Landing Apple as a Customer May Be More Trouble Than It’s Worth

Be careful what you wish for, particularly if your wish is to sign Apple as a customer. That’s true whatever business you’re in, including, as The Information revealed this week, freight transport. As my colleagues Theo Wayt and Ann Gehan detailed in this report, freight firm Flexport’s biggest-name customer—one that hasn’t been disclosed before—is Apple. Flexport flies Apple products from Asian factories to U.S. cities. But the freight firm effectively bears the cost, as it has been losing money on the deal.

You might think bragging rights would offset the monetary cost. That would be true if Flexport could brag about serving Apple. That doesn’t appear to be the case. The fact that Flexport has never publicly revealed that relationship—and didn’t comment for our story—implies that the company can’t talk about it. That shouldn’t be surprising. Apple typically requires its suppliers to keep quiet about their relationship with the iPhone maker. More to the point, Flexport isn’t the first company to discover that working with Apple isn’t lucrative.