ShipBob announced new freight partnerships with Maersk and ECU Worldwide for its freight and inventory distribution service, FreightBob.

Chicago-based ShipBob is a supply chain and fulfillment platform provider for SMBs and mid-market ecommerce retailers. It provides fulfillment services to TB12, which ranks No. 623 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers.

Maersk is a supply chain and logistics company headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, with more than 100,000 employees. Mumbai, India-based ECU specializes in less than a container load (LCL) shipping.

“The Maersk and ShipBob partnership brings together two like-minded companies who share an ambition and commitment to meet customer needs,” said Mark Fearnehough, area head of LCL at Maersk. “Together, we look to deliver premier reliability and efficiency, coupled with the agility to respond to rapid market changes through a fully owned global network.”

The new partners are in addition to FlexPort, which has powered FreightBob’s ocean freight since launch.

What Maersk and ECU bring to ShipBob

Working with Maersk and ECU will give ShipBob customers access to more freight lanes, improving the fulfillment process, ShipBob said. 

Maersk has 65,000 port pairs in over 100 countries with no minimum volume requirements. That’s key for small and medium-sized retailers using ShipBob, it said. Port pairs refer to the origin and destination ports of a specific shipping lane.

Meanwhile, ECU is a leader in air and ocean freight, moving cargo between 180 countries. It has over 2,400 direct trade lanes and manages door-to-door deliveries in 50 markets.

Between the two transportation companies, ShipBob will gain access to more routes for clients. Those include guaranteed ocean freight sailings, air freight and domestic freight from most locations around the world to ShipBob fulfillment centers for its retail clients. Both ECU and Maersk travel on the most popular ocean trade routes, along with LCL, full container load (FCL), air freight, and other shipping services. For ShipBob clients, the most popular shipping lanes are between Asia and the U.S., and Asia and the U.K.

“We’re thrilled to elevate our freight offerings to our merchants by partnering with the industry leaders in the global logistics space,” said Melissa Nick, chief supply chain officer at ShipBob. “We’re confident that these new partners will support our merchants through every global freight need, from clearing customs to importing inventory, while unlocking preferred rates.”

What FreightBob does

ShipBob launched FreightBob in 2022 as an end-to-end freight and inventory distribution management system. 

“We’re thrilled to offer FreightBob to our existing and future ecommerce clients, unlocking a seamless, cost-efficient and dependable inventory distribution service,” ShipBob co-founder and CEO Dhruv Saxena said at the time. “FreightBob will enable some of today’s fastest-growing ecommerce brands to navigate volatile freight markets, all while meeting strong U.S. consumer demand.”

ShipBob created FreightBob to give its clients access to faster shipping times. The vendor says it does that while avoiding volatile price shifts and making accurate pricing forecasts. It achieves that goal by using faster ships and strategically delivering to ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, which are optimized for distribution in the U.S. That method reduced average transit times from Asia to 15-30 days from 45-60 days, ShipBob said in 2022.

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