Freight Right Global Logistics

05/13/2026

CBP’s latest CAPE update shows real movement on IEEPA tariff refunds.
As of May 11, CAPE declarations accepted by CBP covered 15.1 million IEEPA-duty entries. Of those, 8.3 million entries have already been liquidated or reliquidated without IEEPA duties, representing approximately $35.46 billion in anticipated refunds and interest.

But the refund opportunity is still much larger. Reuters has reported that more than 330,000 importers paid IEEPA tariffs across roughly 53 million shipments. Based on accepted entries to date, only about 28.5% of affected entries have cleared this CAPE validation milestone. Using that entry-share as a rough proxy, as many as ~236,000 importers may still have refund opportunities that are not yet fully processed.

Importers should not assume the refund will simply arrive. CAPE filings, ACH information, liquidation status, protests, and entry records all matter.

Freight Right is a licensed customs broker and can help importers review eligibility, prepare filings, and pursue eligible IEEPA tariff refunds before timing or documentation issues get in the way.

CBP’s latest IEEPA tariff refund update shows $35.46B in anticipated refunds and interest. Learn what importers should do now to claim eligible refunds.

05/12/2026

Congratulations to Virtuix (NASDAQ: VTIX) on the Canadian launch of Omni One and Omni One Core.

This launch marks another step in Virtuix’s international rollout and brings its immersive gaming and fitness platform to a new group of consumers.

Freight Right is proud that CartRight, our Shopify app built for big, bulky & oversized DTC ecommerce, helped play a role in making this expansion possible.

We’re pleased to support Virtuix as the team continues growing into new markets!

Omni One Has Officially Launched in Canada

Step into full body VR and physically walk, run, crouch, and jump through immersive virtual worlds from your home.

Learn more: https://virtuix.com

04/21/2026

Most importers didn’t lose margin because tariffs went up. They lost it in how they chose to account for them.

The common move was to absorb a 25% Section 301 tariff by raising retail prices and keeping checkout clean with flat-rate or all-in pricing. But then that inflated price gets declared to CBP as the transaction value. That’s where the leak starts.

If a product costs $4,000 and is repriced to $5,000 to cover tariffs, CBP applies 25% to the full $5,000, not the original cost. That’s an extra $250 per unit in duties paid on your own markup. At any real volume, that compounds fast.

The fix is operational in most cases, often simple changes to pricing calculations:

- Declare the true transaction value of the goods

- Break out duties, taxes, and shipping as separate line items

- Stop embedding tariff recovery inside MSRP

Simple changes like these can make a world of difference for importers so to avoid double-duty when selling cross-border.

Importers absorbing tariffs risk paying duty on inflated transaction values. Learn how pricing strategy, customs valuation, and landed cost transparency impact margins and compliance.

02/09/2026

One of the more subtle challenges in ecommerce logistics shows up when brands try to automate freight in mixed-SKU catalogs.

When a merchant sells both small parcel items and large freight-worthy products, pricing logic becomes non-trivial. The system has to decide at checkout which SKUs move via parcel carriers and which should trigger freight. That ambiguity alone can slow integrations and stretch sales cycles, even when demand is real.

This is why high-SKU distributor models often struggle with freight automation.

Resellers juggling hundreds or thousands of mixed products typically lack the margin control and SKU consistency needed to make freight a default workflow.

For private-label brands and manufacturers, freight is core to the business.

For distributors, it’s an exception and exceptions don’t automate well.

That said, there’s a smart workaround emerging: conditional freight activation.

For "borderline" items that could ship parcel or freight depending on quantity, the system only triggers freight once an order crosses a volume threshold. One item ships parcel. Ten items consolidate onto a pallet. Same catalog, cleaner economics, far less friction.

Freight automation works best when product ownership, SKU discipline, and shipping logic are aligned but with the right rules, even mixed catalogs can unlock meaningful efficiency gains.

