It’s not really Trans Arabia, but it’s of the era. Caravan trading was a 51/49 percent relationship with Behring international of Houston. (Sheikh Ali had the 51%, as with all Saudi companies). Behring had contracts with various American companies like Lockheed and Boeing etc. Lockheed Tri Star L1011s were Saudia’s main long haul jets at the time and they had employees at most airports.
Our trucks went to all quarters of the kingdom, Riyadh, Jeddah, Khamis Mushayt, And Arar and Turaif up the Tapline - anywhere where Americans were based, to collect their ‘personal belongings’ to ship back to the States. Since they could ship free as much as they wanted home - they did. We carried anything and everything, the things they could buy tax free and illegal exports like the beautiful ‘desert roses’ carved from the sand.
We used to ship about 20 tons or more weekly - cube weight, not actual weight, but we were paid the same. This was a huge money spinner for Caravan.
Sadly, an American who had worked for Behring went to work for Lockheed. He promised massive freight savings, because he knew all our tricks about cubic expansion!
Sod’s law, this happened as I took over as General Manager at Caravan. It didn’t help that Behring declared chapter 11 bankruptcy in the states at the same time, 1986.
We suddenly were just Caravan instead of Behring Caravan. We did a deal with A J Fritz in the States and tried to keep our airfreight contracts.
I managed to hold onto Boeing, who operated from near Riyadh, but the ‘free’ airfreight was cut, so of course the employees were less willing to ship things home.
To add to the problems, A J Fritz suddenly started to have problems clearing our goods in the States. Usually, we could offer a second day delivery to almost anywhere through UPS, but some Goods were held up in U.S. customs, which hadn’t happened before.
Ali asked me to go to A J fritz’s head office in Chicago to find out what was wrong. I went on about 2nd January 1987.
The problem was simple. Customs had had a change at the top and the new head honcho wanted all goods from Saudi Arabia scrutinised in depth. I soon realised that this wasn’t something I could solve and we had essentially lost a good source of income. We could still carry personal effects, but we would have to make the customer aware that they would not clear customs as they used to.
I was flying American Airlines and took a taxi back to O’Hare, gloomy and with the snow beginning to fall.
By the time I got to O’Hare, it was snowing heavily. The next few hours were like something out of the film ‘Airport’.
We got on the plane, which was then de-iced, by spraying anti-freeze all over it. The Tv was plugged into the Johnny Carson show, which, being beamed from Chicago, sent crews up to O’Hare to report live. It was odd to see the TV crews inside the building through the cabin windows, while watching our plane being de-iced live on TV!
It was also possible then on AA to listen to the flight deck/tower conversations on one of the entertainment channels. This was fascinating, hearing them talk to the de-icing crew and also whether we would actually get to take off as the weather worsened. Looking out on the runway, the ‘conga line’ of about 7 snow ploughs was moving up the runway and the crew were talking to them too.
Eventually, we pushed back and took off as normal. An uneventual flight arriving back at Heathrow next morning.
Our Air Freight business was never as profitable as previously, but we did well on containers - we secured a contract with a London commodities firm and shipped several 20’s a week to London and elsewhere, containing minerals (sorry, can’t remember exactly what at this late stage.) This was good profitable freight because exports from Saudi were rare.
