
Aboard a Cargo Colossus: Maersk’s New Container Ships - mhb
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/business/international/aboard-a-cargo-colossus-maersks-new-container-ships.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
======
bane
"Maersk, based in Copenhagen, ordered 20 Triple-E’s from Daewoo of South Korea
in 2011"

I got the rare opportunity to tour the DSME (Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine
Engineering) yard in Okpo Bay, Geoje-Do South Korea a few years ago. I think
it's the second largest shipyard in the world. It was really an unbelievable
experience. Container ships are huge when they're in the water, but they're
absolutely mind bogglingly _immense_ in drydock, where individual sections
dwarf most apartment buildings.

The range of ships they produce there is also rather mindblowing, in my tour I
saw (in various stages of assembly) container ships, LPG transport vessels,
crude oil ships, various navy ships and a handful of submarines among others.

The engineering going on is also fairly cutting edge. Problems like accurately
predicting weld strength are still unsolved and they had a large computational
modelling R&D programs I got a glimpse of while I was there.

If you squinted a bit, it almost felt like huge starships were being assembled
there.

[https://www.google.com/maps/@34.8706117,128.706339,6867m/dat...](https://www.google.com/maps/@34.8706117,128.706339,6867m/data=!3m1!1e3)

Down the street (more or less), in Gohyeon, is another huge shipyard which I
think Samsung Heavy Industries runs.

~~~
masklinn
> If you squinted a bit, it almost felt like huge starships were being
> assembled there.

An interesting note when you consider triple Es would just sit in the middle
of the medium starship comparison chart[0], or at the very bottom of the large
chart[1] next to borg scout vessels

[0] [http://www.st-
minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_medium...](http://www.st-
minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_medium.png)

[1] [http://www.st-
minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_large....](http://www.st-
minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_large.png)

------
pslam
The media in this article is frustrating. The lead of this story is the
incredible size of these container ships, but no photos, and no parts of the
video, show the ship side-by-side anything which gives us a sense of scale.

It's all very well showing a diagram of the Empire State Building stood on its
side, but I would have loved to see even a single photo or 1 second of video
where it was moving slowly past a landmark. Or even a long-shot of the harbor
as it came out of port. Nope. All artistic "through the porthole" or other
strange angles which never capture the whole ship.

Anyone got a resource which actually shows the ship in a setting which gives
it some sense of scale, instead of, like this article, leaving all of that to
the imagination?

~~~
minimax
Maersk actually has a pretty solid instagram account where they post those
kinds of pictures.

[http://instagram.com/maerskline](http://instagram.com/maerskline)

~~~
jdnier
Heh, heh. Lego minifigure comparison (although probably not a TripleE):
[http://instagram.com/p/q_yDmLiL1F/](http://instagram.com/p/q_yDmLiL1F/)

------
jdietrich
There are some comments downthread about how new technologies (3d printing
etc) might disrupt international shipping. I think that they are grossly
underestimating just how cheap sea freight actually is.

Sending a 20ft container on a typical China to Western Europe route costs
about $1400. The journey by sea adds less than one cent to the wholesale cost
of a small plastic widget, or about $1.50 to the cost of a desktop PC. There
isn't a particularly great environmental footprint either - fuel is the
biggest single cost in shipping, so low costs depend on astonishing levels of
fuel efficiency.

Shipping is so cheap that all sorts of superficially absurd business practices
make economic sense. Some British companies send locally-caught seafood to
Thailand for processing, then ship it back to the UK to be sold domestically.
It takes only a relatively small difference in labour costs to offset the cost
of shipping.

------
mrtimo
"The Triple-E’s were built for $190 million a ship"

The list price for the 777-300ER is $320.2 million [1].

Incredible! 1:
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/30/why-...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/30/why-
a-boeing-777-costs-320-million-dollars/7063805/)

~~~
mrfusion
Would that mean the primary costs for a 777 aren't materials?

~~~
celticninja
pretty much. every single thing used to make a plane has to pass a shitload of
tests, that is what adds the cost. I think it costs about a million dollars to
test the wing of a plane like a 747, one wing.

