his customers.
That have as a music achievement provider led him to explore alternatives to the national carriers.
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