QUARTEL STARTS NEW ONLINE SERVICE

QUARTEL STARTS NEW ONLINE SERVICE    Rob Quartel, a former Federal Maritime Commissioner, announced on Monday that he and other backers had formed FreightDesk.com, a “vertical portal” application service provider for transportation intermediaries.
   “This is about managing logistics processes from the standpoint of the freight forwarder, customs broker and NVO, and their customers,” Quartel said.
   Stressing that FreightDesk.com isn’t an online auction, Quartel described the new service as a Web-based, shipment level and door-to-door cargo tracking tool.
   “Software vendors are trying to migrate to the Web, but they don’t know international trade,” Quartel said. “Everyone else is saying, ‘we’ll connect the shipper and the carrier via the Web,’ as if those were the only two parts of the business that mattered. That assumes a very naive view of international trade. You’re always going to need forwarders and other intermediaries because they have the domain knowledge of trading that carriers and shippers intrinsically lack.”
   FreightDesk.com — at https://www.freightdesk.com — is based in Bethesda, Md. The company’s executives include Quartel, chief executive officer; Bruce Finland, chief operating officer, most recently the founder of Member Direct Television; Bill Ansley, senior vice president, formerly president of Samuel Shapiro & Co.; and Dr. Michael Krause, chief logistics officer, formerly chief logistics planner for Amazon.com and the U.S. military’s ranking logistician during the Persian Gulf War.