Chris Condon Podcast Transcript
Chris Condon joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast.
Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Chris Condon. Chris Condon is the CEO and founder of Aircon, a technology focused air freight platform headquartered in Dallas, Texas, pioneering AI driven workflow automation that is transforming the air freight industry. With over 26 years of significant management experience in third party logistics, Chris has held key leadership roles, including CEO of Tricon Logistics and Regional Director and CEO of Trans Trade Logistics.
His career began at Expediters International of Washington, where he served as the department manager in 2021. Chris founded Aircon with a revolutionary mission to empower small and medium sized freight forwarders through cutting edge AI and workflow automation technologies.
Well, good afternoon, Chris. Welcome to the show.
Chris Condon: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it. We’re in the same time zone today. You’re in Dallas. I’m in Kansas City. We do Traverse the globe. I always like to bring that up first on the podcast just to kind of set the record straight of where everybody’s at in the world, so I appreciate that.
And Chris, jumping into your first question, you’ve spent over two decades in logistics leadership roles. What inspired you to launch Aircon and how is it different from traditional freight forwarding platforms?
Chris Condon: Well, that’s kind of a loaded question, but really it comes down to the fact that I, I like to compete, played sports all my life, and going from a large freight forwarder to a smaller freight forwarder, I was able to compete at every level with the exception of air freight.
And by the third or fourth time being rejected by a large shipper. I. You can think of companies like Microsoft or Cisco or those type of folks on the air freight side, I kept not getting able to get to the second or third round of the RFPs, and a light bulb went off and says, Hey, these guys are consolidating.
These guys that are moving on are reducing their, their net effect, if you will, or their chargeable weight. And so the idea was to be able to leverage all the freight forwarders at scale to compete against the large multinationals.
Brian Thomas: I love that. Think smarter. Right? That’s so cool. And I know it’s, it’s in you, you’re, we talked about this a little bit, is you’re just competitive and you’re outgoing.
You’ve got a lot of energy and enthusiasm, but you took to the next level and, and found a solution to how to compete with the big guys. So I appreciate that. And Chris, my next question for you, aircon is pioneering AI driven workflow automation in air freight. What are some specific pain points in the industry that your platform is solving for small and mid-size forwarders?
Chris Condon: It’s really capacity at the end of the day in air freight. Most people talk about capacity in terms of the air freight or you know, the airline capacity on rates, but it’s really about labor capacity and timing of that. Meaning air freight is, let me rephrase that. The air freight is stereotypically done or communicated 24 7, right?
So if you don’t have the labor capacity to respond to air freight in real time, you just lose your opportunity to win that piece of business. In fact, it’s an interesting stat is. What most people believe is that you have a 40 to 50% better chance of winning a shipment if you’re the first to quote in air freight versus an ocean freight.
It’s all about rates, right? Meaning you could take a week or two to respond to an ocean quote and still win the business. Because rate’s more important where an air freight rate is really secondary or, or even third on the list of priorities. But speed is really the, the key to that. And we found that in our internal data.
When we turned on our first AI agent, which we call Laura, we found it immediately within the first 90 days. Our win percentage went up by 40%. Our revenue went two and a half X all within that first 90 days.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Love how you kind of broke that out for us. You know, not all of us, this is a tech podcast, but we, you know, talk about AI all the time and I like how founders and entrepreneurs like yourself come in and share with our audience really how that business works.
And what I heard is capacity is the key word in air freight. You know, you talked about labor capacity, speed, capacity, tracking capacity, but that first to quote. Obviously, you know, leveraging the power of ai, you were able to in a 90 day period, increase that win rate for jobs, RFPs, whatever you call ’em in that industry at 40% is amazing.
So I appreciate that.
Chris Condon: Yeah, it’s not just the AI piece that, which I think a lot of people miss for maybe I, I’m the one that misses, maybe. AI is really just a, is just part of the, the toolbox, if you will. That helps us obviously structure the data so we can digest it and look for routes and all these other things.
It’s really a net. It’s really a plethora of other things as well, right? It’s physical networks, it’s all these different things that AI just kind of wraps it all together.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate that. Chris, could you walk us through a real world example of how AI powered automation on your platform drastically improve shipping, handling, or customer outcomes?
Chris Condon: Sure. Absolutely. So in the, we have three agents, and our first agent is our quoting agent, which we call Laura. Let’s say 50 to 60% of US exports is controlled by the buying country. So let’s say South Africa, for example, or Joe Bergen, South Africa. If that buyer there is buying something, they’re gonna go to a freight forwarder.
