Faster Than Sea Freight — Cheaper Than Air Cargo
Hybrid-electric cargo flying boats in ground-effect will disrupt ecommerce and make everything cheaper.
Flying boats conjure up the glamorous early days of intercontinental aviation. They offered an alternative to boarding a ship and ply the high seas for weeks. Dapper travelers could get on the Boeing 314 and fly in luxury to destinations like Hawaii and Asia in a few days.
Flying boats refueled along the way as passengers sipped colorful drinks in exotic stopovers such as Midway and Guam.
Those days are not likely to come back for travelers. But they might for ecommerce cargo. Next-generation hybrid-electric flying boats could offer a disruptive new shipping option for selling products directly to consumers across oceans. It would be much faster than sea freight and significantly cheaper than air cargo.
The Opportunity
The growth of commerce has relied on freight innovation since the Age of Sail. It opened markets to mass production and economies of scale. The advent of aviation shrunk the world further.
Yet, air freight today remains expensive. It’s best used for high value items and perishables. For anything else needed quickly, shipping by air will likely cost you more than the product itself.
Sea freight is economical but can take months. Getting products to your market across an ocean involves careful demand forecasting, bulk buying, financial risks, warehousing burdens at the destination and lots of handling. All this adds cost upfront.
This isn’t ideal for ecommerce entrepreneurs hoping to compete against retail giants. Moreover, sea freight imposes laggy product cycles for those designing their products in the US but manufacturing abroad. Nimble entrepreneurs cannot leverage their market savvy and speed against their slower juggernaut competitors.
That’s too bad for American consumers as well. They don’t get the latest products from Asia and can’t buy them at the same low prices as in the countries of origin.
For this amusing thought experiment we will speculate about a third shipping option. One that could enable disruptive entrepreneurs to sell their products just-in-time at bargain prices from their factories in Asia, and have them delivered directly and inexpensively to US consumers under 7 days.
No bulk buying, no upfront capital. No warehousing on American soil either. No physical presence at all. Retail entrepreneurs could become truly virtual, design-focused and software-driven.
The Flying Cargo Ship
It is Henry Kaiser who came up with the idea of a flying cargo ship. Yes, that Kaiser figuring on many US healthcare cards. He was also a shipbuilder and produced the famed Liberty ships that delivered supplies during World War 2. He wanted something faster.
Kaiser challenged aviation tycoon Howard Hughes to build one. It had to be enormous and capable of crossing oceans. This effort produced the iconic Spruce Goose flying boat.
It’s still today one of the largest aircrafts ever built. After many delays, it wowed spectators by taking off from Los Angeles bay in ground-effect.
But the nascent Jet Age made it obsolete as the war ended. However, the concept of a flying cargo ship wasn’t forgotten, as we’ll see below.
Let’s Shop!
For our consumer use case we’ll shop for a quality linen summer shirt and explore our options for price and delivery. We’ll ignore sales tax.
The shirt is available from an American online store for $47.99 US. Shipping costs $7, so we pay a total of $54.99. It is shipped from a US warehouse. The package is a rugged plastic envelop weighing half a pound. Delivery takes 7 days or less within the contiguous USA.
As seen above, the ecommerce rule of thumb is that delivery should cost no more than 15% of the product price. Moreover, it should take 7 days or less.
We could instead buy it from AliExpress in China, where it was made. It retails there under a local brand for $11.17 US. That’s the kind of bargain anyone who visited Hong Kong is used to.
However, the shipping is more expensive than the shirt itself. And that’s including the sizable US postal subsidy! It takes a while too. Let’s explore more options.
*Why the US Postal Service Delivers Chinese Packages For Free (Almost)
The United States is abiding to an international postal treaty (see UPU) requiring rich nations to subsidize domestic delivery of packages from third-world countries. The treaty still considers China a third-world country. USPS has to take the loss. Many say the treaty is now unfairly benefitting Chinese ecommerce merchants and US drop-shippers (see ePacket).
The Fedex Option
Fedex is a competitive carrier that offers fast international air shipping. It would charge us $65 for a delivery from Asia in about 4 to 5 days. Fast but not a good deal overall.