02/04/2026

One of the more interesting patterns we’re seeing around international growth has nothing to do with how companies ship and everything to do with when.

Not already operating in multiple countries with entrenched systems. Not treating global expansion as a vague "2027 initiative."

There's no shortage of ecommerce companies that see the immense value in international expansion. One Bizplanr study found "In 2025, more than 60% of small businesses globally plan to expand their operations" . Other studies from DHL and FedEx found similiar finding about international expansion for SMB ecommerce brands.

The strongest momentum comes from businesses that are about to go international but don’t yet have the infrastructure to support it.

That timing matters, because logistics alone doesn’t create strategy.

A shipping solution can enable expansion, but it rarely creates the intent to expand. If a company isn’t already thinking seriously about new markets, the conversation tends to stall, no matter how good the tooling is.

What consistently bridges that gap is domestic operations.

Many teams delay international growth because their home-market logistics feel unfinished or chaotic, especially around LTL. Once domestic freight is automated and predictable, global expansion stops feeling premature and starts feeling achievable.

02/02/2026

International expansion often becomes possible only after domestic LTL is fixed.

A recurring pattern we’re seeing across big & bulky merchants is that global growth is blocked by unresolved domestic freight complexity.

When domestic LTL is manual, fragmented, or unpredictable, international expansion gets pushed indefinitely. Not because demand isn’t there, but because teams don’t have the operational headroom to take on more complexity.

Here’s what becomes clearer once domestic LTL is addressed:



🔷 The "not ready yet" barrier fades.

Merchants who previously labeled international as a future-year project begin reconsidering once day-to-day domestic shipping friction is removed.

🔷Expansion becomes sequential, not overwhelming.

Fixing domestic freight creates a natural progression: stabilize, extend, and scale, rather than attempting a high-risk leap into new markets.

🔷 Hawaii & Alaska function as natural stepping stones.

Enabling these regions, often treated as logistical edge cases, builds confidence in managing long-distance, over-water freight before moving into markets like the UK or Australia.

🔷 Operational clarity unlocks strategic thinking.

When Operations teams no longer spend their days manually quoting or troubleshooting freight, expansion conversations shift from “can we handle this?” to “where does it make sense to go next?”

🔷 Data replaces speculation.

Domestic LTL performance reveals whether a product’s pricing, margins, and demand can support longer-haul shipping, turning international expansion into an evidence-based decision rather than a gamble.

Contrary to belief, international expansion doesn’t start with crossing borders. It starts by making domestic logistics boring, predictable, and scalable. Once that foundation is in place, global growth stops feeling aspirational and starts feeling achievable.

01/28/2026

Who better to walk everyone through the Supreme Court's IEEPA case than the one and only Pete Mento .

Freight Right's Robert Khachatryan sat down with Pete for a conversation about this massive Supreme Court case and covered everything from:

- What are the possible outcomes of the Supreme Court ruling

- How will refunds be handled if the Supreme Court rules against IEPA tariffs

- What challenges do importers face in claiming refunds

- What documents are essential for auditing entries for refunds

- How might the government audit refund claims and more.

The Supreme Court is weighing the legality of IEEPA tariffs. Learn what the case means for importers, potential refunds, audits, and compliance readiness.

01/27/2026

A must-listen conversation between BakerTilly's Pete Mento and Freight Right's Robert Khachatryan on the IEEPA tariffs, possible outcomes, what importers need to know and how to get prepared.

Re-listen to the webinar here:

https://lnkd.in/gD4NCNeR

Recent IEEPA-related tariffs have created significant uncertainty for importers across the U.S. As the Supreme Court considers whether these tariffs were leg...

01/23/2026

White glove delivery is often seen as a premium differentiator but for small and mid-sized merchants, it’s one of the hardest logistics services to implement.

Why? Generally speaking,

Most white glove providers reserve contracts for enterprise shippers with consistent volume, leaving smaller merchants locked out without an aggregator.