That freight forwarder in in South Africa still typically will email two or three freight forwarders here in the US and those two or three freight forwarders will reach out to truckers, airlines, warehouses, et cetera, get rates, put margins, look at the compliance of it, put it together, and respond. And that normally takes without AI anywhere, depending on the time of day, obviously anywhere from, you know, 30 minutes to 24 hours, depending on the day, at the time of, of the request.
With our solution, Laura, we basically respond within two minutes, anywhere in the US to basically anywhere in the world with a competitive rate. So that’s how we use AI to speed, for speed to market. And then we also use AI for, what I say is traditional AI is more the ML and the, and predictive analytics.
So once you have the shipment, so now, hey, the shipment is awarded to forward or a, our second agent is what we call Rocky, which is kind of a, a nod to one of my favorite movies, Rocky, obviously, but also it’s a canine dog for TSA. So you think of. You know, all the compliance. But what happens is the customer will say, book, we will re-quote it with now the new data points that we have, right?
We have the Iraqi has the, the shipment ready date. He’s got the schedule, the carriers, the predictive analytics on the on-time performance of the trucker. And he knows what the client is willing to pay and what the client expectation is, which those two things we did not have, per se at the time of quoting.
So Rocky will requote it again, again automatically in real time, and find out what the best route is to meet the customer’s expectation and maximize profit for the freight forwarder. A prime example of that is, which I like to use a lot, is Milwaukee to London. Most freight forwarders will quote that over Chicago, right?
So they would truck it to Chicago and then use an airline, British Airways, American Virgin, whatever, out of Chicago direct flight to London. And they do that because there’s just lots of capacity outta Chicago, right? There’s lots of daily flights, there’s lots of, lots of options in terms of carriers. But now that you have the freight.
You know, the expectation of the transit time, Rocky will rebook it based on maximum price and maximum probability of being on time. So let’s say it’s a Friday and there’s a, it’s a summer schedule and BA has a flight outta Cincinnati that is half full compared to over capacity in Chicago. We’re going to truck it through Cincinnati direct flight Cincinnati to to London, which could save up to 30 to 50% just on the buy rates from the airline.
As an example.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. I really appreciate that. You know, we always talk about our team, right? We talk about the people, great team, great cultures, but here truly, you’ve got a whole team of ai. You know, if you talked about Laura, you talked about Rocky. This is a very complex process with many different touch points along the way, right?
But not only accurate, you can respond a lot faster to win these jobs. And then when you win those jobs, you can actually provide the most efficient, inexpensive routes, transit times, probability of being on time. I think that’s awesome, and that’s the things that I like to highlight here on the podcast, so I appreciate you sharing that with us.
Chris, last question of the day, you’ve described Air Con’s mission as reimagining how freight is managed. What does the future of air freight logistics look like to you in a fully AI automated environment?
Chris Condon: I see it kind of coming through a, connecting all the different folks and or providers all under one roof to include FinTech, right?
So if you think of the dollar spent on transportation, on buying and pos and all this kind of good stuff, there’s roughly 16 to 18 financial transactions that happen in a particular shipment from a PO creation to shipment delivered or PO closing, if you will. I see AI wrapping that together to make it smoother and less barriers of entry so more people can do business with people.
That’s kind of my driving force is that I truly believe that if you can be competitive, people do business with people. And through relationships and through trust factors. That’s why these, you know, at least in my mind, these smaller freight forwarders you can see will have business with Foxcon or with Cisco or you know, Schlumberger, whatever the large shipper is.
It’s like, well man, how did you get that business? Well, you know, that person who is deciding that particular item. Trust you that you would take care of their product. And that’s actually where Rosie comes in and which is our third AI agent, which is our exception agent, is really the visibility agent.
What’s cool about it is it’s not just visibility ’cause who cares if your freight’s in Long Beach or, or London. It’s what is my solutions to fix it and what is it gonna cost me to meet my need at the particular time? And Rosie will define that and give options to the buyer to help the freight forwarder retain business and not, uh, have egg on their face, if you will.
Brian Thomas: That’s amazing. Again, you know, we just talked about your team, your AI team, and now you, yeah. Mentioned another agent, Rosie, your exception agent, which is phenomenal. At the end of the day, and I like to highlight this because while I love emerging tech and ai, we all need to keep humans at the center of this, right?
And you talked about that relationship and trust, and you still need to have that. You still need to be face to face. A lot of times it’s just learning how to be more efficient and effective in your processes on the backend is a game changer as you know. So I appreciate that Chris. It was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Chris Condon: Sounds good, Brian. I appreciate it very much and uh, we’ll chat soon.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Chris Condon Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