~~~
toomuchtodo
One of the wing tests:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai2HmvAXcU0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai2HmvAXcU0)

"This Boeing 777 wing was tested to destruction, finally breaking at one fifty
four percent (154%) of the designed limit load."

------
wglb
A fascinating book about the history of container shipping is
[http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-
Economy...](http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-
Economy/dp/0691136408/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412363433&sr=1-1&keywords=container+ships)

~~~
ghaff
Great book and it also very much speaks to how, for example, processes and
regulations/contracts may need to change in order for a new technology to be
used effectively. Most people don't appreciate the degree to which containers
underpin the globalization of manufacturing (for better or worse).

------
kylelibra
It's amazing to think about the scale of these shipping operations. 70% of the
world's freight is still moved by Ocean, you really take it for granted the
journey products sometimes make before reaching your hands.

~~~
revelation
More concerningly, I'd venture 70% of _freight_ travels in a 5 seater SUV with
a single person at the wheel.

~~~
electromagnetic
Then let's just dig a canal and have the container ship deliver it to our
houses, you would eliminate rail, truck and consumer transport costs!

I would estimate 100% of people buy and transport food, and I can guarantee
almost 100% would kill you rather than stop.

Making asinine comments is asinine. You might find it concerning that people
use automobiles to get "freight" to their homes, but I find it quite
reassuring. I for one don't want to be around when they stop.

------
akeck
With today's commodity-scale solar panels, is there enough non-container
surface area on a Triple-E to reduce the fuel usage by 1% with a solar
electric drive that assists the fuel-based engines?

~~~
krschultz
There is almost no non-container space deck space. Take a look at how they
designed the superstructure where the crew lives, it is super narrow, full
width, and obviously full height.

You might have better luck on an oil tanker or car carrier.

~~~
darkmighty
They could make special containers with solar panels integrated into their
roofs (and place them carefully on top of course), and find a way to route
cables cheaply. Given solars area power density, I'd guess completely
uneconomical.

------
orbitingpluto
And right now ports like Long Beach can't deal with the incoming container
traffic. Currently, it's a struggle for a trucker to find a chassis now.

These huge ships can create huge variations in the total TEU (twenty foot
equivalent units) coming in at any given time. Containers can get lost under
incoming containers for days/weeks because the port is playing Jenga.

I guess my point is that someone has to figure out the destination side
logistics that will arise with ever increasing amounts delivered all at once.

~~~
Animats
Check out Rotterdam. Ground container handling is done with robot vehicles.

~~~
techdragon
And a mountain of software to route, reroute, stack and unstack all to ensure
minimum time spent in the port for a full container.

------
orbitingpluto
Obligatory info for amalgamated AIS tracking for ships:

marinetraffic.com vesselfinder.com

Quite useful. Most ocean carriers, Maersk included, have horrible tracking of
their shipments. No API, outdated and buggy IE4-ish sites, and inconsistent
info. (I've used Selenium to web scrape data from ocean carriers before.)

Probably the most modern I've seen is Hapag-Lloyd, and they provide a email
interface with a turnaround time of 5 minutes - then you can just scrape the
results.

~~~
gadders
I worked at an investment bank for a while in a commodities department that
dealt with physical commodities. Using those websites and Solarc/Openlink
RightAngle [1] we could actually find one of our containers full of oil
delivering into Singapore. Kind of cool.