Costs vary by destination, stairs, elevators, and equipment needs. Without dynamic pricing at checkout, merchants rely on flat fees and often lose margin when delivery complexity spikes.

Ecommerce platforms are built for parcels, not freight-level services. Inside delivery, assembly, and appointment fees are rarely automated, forcing manual quoting and slower fulfillment.

Oversized items may exceed lift gate limits or require specialized crews, increasing costs and coordination risk.

And in dense urban markets like the UK or EU, white glove isn’t optional but reverse logistics, servicing, and warranties add another layer of strain.

01/19/2026

Most small and midsize businesses say growth is a priority in 2026.

Bank of America found in one study recently, "~60% of SMB owners plan to expand operations (which often includes new markets). This reflects general expansion intent among smaller firms.".

Inc. Magazine found similar figures, "international expansion is a top priority for 97 percent of U.S. companies [in 2026]".

Ecommerce brands among the most represented here.

Yet in practice, many of these expansion plans stall before ex*****on.

International expansion is still widely perceived as a major infrastructure project, often requiring new facilities, new hires, and long lead times, before demand is ever validated.

As a result, expansion often remains a strategic intention rather than an operational reality. Something that usually takes many months, many meetings, lots of calls, lots of vendor vetting, lots of false starts.

Looking ahead to 2026, the brands that succeed in new markets will likely be those that treat expansion as a reversible experiment, not a capital commitment, prioritizing speed, cost transparency, and operational simplicity over scale for its own sake.

01/14/2026

The big & bulky ecommerce market is massive. As big as the items being shipped.

It's apt to call this niche small but significant because that's exactly what it is compared to what everyone thinks of when they hear ecommerce: small boxes being delivered by Amazon, USPS, FedEx or DHL on their doorstep.

But how big is the big & bulky market?

Satish Jindel, president of ShipMatrix, Inc. / SJ Consulting Group, Inc. , a leader in shipping data and consulting, the total addressable market for big and bulky last-mile deliveries is estimated at $16 billion.

What's more interesting, Jindel also estimates that approximately $4 billion of this market consists of retailers and ecommerce sellers who manage their own last-mile logistics, while the remaining $12 billion is handled by independent outsourced operators.

So why isn't there more gusto to tap into, solve for and expand this market?

For one, the challenges are many and they're not conventional ecommerce challenges. They're logistics challenges masked as ecommerce challenges.

To name a few in big picture problems to observe:

- Last-mile fulfillment is the costliest segment of the supply chain, accounting for 53% of total shipping costs and 41% of total supply chain costs.

- Reverse logistics for oversized items is a major "cost bucket" involving expensive repacking, restocking, and reselling, often at a significant discount.

- As the "last handshake" in a transaction, delivery failures directly damage the retailer’s brand and consumer trust.

Then come the merchants with their own unique challenges:

- Retailers prioritize speed (90%), reliability (85%), and flexibility (58%) above all other factors in last-mile operations.

- Failed or missed deliveries and goods delivered damaged are significant pain points; redeliveries represent hidden costs that are consistently underestimated by sellers.

- Merchants are increasingly prescriptive about measuring carrier performance through indicators like on-time delivery, accessorial costs per item, and real-time status updates.

- Merchants struggle with "sticker shock" at checkout and often lack the clean SKU data (dimensions and weights) required to automate shipping costs accurately.

and then carriers have their own challenges:

- Carriers face intense pressure because modern consumers now expect speed, high-level service, and low cost simultaneously, whereas they previously only expected two of the three.

- Small to mid-sized operators lack a "perfect" affordable integrated software platform; they currently rely on a "hodgepodge" of different planning and visibility tools.

- Managing "white glove" services such as in-home assembly, stair carries, and installation adds immense operational complexity compared to standard parcel delivery.

- Carriers struggle to move from "reactive ex*****on" to "proactive intelligence," needing better data to anticipate disruptions like weather, traffic, or capacity shifts.