Business View Magazine | February 2019

they leave.Then you have to start all over again. “The other thing is our flexibility.We’re a full-service customs broker, freight forwarder, doing all inter- national transport, all modes, dangerous goods, consulting, financing–whatever the importer or exporter needs. Interestingly,we neutrally service agents at basically every port in the world. For in- stance, at Sao Paolo, Brazil,we have a dozen agents feeding us business. Unlike a lot of our competition that create bigger consolidations to lower costs, agents can feel free to use our export or import services without fear of us trying to grab their busi- ness. “And another major differentiator is we have money -a lot of money; meaning we can extend credit limits for duties up into the millions of dollars. ClearFreight can actually take on large companies with large needs because of the resources we’ve developed with our retained earnings over the years.There are lots of reasons for our success. For me, specifically, I grew up overseas in Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Manila (Philip- pines), so my understanding of how to navigate the third world for American companies is pretty good because I’ve lived it and done it.” BVM: What type of shipments do you handle? Reynolds: “We can do everything, everywhere. There’s always a learning curve and we’re not shy of anything. Imports are a lot of car parts, some food products, electronics and furniture, and wearing ap- parel.On the exports,we’ve made a very nice niche in cosmetics.We ship eyelashes by air and ocean all over the world, as well as nail polish.A lot of those goods are low-grade hazardous materials and we’re experts at it.We also specialize in all dangerous goods–including radioactive Class 7, explosives and guns.We generally don’t do perishables be- 253