Clearjet leverages narrowbody aircraft for air service at ground rates

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 often 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.

Chris Guggenheim begs to differ. In his world, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. In July 2022, the serial entrepreneur (pictured) launched Clearjet, a parcel delivery company that combines regional ground transport with the nation’s narrowbody air fleet such as 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 approximately 9,000 daily nationwide narrowbody flights and the cheap rates offered by the airlines to fill their bellies with revenue-producing cargo, Clearjet aims to provide two-business-day deliveries at ground-delivery prices, Guggenheim said.

Under the service, Clearjet’s regional surface partners sweep the first mile at customer locations and then truck to any of the nine airports in the Clearjet network located in the East, West, Midwest and South. Clearjet manages the on-airport sortation and then 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 in which package volumes are delivered to a carrier’s hub local to the package’s final destination. Doing so allows the shipper to decrease its costs by skipping most of the eight carrier zones that divide the U.S. transportation market. Zone skipping is generally 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. However, Guggenheim said that regional truckers can also pick up their own shorter-haul parcels when they make their initial sweeps for Clearjet, thus turning his company into a de facto zone 2-8 provider.

The typical narrowbody has an available payload of about 3,000 pounds. Still, that’s enough to move a fair 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 companies, and e-commerce sites managed by Shopify, Guggenheim said. 

Clearjet has also found passenger airlines to be a receptive audience, Guggenheim said, as the U.S. Postal Service continues to shift more parcels from air to ground as part of the agency’s “Deliver for America” campaign, thus siphoning business away from all types of airlines. 

Clearjet has no problem using widebodies if 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 of the risks of the model are the potential disruptions caused by dynamic passenger schedules. To counter that, Clearjet stations employees at each airport to shift parcels onto other flights if the original belly lift is scrubbed, Guggenheim said.

Guggenheim founded Clearjet as a by-product of his longtime work in the e-commerce music fulfillment space, where he still is a major player. (Guggenheim’s music company, OneLive, fulfilled all of 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 at the dense, complex contracts, especially from FedEx and UPS, that always seemed to put parcel shippers on the back foot. He also grew tired of rate hikes and increased accessorial charges that became an annual and onerous event for him and his customers.

That experience as a music fulfillment provider led him to explore alternatives to the national carriers.

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