[1]
[http://www.olf.com/software/products/RightAngle.html](http://www.olf.com/software/products/RightAngle.html)

~~~
apaprocki
If you ever had a Bloomberg, we let you map all the worldwide shipping traffic
in realtime and dive into ships/cargo in the BMAP function. Almost exclusively
used by commodities desks like the one you were probably at :)

------
TraderZoe
<CTRL+F> Baltic Dry -- No returns.

What depresses me about this forum is not one of you knows the relationship
between the technology of the market (these wunderkind ships) and the market
itself.

The Baltic Dry index crashed, hard, in 2008[1]. (There are many reasons for
this apart from the global economic crash - a lot of over-production, a lot of
ships coming off-line but with replacements that needed extended loans that
were put into question by the crash, extremely dodgy business practices in
Greece and so on). It had a terrible year in 2012[2]. And 2014 doesn't look
much better[3].

I'd urge you to look at the figures, then work out just how well global trade
is doing. Hint: paper over cracks.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Dry_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Dry_Index)
[2][http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-
blog/2012/feb/...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-
blog/2012/feb/07/baltic-dry-shipping-index-25-year-low)
[3][http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BDIY:IND](http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BDIY:IND)

------
hacst
For more information about container shipping I highly recommend this omega
tau podcast episode: [http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-
shipping/](http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-shipping/)

------
theoh
This time last year Lego announced a Triple E kit: [http://gcaptain.com/lego-
unveils-maersk-line-triple-e-block-...](http://gcaptain.com/lego-unveils-
maersk-line-triple-e-block-kit/)

------
johnyzee
I once went to see Maersk's largest vessel in the Copenhagen harbor. After
driving up and down the docks for some time without being able to find the
ship, I realized I was driving next to it.

------
stcredzero
How about a disposable combat drone launcher system built into a standard
cargo container? The device could remain inert until needed, but be activated
on request from the crew. If the movie Captain Phillips accurately portrayed
the piracy threat, then several smaller drones might be able to act as a
deterrent. (Particularly if a TrackingPoint like weapon were incorporated.)

~~~
eck
Sounds more expensive than the ransom.

~~~
stcredzero
You could probably have these mass produced for 100's of thousands. You
wouldn't even need to put them on all ships. Just put them on a large fraction
of them. I think the stock could be operated for less expense than a few
ransoms of a large ship.

------
odiroot
Being Polish and having been multiple times to Gdansk I'm pretty surprised
such a huge ship can even dock there. Good to know Poland can actually receive
goods straight from SE Asia without reloading. On the other hand it doesn't
explain how the same electronic equipment (and other luxury goods) is nearly
always cheaper in Germany and sometimes even in the UK.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Logistics is only part of the costs. All those electronics are even more
expensive in China, where they are often actually made! Taxes, retail
overhead, and competition play a much bigger role in the actual price you pay.

------
mrfusion
I wonder why US ports are too small? Anyone know?

Also curious that the Suez canal is wider than the Panama?

~~~
ecopoesis
The Suez is sea level, so there are no locks.

Panama is working on a new set of locks and other expansions
([http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_projec...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_project))
that will allow for post-Panamax ships.

~~~
fuzzythinker
There's also going the be a new competing canal in Nicaragua to be started in
December this year.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal)

------
mrfusion
Do they have any issues with pirates sailing that close to Somalia?

~~~
bane
If they go through the Straits of Hormuz, definitely.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/30/us-shipping-
attack...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/30/us-shipping-attack-
idUSBREA2T0AV20140330)

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
I think the question was more about whether this specific type of ship (triple
E) better protects them against pirate attacks.

I was wondering the same thing (if they engineered the ship differently to
better stop pirate attacks).

------
mrfusion
It appears from the pictures that the crew has access to every single cargo
container during the voyage? I wonder why that would be necessary?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Leakage, customs, national security issues, etc. If the government of a
country says they need to inspect a specific cargo container or you can't come
into port, it's easier to make that possible at sea rather than having to
steam elsewhere and completely unload, especially since you'd likely have to
refuel en route and it would be a very long trip due to the rareness of ports
capable of handling such ships.

------
w8rbt
Are ships still required to have stand-alone radios (VHF/UHF/HF) at sea? I
know most of them use satellite comms now.

~~~
gaius
Yes, every ship is required to keep a watch on VHF channel 16.

~~~
laxatives
The captain of a boat I crew for says this is rarely enforced. Often requests
are not responded to, or if they are, the crew member monitoring the radio
doesn't speak English.

