I'm Sun Kai — master's in international logistics management, twenty years on the project logistics side. Mexico is the lane I've worked longest — twelve years, eight ports, thirty-plus projects, from 280-tonne gas turbines to 44 metro cars. I've led teams onto the approved vendor lists of COSCO Shipping, SINOTRANS and DHL.
CRRC, CEE, CHINT, BMW, BOE, Sanhua, Pemex Dos Bocas — each of those names maps to a specific packing list and a date, not a wall of client logos. My job is turning "can it move?" into "when does it land?".
孙凯 SUN KAI
Founder · LIVO Logistics China
Shanghai Langfan International Logistics
Factory gate to site gate. RO-RO, breakbulk, flat racks, open tops, heavy lift and barge — one plan carried through to the load hitting the ground.
The hard part of project logistics isn't the freight rate — it's keeping the site from stopping.
1,556 pieces, 6,355 tonnes, sailing from Shanghai and Dalian at the same time, landing on one site in Venezuela.
Forty-four cars in four batches — not one of them held up the track laying.
EXW / FCA pickup, export declaration, CFDI attestation, AHK quality and quantity inspection, anti-dumping treatment, CBAM reporting.
From a 280-tonne gas turbine up the mountain into Puebla, to 44 Monterrey metro cars, 46 BMW containers and 160-tonne transformers split across three states. On this lane I am not booking freight — I am taking hold of the stretch between the port and the site gate.
Open the Mexico practiceMexico goes first because it is the lane I have worked longest. Beyond the seven, Venezuela, Chile and El Salvador each keep one — proof the method isn't tied to a single country.
44 cars in four batches (8 / 24 / 8 / 4). Lifting gear designed for the complete car, bogies broken out and shipped separately, RO-RO and flat racks mixed, destination clearance plus road haul to the depot.
Seven sailings and 46×40'HC in 2025. WANHAI / RCL / KMTC combined, Shanghai to Manzanillo, then door to door into the plant. THC and storage checked and back-filled shipment by shipment.
EXW pickup, bagging, AHK quality and quantity inspection, CFDI and origin documents, then 2×20'GP cycling out to Qingdao. Container, seal and weighbridge ticket recorded on every shipment.
In and out through two ports, Ensenada and Manzanillo. Shipment statistics, operating SOP, supplier questionnaires, destination surcharge audit — one report covering every shipment.
2016 to 2018, multiple lots of 20'DG and 40'HQ from Taiwan to Manzanillo. DG declaration, container overstay, statement reconciled month by month.
Towers, blades and nacelle frames shipped back from Progreso. Loading configuration, frame value calculation, return quotes checked version by version.
EXW pickup inside Mexico, export declaration, CFDI attestation, ocean freight to Mombasa. Destination PAF advance payment and clearance documents joined end to end.
1,556 pieces, 6,355 tonnes, 21,751 m³. Chain grate, mills, dryers and stacker-reclaimers shipped in three phases from Shanghai and Dalian, with daily site reports and arrival distribution.
Conveyor sections and rubber-tyred vehicle parts, shipped in 450 m³ lots. Dimension and weight sheets, packing plans and stowage drawings first — the quote comes after.
Masks and face shields, full DDP, moved inside the pandemic window. Space, clearance and last-mile all under pressure at once — not one shipment stopped.
I don't take everything. These six are what I have done repeatedly, broken, and fixed.
Route design and survey, stowage, lifting points, lashing, site delivery. Single pieces from 30 tonnes to over a hundred — I can work out the centre of gravity and still sign a delivery date.
RO-RO, breakbulk, 40'FR / 40'OT, heavy lift, barge. Which cargo on which ship — hatch and crane first, price second.
EXW / FCA / DDP in full, origin, CFDI attestation, anti-dumping and CBAM. One wrong character on a document turns into money later.
Mexico as the main lane: Manzanillo, Ensenada, Monterrey, San Luis Potosí. Hands-on records in Chile, Peru, Venezuela, El Salvador and Kenya.
THC, storage, demurrage, FX. Those three at destination are the easiest to lose — I check per shipment and back-fill per shipment, rather than find out at month end.
Organisation and SOP across warehousing, transport and customs. Familiar with replenishment under JIT and ERP, able to braid three parties into one process.
What follows is what contracts and vendor lists can prove — not self-assessment.
Complete units and engineered pieces, steel and bulk, liquid bulk (flexibag), containers and reefers, plus projects that need work done at destination. From one container to fifteen hundred pieces — the only difference is how thick the plan gets.
And what I don't take, said plainly: pure price shopping, no cargo owner, payment terms nobody can explain — I don't take that slot.
Do the work first, quote second. Route survey, lifting points, stowage and lashing plans first; weight and centre-of-gravity sheets checked first; price after that.
On the first Venezuela batch — 1,369 pieces — I hold a line-by-line list of packing case numbers, dimensions, gross and net weights and yard positions. The plan is not drawn; it is calculated out of that sheet.
Mexico is the main lane. Manzanillo, Ensenada, Monterrey and San Luis Potosí all have long-standing agents and inland fleets — from clearance to the plant gate I can watch it myself.
Chile as well (Santiago, San Antonio, Coquimbo), plus Peru, Venezuela, El Salvador and Mombasa in Kenya — real operations on the ground, not a network on paper.
THC, storage and demurrage at destination are the three that slip, because they are not on your origin invoice and agents usually report them at month end.
So I cap those three separately in the quote, track them shipment by shipment, and ask the same day when one goes over. FX sits in its own ledger — never mixed into freight when calculating margin.
One email with four things: what the cargo is (a packing list is best), from where to where, the time window, and a budget range. The more specific you are, the faster I answer.
Then I tell you first whether it can be done, roughly what it costs, and where it will go wrong — the quote comes after that.
This page keeps a few switches. Tired eyes — go light. Small screen — resize the text. No motion — turn it off.
