With the second half of the calendar year fully in gear, ocean and air freight rates are seeing upward momentum, according to a July 2017 Market Update recently issued by San Francisco-based freight forwarding and customs brokerage services provider Flexport.

San Francisco-based Flexport has ambitious plans for Atlanta

Due to the increased frequency of cargo moving between China and the U.S., the freight forwarder will first build warehouses in Hong Kong and Los Angeles for consolidation and rerouting purposes.

For this week’s Loadstar podcast, managing editor Gavin van Marle travelled to San Francisco to interview Ryan Petersen, chief executive of start-up freight forwarder Flexport, a company at the forefront of the tech industry’s attempts to disrupt the freight forwarding and logistics business.

Neel Jones Shah, formerly chief of Delta Cargo, has resurfaced as global head of air freight and senior vice-president at Flexport, a San Francisco-based forwarder.

Flexport is one of the fastest growing companies in the world and has raised close to $100M in funding from Founders Fund, First Round Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Susa Ventures and others.

This company is tackling one of the oldest industries: international shipping.

Kehlan Kirwan meets Jan van Casteren of Flexport, one of the world’s hottest start-ups which has raised €25m in investments. Flexport aims to disrupt the trillion-euro shipping industry involved in freight management.

A startup called Flexport has flipped this archaic industry upside down by providing free software that indexes all available carriers into a searchable database used to organize and track shipments.

Enter entrepreneur Ryan Petersen, whose San Francisco start-up, Flexport, aims to bring global freight transport into the 21st century by automating one of the world’s oldest industries. “It’s really all about coordinating complexity,” says Petersen.

Today we are thrilled to announce that Flexport has raised $20 million in Series A financing. This brings our total capital raised to $26.6 million. The round was lead by Peter Thiel of Founders Fund. Existing investors A-Grade Investments, Bloomberg Beta, Cherubic Ventures, First Round Capital, Fuel Capital, Funders Club, Google Ventures, Susa Ventures, and Y Combinator were joined by new investors including Ceyuan Ventures, Felicis Ventures, and Fenway Summer.

Among the most recent deals: Founders Fund, backed by Paypal Holdings Inc. creator Peter Thiel, last month led a $20 million round of funding for a freight-forwarding startup called Flexport Inc., which offers online booking and tracking for cargo shipments.

Uber Technologies Inc. is changing the way people move around cities; Flexport wants to do the same with stuff in the holds of container ships in oceans.