ClearJet CEO Chris Guggenheim on Flying Parcels for 3PLs

Years before ClearJet existed, UPS gave Chris Guggenheim's company at the time, OneLive, a five-day cancellation notice by email. The reason: the account was "not profitable enough." He says OneLive spent $55M with UPS in 2019. So he started emailing airlines.

That UPS email led to ClearJet, which launched in May 2022 and also has a profile on Fulfill.com. ClearJet moves parcels in the belly of scheduled passenger flights and hands them to final-mile carriers. Chris's pitch to 3PLs: skip shipping zones by air.

Chris has been in ecommerce since 1997. At 18 he built Pat Green's website, then Willie Nelson's, and later OneLive, which he says runs over 1,200 Shopify Plus stores today.

I sat down with Chris on September 29, 2026 to ask the questions a 3PL owner would ask. How does a ClearJet label get from the dock to the doorstep? What changes on the warehouse floor? How do you integrate it, and how do you try it without betting the operation? The full conversation is below, followed by the highlights.

Jump to a chapter:

• 0:00 Meet Chris Guggenheim: Willie Nelson to OneLive
• 6:52 From OneLive to ClearJet: the UPS email
• 10:58 Emailing the airlines until United said yes
• 13:11 How it works: one Gaylord, many carriers
• 18:09 Integrations, rate shopping and ghost warehouses
• 21:08 What 3PLs gain: less left on the dock
• 22:42 Returns by air, launching in January
• 24:47 Under 7% on national carriers
• 26:34 What's next: international and AI agents
• 29:27 How a 3PL can kick the tires
• 31:06 What drives Chris

The email that started ClearJet

The new contract UPS offered, Chris says, carried a 30% rate increase.

"It doesn't matter how big your brands are, you're not ever in control."

His answer was to fly the long haul. He had strong volume coming out of Los Angeles, and most of the population is to the east. If an airline could carry parcels across the country, he could find someone to deliver them at the other end. The regional carriers he contacted said yes. The airlines were harder.

"I didn't have a connection. I just emailed them."

United Cargo answered and invited him to its annual event in California. There, in January 2020, Chris pitched the president of United Cargo and asked two questions: is there space on your airplanes to do this, and why are you not in ecommerce? The answer, as Chris tells it: "We've been talking about it for twenty years." The first parcels flew from LA to New Jersey for about a month before the pandemic stopped everything. ClearJet was officially born in May 2022.

How it works: from your dock to the airport

Chris says ClearJet's facilities are only at airports. A ClearJet truck, a 26-foot box truck at your dock door at five o'clock in Chris's example, takes the day's parcels to the airport. At LAX, he says, ClearJet has its own dock doors in the terminal. Machines there sort each parcel by final-mile carrier and destination city. The parcels then fly to the destination airport, where ClearJet trucks take them to the final-mile carrier's facility.

Chris says ClearJet injects into UPS, FedEx, the post office and DHL today, as well as final-mile partners such as OnTrac, Veho and DoorDash. ClearJet ties the tracking together so the shopper sees one door-to-door journey. His goal is "to make it feel as natural as if you'd handed it to UPS from the first scan."

"For a 3PL, what's really fantastic about this is we just erased all your zones across America."

He says ClearJet does that at a much lower cost than handing the same parcels to a national carrier, and it prices on weight and dimensions, not distance.

Chris says some of ClearJet's biggest retailers, shipping millions of packages to every part of the United States, now put less than 7% of that volume on a national carrier. "This is unheard of." Regional carriers deliver most of the rest, usually at next-day speeds, and the nationals still take the ZIP codes that are harder to reach. ClearJet calls that combined network the SuperCarrier.

What changes on a 3PL dock

• One Gaylord, many carriers. A 3PL can print labels for three regional carriers and a national carrier, put them all in the same Gaylord, and dedicate one chute to ClearJet instead of one per carrier. "Throw us the chaos and we'll make it all work," Chris says.
• Less left on dock. When a regional carrier's 53-foot truck fills up, the next one can sit for a 24-hour cycle. With ClearJet, Chris says, everything goes the same day.
• Ghost warehouses. Chris suggests a 3PL in Dallas set up ghost warehouses at airports such as Seattle and Chicago, then print its own labels at zone two. "Your rate shop's gonna win a lot just by the fact that it felt like it was local."
• Pricing power. Faster service lets the 3PL decide how to price it. ClearJet offers two-day and two-to-three-day service models.

Chris also walked through example math rather than a rate card. Say the air leg costs a dollar a pound and a New York final-mile carrier costs four dollars. A two-pound package then costs six dollars door to door, in two days or less.

Integrations: API or your shipping platform

Chris describes two routes. ClearJet has an API anyone can connect to, and with today's AI tools he says you can have a label printing in about twenty minutes. ClearJet is also available on popular shipping platforms, including ProShip, Shipium and ShipWise, so it can sit inside a normal rate shop. A 3PL can also use ClearJet for the air middle mile only and keep its own final-mile labels and rates.

Returns in January, and what comes next

Chris says ClearJet is launching returns in January. Returns, he says, have been stuck with UPS, FedEx, the post office or Amazon because regional carriers cannot pick up at a shopper's house. ClearJet already sits in the major airports, so it is already close to the return. The shopper will print a label and drop the parcel in a mailbox or at the post office. It will reach ClearJet at zone one and fly to the city where the 3PL's warehouse is, and a ClearJet truck will deliver it to the building.

"We're the fastest returns in America, hands down, because we fly."

I asked Chris what ClearJet will do with its $25M Series B, led by Edison Partners. He named four priorities: returns, faster automated sortation at each of its airports, international shipping next year, and AI. He says customers will add lanes by talking to an AI agent. His example: a Seattle lane, 2,000 pounds a day, five o'clock pickup, no human on the other end.

Pick one lane

Asked how a 3PL can get started with ClearJet, Chris invites them to test it on a single lane.

"I would love for anyone that's a 3PL to kick the tires with us. Pick a lane, it's very simple."

He also gave example math for small parcels. ClearJet consolidates them in blue bags. At his example air rate of a dollar a pound, hundreds of ounce-based packages in one bag can bring the air leg to ten cents a package, before the final mile. To scope a test, the ClearJet team works from your PLD, or package-level detail, file and maps it to flights, routes, times and SLAs.

Make your foot go in the door

Asked what drives him, Chris says many of his customers and partnerships came from just asking: United Airlines, Willie Nelson, Beyoncé. "I didn't know anybody."

"You have to make your foot go in the door."

Want to test a lane? Talk to the ClearJet team at clearjet.com/start.

Run a 3PL? See how Fulfill.com connects you with brands that fit your operation, or browse the 3PL directory.

Quotes are lightly edited to remove filler words. Figures are as discussed in the interview. The $25M Series B came up in my question to Chris; Edison Partners, which led the round, announced it on August 12, 2026.