Free Republic

Two US-flagged container ships under the protection of the US Navy were forced to retreat from a passage of the Red Sea after coming under fire from Houthi terrorists on Wednesday. The US-flagged container ships Maersk Detroit and Maersk Chesapeake were supposed to enter the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and transit the Red Sea under the protection of the US Navy. The US Navy has done this once before. On January 10, a convoy of four US-flagged ships carrying military cargo passed through the Red Sea. It came under a complex attack of 18 suicide drones, two anti-ship cruise missiles, and...

Orderbook ‘sword of Damocles’ will soon hit container market.. Here it comes. An unprecedented flood of new container ships is about to enter service. The pace of deliveries will pick up in earnest next month, surge much higher in the second quarter, go higher still in the second half, even higher throughout 2024, and stay strong in 2025. “The colossal orderbook is like a sword of Damocles hanging over the market, with a raft of new ship deliveries in the next months inevitably triggering a return of overcapacity,” ... Maritime Strategies International (MSI) estimates that deliveries will total 717,900 twenty-foot...

Slump in imports, cargo diversions to other ports help shrink queue of dozens of vessels The backup of container ships off Southern California’s coast that was at the heart of U.S. supply chain congestion during the Covid-19 pandemic has effectively disappeared. The queue of ships waiting to unload at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach fell from a peak of 109 ships in January to four vessels this week ... . U.S. import volumes are declining ... The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach together handled 686,133 loaded import containers in September, down 18% from a year...

Rerouting freight to avoid the extended lockdown in Shanghai, where daily confirmed COVID cases topped a record 17,000 this week, is becoming more difficult and expensive as cargo facilities in other Chinese cities become overcrowded, logistics companies and carriers warn. The logistics challenges for ocean and airfreight in Shanghai are extreme. More than 90% of truck capacity is out of service. Trucks are prevented from moving in and out of the city without a special permit, which is only valid for 24 hours and only on specific routes. “Even with this arranged, it is possible for booked trucks to...

stunning new report claims that China has been “secretly developing Trojan Horse-style missiles hidden in shipping containers” at a time when shipping and logistics is a key global focus. The new allegations, raised in a report by The U.S. Sun, state that the missiles could be “unleased on enemy ports” and would be disguised amongst the country’s massive fleet of freighters and fishing vessels – which could then be “turned into warships” using the secret missiles. The missiles could “blend in seamlessly” with hundreds of other containers on board ships, the report says. The shipping vessels are tougher to pinpoint...

Most of the Western world has transferred its manufacturing sectors to China. Every single day, Chinese container ships ply the world's oceans, fanning out to every continent except, maybe, for Antarctica. We've long known that those ships are carrying cheap goods and the West's economic destruction, but The Sun is contending that those same ships are likely to be disguised missile launchers.Here's the main part of the story, although you should visit The Sun to read the whole thing:CHINA has been secretly developing Trojan Horse-style missiles hidden in shipping containers that can be unleashed on enemy ports, experts warn.Military analysts...

President Biden told Americans that the supply chain is in “very strong shape” ahead of Christmas. Speaking from the White House Wednesday, Biden said his administration has partnered with the private sector to “ensure the store shelves are stocked.” But new shipping data shows snarled supply chains are worsening, and it could take months to untangle them. New shipping data from the busiest U.S. port complex, Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, shows 96 container ships idled offshore, waiting to unload cargo. FreightWaves’ Greg Miller described a new queuing system for vessels as pure optics, which reduces the number of...

I have a simple question for every ‘expert’ who thinks they understand the root causes of the shipping crisis: Why is there only one crane for every 50–100 trucks at every port in America? No ‘expert’ will answer this question. I’m a Class A truck driver with experience in nearly every aspect of freight. My experience in the trucking industry of 20 years tells me that nothing is going to change in the shipping industry.

Shipping companies at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will soon be fined if their containers stay in marine terminals for too long, officials announced on Monday. Officials at San Pedro Bay Ports said in a statement that the fines are being imposed in an effort to “improve cargo movement amid congestion and record volume.” Starting on Nov. 1, the ports will charge shipping companies that fall into one of two categories: containers scheduled to move by truck and containers moving by rail.

There was fleeting hope that Southern California port congestion had turned the corner. The number of container ships waiting offshore dipped to the low 60s and high 50s from a record high of 73 on Sept. 19, trans-Pacific spot rates plateaued, the Biden administration unveiled aspirations for 24/7 port ops, and electricity shortages curbed Chinese factory output. The reality is that the port congestion crisis in Southern California is not getting any better. The time ships are stuck waiting offshore continues to lengthen. There are simply too many vessels arriving with too much cargo for terminals, trucks, trains and warehouses...

