‍FlexiVan has spent 70 years moving the containers that keep global trade running. They manage over 120,000 intermodal chassis across North America, the steel-wheeled trailers that carry shipping containers from ports to warehouses. Ten years ago, once a ship arrived at port, no one could tell you where a container was until it showed up at its destination. FlexiVan decided to fix that. And then they found a much bigger problem to solve.

The Visibility Gap That Started Everything

In 2016, FlexiVan's founders Ronald Widdows and Nathaniel Seeds launched a bold bet: outfit their chassis fleet with IoT sensors, GPS tracking, weight sensors, and mount/dismount detection to create what they call Smart Chassis. The idea was straightforward. A shipping container has no wheels. It cannot move without a chassis. And if no one knows where the chassis is, the entire supply chain stalls.

Smart Chassis gave FlexiVan and their customers something the industry had never had before: real-time visibility into where assets were, whether a container was loaded or empty, and when it would arrive at its destination.

But visibility was only the beginning.

From Seeing to Knowing: AI Vision at the Gate

With location data flowing, FlexiVan turned to the next problem: accuracy. At port and warehouse gates, human operators manually recorded which container was on which chassis, pulled by which truck. The process was error-prone. Even a 2% error rate cascaded into misrouted containers, delayed shipments, and lost productivity across the network.

FlexiVan deployed cameras at gates and built computer vision models to automatically identify container IDs, chassis IDs, and truck license plates, then marry all three objects together in real time. Getting it right required solving hard physical problems: camera angles, lighting differences between day and night, and the challenge of reading IDs on equipment that was never designed to be machine-readable.

It took years of iteration. But today, the system runs autonomously across their facilities.

"AI used to be experimental at FlexiVan. It is no longer experimental. It is operational."

Sagar Chikkala
Chief Information Officer @ Flexivan‍

The Prediction Problem

Knowing where things are is valuable. Knowing where things will be is transformational.

FlexiVan needed to forecast how many chassis would be required at each port on any given day, based on incoming cargo volumes, customer behavior patterns, and container trip times. If a customer's containers are arriving at the Port of Los Angeles but there are not enough chassis available, those containers sit idle. The cargo does not move. The supply chain loses velocity.

This is where FlexiVan's partnership with Shakudo began.

FlexiVan needed a platform that could handle predictive analytics at scale, across millions of monthly data points from their Smart Chassis network, without forcing them into a locked-down vendor ecosystem or compromising data governance. Their data is operationally sensitive. Their competitive advantage lives in the intelligence they extract from it.

Shakudo deployed inside FlexiVan's own infrastructure, giving them full control over their data while providing access to the best open-source and commercial AI tools, orchestrated and managed as a single platform. FlexiVan's team did not have to re-engineer their stack or hand their data to a third party. They got time-to-value in weeks rather than months.

"Shakudo does not just provide the platform. It is a real partnership. They are always there to help and execute our vision faster and the right way. It is like a co-team working together to achieve our goals."

Sagar Chikkala
Chief Information Officer @ Flexivan

Build What Differentiates You, Buy What Accelerates You

One of the defining characteristics of FlexiVan's technology organization is how much they build in-house. Their AIM360 platform, their AI vision pipeline, their operational analytics layer: all built internally. In an industry where most companies buy off-the-shelf software and accept its limitations, FlexiVan treats technology as a core competitive asset.

Sagar Chikkala has a clear philosophy guiding these decisions: build the capabilities that set you apart from competitors, and partner for the platforms that help you move faster.

"Build what differentiates you. Buy what accelerates you. The employees focus on what differentiates us, and the agents help them do it faster and better."
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Sagar Chikkala
Chief Information Officer @ Flexivan

This is exactly the role Shakudo plays. Rather than spending months on DevOps, infrastructure configuration, and tool integration, FlexiVan's engineers focus on the models, workflows, and intelligence layers that create business value. Shakudo handles the orchestration underneath: compute management, autoscaling, identity and access controls, monitoring, and software updates across the full AI and data toolchain.

The result is a team that punches well above its weight. FlexiVan runs an innovation practice where engineers spend dedicated time each day on forward-looking projects. What starts as experimentation becomes production capability. The Smart Chassis program, the AI vision system, and now predictive logistics all followed this pattern.

The Agentic Future

FlexiVan is not stopping at prediction. Sagar's vision for the company centers on what he calls agentic logistics: deploying AI agents to handle the manual, repetitive transactions that consume operational bandwidth without adding strategic value.

In logistics, exceptions are constant. Sensor data is not always perfect. Containers get delayed. Inventory counts drift. Today, back-office teams spend significant time identifying and resolving these exceptions manually. AI agents can take over that work, freeing people to focus on the decisions and relationships that actually differentiate the business.

FlexiVan is also transforming how customers interact with their data. Their AIM360 platform now features dynamic, AI-generated interfaces. Instead of navigating static dashboards, a VP of operations logging in sees an executive summary tailored to their role. A regional manager in Chicago sees the operational data relevant to their area. Customers can ask questions in natural language and receive visualizations built on the fly.

"If we implement agents and enable AI tools for our employees to do better than what they used to do before, we can achieve our five-year vision in three years."‍

Sagar Chikkala
Chief Information Officer @ Flexivan

This is where Shakudo's newest capability, Kaji, enters the picture. Kaji is an autonomous AI agent that runs on the Shakudo platform, connected to FlexiVan's data and tools. It understands the organizational context: who holds which role, what systems contain which data, and how to collaborate with human team members through Microsoft Teams, Slack, or email. Rather than replacing people, Kaji works alongside them, handling execution while the team steers strategy.

For FlexiVan, Kaji represents the next chapter in a journey that has moved from visibility to prediction to autonomy. The steel and wheels have not changed. But the intelligence layer on top of them is evolving faster than anyone in intermodal logistics expected.

What This Means for the Industry

FlexiVan operates in a sector that is traditionally low-tech and transactional. Chassis leasing was, for decades, a commodity business. What FlexiVan has built is a platform company layered on top of physical assets, using sensors, software, AI vision, predictive analytics, and now autonomous agents to create value that competitors cannot easily replicate.

The playbook is instructive for any organization operating in critical infrastructure, logistics, manufacturing, energy, or transportation:

• Start with a real operational problem, not a technology looking for a use case
• Build what differentiates you and partner for the platform that accelerates you
• Move from experimental to operational by iterating in production, not in labs
• Invest in your team's domain expertise because as AI commoditizes code and execution, the lasting advantage is organizational knowledge and strategic judgment
• Choose infrastructure that gives you control because in regulated, operationally sensitive industries, your data governance posture is not optional

See What Shakudo and Kaji Can Do for Your Operations

FlexiVan is achieving its five-year roadmap in three years by combining deep operational expertise with Shakudo's AI platform and Kaji, our autonomous AI agent.

If you are leading AI initiatives in logistics, supply chain, manufacturing, or any operationally intensive industry, Get a Demo of Shakudo and Kaji Today.