
Leaky Ships: Ocean Carriers and the Age of Profitless Shipping - thedogeye
https://www.flexport.com/blog/why-are-ocean-freight-rates-so-low/
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lalalandland
The pollution shipping causes is really not taken seriously enough. Much of
overseas production of cheap products is possible because of cheap shipping,
but the environmental impact of this is going to cost us dearly.

One report say 16 of the biggest container ships produce as much pollution as
all the cars in the world:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-1...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1229857/How-16-ships-
create-pollution-cars-world.html)

~~~
facepalm
While I agree that it's horrible (but also presumably comparatively easy to
fix), I think they only measure pollution by certain pollutants, not total
pollution.

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DrScump
"Let’s say that you want to travel for a year; it’s cheaper to put your
personal belongings in a shipping container as it sails around the world than
to keep it at a local mini-storage facility."

Yow.

~~~
ckozlowski
My collegue repatriated back to the US earlier this year from Europe, and I'll
be following shortly. I was stunned at how cheap it was (relatively speaking)
to ship our things back.

The moving company brings a 40ft container to your house, and starts packing
it up. Then it's right off to the port. It amazes me, perhaps more so than it
should, that moving an entire household full of items across the ocean is so
economical.

~~~
jacquesm
If it wouldn't be that economical then the whole 'made in China' phenomenon
would not exist.

The biggest problem I had in moving back from Canada to NL was to pick up the
container in Rotterdam harbor and to have it delivered at our house. The rest
of the 6500 km journey was trivial.

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bryanlarsen
Expect the prices to spike horribly in a few years, it sounds like a classic
oligopoly in the making.

Small & mid-sized carriers are being killed off, and the big carriers are
forming consortiums.

Once that consolidation is complete, it'll be a closed field with massive
barriers to entry: the immense amounts of capital necessary to build those
huge ships, plus the need to secure the necessary docking slots.

~~~
cglace
This has been taking place since the beginning of containerization and it has
resulted in ever lower prices per container.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Yes, it's a classic pattern. Companies get bigger and more efficient, driving
down prices until there's only 2 or 3 left and they can start enjoying their
oligopoly.

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ascorbic
Rates are very low, but the example given of Rotterdam to Shanghai is a bit
misleading. There is much less demand in that direction than the other way,
but the ships still need to get to Shanghai to pick up all those toys for the
children of Europe. I'd expect the price the other direction to be more than
double that.

~~~
kyllo
Exactly. The carriers are happy to get any money at all on the Europe to Asia
route, because most of their containers are moving back to Shanghai empty.

~~~
ascorbic
One common cargo from Europe to China is waste cardboard. Think how cheap
shipping would have to be for that to be worth shipping. Many of these will be
the boxes from goods shipped to Europe from China, and will be recycled into
more boxes for more goods to send back to Europe. It's like the circle of
life, but with cardboard.

~~~
burger_moon
Scape metal has also become common to ship to China to be smelted back down
shipped back to the U.S.

~~~
kyllo
Chinese Customs has started banning a lot of these commodities because of the
pollution that recycling them creates. Used tires for example. But apparently
it is _still_ somehow profitable to ship them to Vietnam and smuggle them
across the border into China for recycling.

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acd
I smell a credit bubble that has put too many ships on the market.

See also this Article about an advertising bubble where there is "There's more
money being made from advertising than consumers are putting in."
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10572863)

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samstave
Crazy idea: what if cargo ships towed behind them a "cruise barge" \-
basically a section of cruise ship that people can rent cabins on to go from
point A to point B -- its basically like a cruise ship - but its only on the
barge behind the cargo ship - maybe not as luxurious as a cruise ship - but
might be another way to charge given that no matter what the cargo ships will
always be traversing these routes on the seas.

~~~
Already__Taken
I guess if a cruise ship is a package holiday what you're describing is a self
catering cruise ship?

What if an operator sourced high-speed internet for a trip and rented a good
few months of container space to programmers who want a working holiday ha.

Or rent out kitted out livable containers to go on ships with an occupant for
x time of the trip.

~~~
david-given
This are some pretty terrible pictures, but they show you how densely packed
the containers are:

[http://www.travelwithachallenge.com/Images/Travel_Article_Li...](http://www.travelwithachallenge.com/Images/Travel_Article_Library/Freighter-
Travel/Container-Hold.jpg)
[http://www.travelwithachallenge.com/Images/Travel_Article_Li...](http://www.travelwithachallenge.com/Images/Travel_Article_Library/Freighter-
Travel/Hanjin-Container-Ship-Seattle.jpg)

That's 14 layers of containers, eight below deck and six above. Some contains
will need power hookups because they're refridgerated, so it's feasible that
those are accessible, but most won't be.

Plus, containers _do_ get lost overboard occasionally. Cabins would be rather
safer...