To be fair, modern cargo jets like the Airbus 330–200F have tremendous payload capacity and fuel efficiency. But the price tag is steep: $260M US for a service life of 50,000 flying hours. Range is also shorter than passenger versions. That’s why some air cargo flies among the luggages in the belly of long-haul airliners.
But do we really need such marvels of engineering for shipping goods? After all, cargo doesn’t mind flying slower, lower and without comfort.
Flying It Old School
Surprisingly, the vintage Boeing 314 and the Spruce Goose would have offered a very competitive oceanic freight option. These majestic flying boats had impressive payload, long range and cavernous interiors. They could dock at any port facilities in the world.
The journey from Asia would take 36 hours for the Boeing 314. The faster Spruce Goose would do it in 27 hours. Both would refuel twice along the way.
USPS would then handle the parcels from Los Angeles onward for the domestic leg. Finally the delivery is now cheaper than the shirt!
Flying these behemoths low over the ocean in some ground-effect would save fuel and increase profitability. Less fuel weight is good; it allows for carrying more payload. Delivery now represents about 17% of the product price.
Unfortunately, all Boeing 314 were scrapped long ago. The singular Spruce Goose is now a cherished exhibit at the McMinnville Aviation Museum.
But other flying boats are still around. Californians are familiar with the Canadair CL-415 Super Scooper visiting us every summer to snuff out wild fires. But more on this later.
What is Ground-Effect?
Ground-effect occurs when an aircraft flies close to the surface. Air forms a cushion under the wing increasing lift. Oceanic birds use it to fly longer distances with less effort over water. This sounds promising for a flying cargo ship technology.
Ground-effect can double the lift efficiency of an aircraft (2.3x optimally). It peaks at an altitude of 5% of the wingspan. Sea waves average 13 feet, so longer wingspans are beneficial over the ocean. The bigger sea of storms can be routed around because of airspeed, unlike ships.
Cargo flying boats don’t have the pressurization constraints of airliners because they fly at sea level. They can carry hazardous products such as aerosols. They can have innovative shapes that maximize the predominantly volumetric nature of ecommerce cargo. They can also be equipped with experimental propulsion technologies.
Interestingly, many jurisdictions categorize these vehicles as sea vessels, thus avoiding regulations of international civil aviation.
Dream no Small Dreams
Modern concepts have been studied. The Boeing Pelican is a ground-effect concept aircraft the US military pondered in 2006. It could deliver over 2.2 million pounds of cargo over a range of 6,900 miles at a speed of 280 mph.
Commercial uses were considered too. The Pelican could ship our package from Asia to Los Angeles in 23 hours at a cost of 31 cents!
It’s fair to say it would be a game changer for global ecommerce. But its use of fossil fuel could impart a large carbon footprint.
The Soviets were first to experiment with ground-effect flying boats during the cold war. The largest was dubbed the Caspian Sea Monster by US Intelligence, who didn’t know what to make of it in spy satellite imagery.
Russia is still pondering them today for commerce. Here’s a concept below capable of carrying standard shipping containers.
But the large scale of these behemoths could make them prohibitively expensive to develop and operate. Meanwhile, civil aviation has been trending toward smaller airplanes serving more diverse point-to-point destinations.
The End Game
It’s time to remove the retail distribution markup from the equation. Let’s buy directly from the shirt maker in Asia.
We finally get our summer linen shirt for a total of $10.74 delivered in 6 days to our mailbox in the US. That’s quite a bargain compared to our initial $54.99 from the US online store. You get 5 shirts for the price of one!
In Part 2 we showcase freight disruptors aiming to impact the future of global trade. We’ll also explore a compelling ocean freight route that an aerospace startup might consider tackling first.
About The Author
Pierre is a software engineer for a major computer maker based in Cupertino. He likes to speculate about innovations in various domains such as aviation, cloud computing, AI and next-generation music streaming. He holds an FAA pilot license for airplanes, helicopters and sUAS.
All opinions and speculations presented here are strictly his own, and are unrelated to his day job and employer.