The United States’ largest container port now has a record backlog of ships and containers, according to Gene Seroka, the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles. “We have about two weeks’ worth of work sitting at anchor right now,” Seroka told CNN, adding that port workers are currently trying to prioritize the cargo that needs to move from the port as soon as possible. Some 200,000 shipping containers remain on ships off the coast, he added. “There’s product that needs to get out there in super-fast speed,” he said. “Think about the toys, the other Christmas product, and...

Critics are asking what Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is doing about the congestion of cargo ships at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, as investigators point to a cargo ship’s anchor as a likely cause of a recent oil spill in the area.As Breitbart News reported last month, there is a massive backup of cargo ships off the coast of Southern California, due to a variety of factors, including rising import demand, insufficient trucking, and workers’ reluctance to do night shifts.On Friday, an undersea pipeline linked to an offshore oil platform leaked roughly 144,000 gallons of oil...

OPINION: This article contains commentary which reflects the author’s opinion Reminder : The purpose of the articles that you will find on this website is to EDUCATE our opinions and not to disinform or grow hate and anger! Dozens of cargo ships anchored off the coasts of Los Angeles and New York face shocking wait times of up to four weeks and railyards and trucking routes are hopelessly clogged due to the lack of manpower to unload goods – with an expert warning that the government needs to intervene or face spiraling inflation and unemployment. The backlog of billions of...

Around 24 cargo ships and oil tankers are stuck waiting to dock off the coast of Long Island, New York, due to a surge in demand for consumer goods and short-staffed ports. MarineTraffic, the global ship tracking site, showed ships gathered a few miles off the coastline that stretches from Long Beach in the west to Lido Beach and Jones Beach Island in the east, The Daily Mail reported. The ships appeared to have been stuck in place since at least Saturday evening, the outlet added. Pandemic-induced shopping sprees ahead of the holiday season, coupled with a national labor shortage,...

A record number of container ships are stuck waiting to enter California’s two largest ports as labor shortages and COVID-19 disruptions continue to roil a supply chain that’s being pushed to its limits ahead of the busy holiday shopping season. A total of 46 freight ships are at anchor or in a drift area waiting to enter the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Marine Exchange of Southern California, which operates the Vessel Traffic Service for those two ports, reported late Monday evening. “Trend at anchor and in drift areas is essentially steady next 3 days,” the group...

Massive port backlogs continued to build for the seventh day in China at the world’s third-busiest container port. Vessels are being diverted away from Ningbo Meishan Container Terminal due to suspended operations following the COVID-19 Delta variant outbreak. This is having a profound impact on nearby ports in Shanghai and Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg. Port congestion in nearby Shanghai and Hong Kong is increasing once again due to the closure of the Meishan terminal at Ningbo port, a major port and industrial hub in east China’s Zhejiang province, which lies south of Shanghai. Last week, a dock worker at...

...the authors of a new article in Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies, have some potentially upsetting news for local food aficionados: 'Local food' cannot simply be equated with 'sustainable food'; in most cases, it neither can ensure food security nor does it necessarily have a lower carbon footprint. For the environmental sustainability of food systems, many more factors matter than just transportation, not least consumers’ dietary choices … In terms of economic sustainability, selling via short supply chains [those with few intermediaries between farmer and consumer] into local markets can benefit certain farmers, while for other producers it...

The number of container ships stuck at anchor off Los Angeles and Long Beach is down to around 20 per day, from 30 a few months ago. Does this mean the capacity crunch in the trans-Pacific market is finally easing? Absolutely not, warned Nerijus Poskus, vice president of global ocean at freight forwarder Flexport. “It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse,” he told American Shipper in an interview on Monday. “What I’m seeing is unprecedented. We are seeing a tsunami of freight,” he reported. “For the month of May, everything on the trans-Pacific is basically sold out. We had one...

A new era for the Port of New York and New Jersey started this morning with the arrival of the largest ship to ever stop over on the East Coast.  The CMA CGM Theodore Roosevelt sailed under the newly-elevated Bayonne Bridge today on its maiden voyage to the United States, as locals gathered at Dennis P. Collins Park to watch the massive ship's arrive. Four times larger than the Statue of Liberty and the length of five football fields, the Theodore Roosevelt can carry more than 14,400 20-foot equivalent units (TEU). Owned by French shipping group CMA CGM, the ship made its...

Today a big Korean shipping company called Hanjin declared bankruptcy. It may be far away, but that move is a testament to an industry in trouble. Volume is way down all over the world as trade remains sluggish. Add to that the fact that just as demand wanes, a whole load of new vessels come online, and there’s a problem. Shipping hit a crisis in 2008 as demand for goods plunged. It’s never fully returned. John Butler is CEO of the World Shipping Council. He said after the financial crisis, when oil prices were spiking, “There was an expectation that...