News

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Hat-trick of new cargo airlines plan for take-off

The past week has seen three new companies – in the UK, Italy and Vietnam – reveal plans to enter the all-cargo market as prices and availability of capacity make the market an attractive prospect. Last week, Italian firm Aliscargo was preparing for the arrival of its first aircraft –…

Jun 22, 2021

Elon Musk eyes subterranean container transport

Elon Musk is reportedly looking into getting into the red hot container transport sector, but from a typically different angle. The Boring Company, which Musk founded five years ago, has developed a 6.4 m wide tunnel concept capable of transporting two lanes of containers.

Jun 22, 2021

Chinese Port Logjam Threatens Christmas Shipping Rush

Shipping executives say around 50 container ships remain backed up around the Yantian port in Southern China and that some 350,000 loaded containers are stacked up on docks as the major gateway for China goods heading to Western nations struggles to recover from a Covid-19 outbreak that disrupted operations there.

Jun 22, 2021

Mounting evidence that container crunch will persist until 2022

A widely held theory on pandemic spending is that container imports surged because Americans bought a lot more goods when COVID prevented them from buying services. Ergo, with more vaccinations and fewer hospitalizations, Americans will resume spending on services and consequently have less to spend on goods, the pandemic-induced driver…

Jun 22, 2021

Cargo Is Piling Up Everywhere, And It’s Making Inflation Worse

Jun 21, 2021
John Nephew thought he had a winner with a new tabletop game called Dice Miner. Importing the games from China turned out to be its own roll of the dice. Nephew, founder of Atlas Games in Duluth, Minn., ordered a 40-foot cargo container full of games from Shanghai in December, anticipating delivery in about six weeks. Instead, the games took nearly six months to arrive — an increasingly common example of the supply chain bottlenecks pushing inflation to its highest level in more than a dozen years.
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Chassis and labor shortages stymie ocean carriers, Class I railroads

Jun 21, 2021
Driver shortages and chassis availability at intermodal terminals continue to be an issue for customers, particularly in Southern California and the Midwest, according to service advisories from ocean carriers Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk. According to a Hapag-Lloyd advisory from last Friday, average dwell times for Hapag-Lloyd boxes at terminals and ramps were 15 days at Long Beach, California, and 9.2 days in Los Angeles. These dwell times include rail and truck moves, according to Hapag-Lloyd.
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