------
ericson578
another area ripe for disruption. Imagine in 100 years when 3d printing is a
mature technology, and most goods are produced locally and delivered by drone.
Maybe only raw materials will be transported this way?

~~~
wdewind
Maybe.

It's extremely difficult to imagine a world in which distributed,
unspecialized manufacturing is actually a reasonable way for most people to
get their goods.

One argument many people have made is look at the personal computing
revolution, shouldn't we see the same thing in physical manufacturing?

And the answer is: yes, we will the same thing. But look at what is actually
happening: you have a brief 20-30 year period in which distributed personal
computing actually happens, but then once the internet comes about things have
slowly started migrating back to centralization and specialization (ie:
Facebook instead of distributed social networking).

I expect the same will happen with 3d printing. Sure, 3d printing might be the
best way to print that obscure part you need for an old car. But for every day
items? Unlikely that the efficiency gain made by getting rid of shipping is
actually offset by printing something in your house on demand.

~~~
snowwrestler
I think the nature of everyday items would have to change for 3D printing to
compete. For example, imagine a technology that scans your body in 3D and then
makes that shirt you like, but with its dimensions customized to the
dimensions of your body.

Clothing sizes today are a messy approximation of what people actually want.
It's a compromise between the ROI possible in a mass-production, mass-
transport world, and the perfect fit.

News and music used to be produced and distributed like clothes--centralized
production of a limited number of product options, which are then shipped to
lots of people. Today people can completely customize their news and music
consumption through a wide variety of dynamically personalized channels.

Personal manufacturing can do the same thing for tangible goods. But the
current "3D printing" technology, which is extremely limited in terms of
materials, size, durability, etc.

~~~
wdewind
The point is that it is unlikely that machine would exist in your house.
You'll still get clothing from the same company, shipped or in store, they'll
just manufacture it differently. This is a big deal, but again, it's unlikely
that the means of production will distribute because of simple efficiency
gains through specialization.

Even if you go full science fiction and have a machine that perfectly
rearranges the atoms and you can buy specific atoms (a la Diamond Age), the
guy who has a deal on bulk atoms needed to make a shirt will make it cheaper
than you will make it in your kitchen on your maker.

------
bsaul
Anyone knows if people are studying things like elon musk's hyperloop to
revolutionnize goods transport ?

~~~
ghaff
Studying a hypothetical high-speed train given that no existing high-speed
trains are used primarily for freight? (And that air freight is widely used.)
I doubt it. High-value goods can already be delivered quickly and low-value
goods can be delivered quite inexpensively. Container ships have, in fact,
revolutionized goods transport.

~~~
bsaul
i would have compared hyperloop more to something like pipelines than trains..

~~~
ghaff
A pipeline is pretty much the complete opposite of what you'd want to ship
discrete goods. Pipelines work well for fluids because they're a homogenous
liquid that have to be loaded and unloaded in discrete chunks to ship by
train. With discrete goods on the other hand, the whole virtue of containers
is that their content don't need to be loaded or unloaded to be inserted into
a transportation system. And if a "pipeline" could take an entire preloaded
container in some form? Well, we're back to something that looks and acts
basically like a high-speed train.

~~~
bsaul
Except a train is using rails. Because hyperloop containers are in a sort of
vacuum, they have extremely low friction.

Ships still consume oil, and whenever one of those super cargo crash in the
ocean, it's an environmental nightmare. And even when they don't, they're
still polluting a lot ( i know, not _that_ much compared to other means and
the amount of goods they carry).

There's probably still a way to carry goods from china to europe in a more
environment friendly way...

~~~
kryptiskt
> There's probably still a way to carry goods from china to europe in a more
> environment friendly way...

Maybe a modern unmanned sailing ship would fit.

~~~
ghaff
There have been various attempts to reduce fuel consumption by using sails,
e.g. [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/science/earth/cargo-
ship-d...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/science/earth/cargo-ship-
designers-turn-to-wind-to-cut-cost-and-emissions.html)

It probably gets less useful as ships get bigger though and there's a long
history of trying this sort of thing without a whole lot of success. Modern
systems do have better automation however.

