“Some carriers have been strategically positioned on how they’ve managed their ships,” she adds. “Other carriers have made sure equipment—the fleet of containers—is available where it needs to be.” Equipment imbalances stem in part from the long detours around South Africa that keep containers on the water longer. To compensate, some carriers have purchased additional equipment. To help carriers match capacity to demand as precisely as possible, Flexport tries to discourage shippers from double- booking, Nielsen says. At the same time, the company advises customers on how to make sure they can secure capacity and get cargo to its destination on time. “For example, we have been advising customers to book earlier than they usually do, and plan very early for longer lead times,” she says. Prepping for Scarce Supply Vessel-owning carrier Crowley, based in Jacksonville, Florida, doesn’t have to worry about avoiding the Suez Canal. It serves shippers in the Caribbean and Central America, generally using smaller container vessels, with a capacity of 2,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) or less. But Crowley could also eventually feel the impact of the global capacity shortage, in part because it relies on chartered vessels for part of its fleet. Currently, barely any vessels are available for charter in the Caribbean region. And with scarce supply, charter rates are likely to go up. “We are a bit insulated from short- term swings, but if there’s a long-term impact on the charter market, we will be impacted,” says Brett Bennett, senior vice president and general manager of the Crowley logistics division. Crowley is compensating by buying more ships of its own. In 2023, the company ordered four new vessels of about 1,400 TEUs each, powered by liquid nitrogen gas (LNG). “That’s part of our sustainability journey,” Bennet says. “But it also gives us additional capacity and
To ensure it can provide ample capacity to its shipper customers and to boost sustainability efforts, Crowley has added to its fleet four new vessels, all powered by liquid natural gas.
capabilities to serve our customers. And it further insulates us from a volatile charter market.” Crowley also maximizes its existing capacity by using its own Crowley Engineering Services to manage its ships. “We invest in our vessels and keep them operating top-notch,” Bennett says. Besides transporting goods with its own fleet within its own service area, Crowley also serves as an NVOCC. It partners with global ocean carriers to ship cargo between its own service footprint and other parts of the world. In that role, as of September 2024, Crowley was also keeping its eye on the labor dispute on the East and Gulf Coasts and routing to the U.S. West Coast when possible. That’s not a panacea, though. “We’ve seen in the past that the U.S. West Coast, as big as it is, can get quickly congested,” Bennett says. Visibility Solutions Are Key With greater complexity in ocean transport, it’s especially important for shippers to monitor the status of cargo in transit. To meet that need, global ocean carrier Hapag-Lloyd recently introduced Live Position, a service that lets shippers and supply chain partners know where their containers are, with updates every 15 minutes.
Shippers already get this information from ocean carriers while containers are at sea. But as various trucking, rail, or barge companies take charge of containers, those providers might or might not offer updates. “There’s a big black hole in terms of everything that happens to a container while it’s on the inland journey,” says Olaf Habert, director, strategy office at Hapag-Lloyd. Hapag-Lloyd can fill that hole because it places tracking devices on all of its containers. No matter where in the world a shipment is, or what transportation mode it’s using, if it’s inside a Hapag-Lloyd container, the ocean carrier can track its location and share that data with shippers and intermediaries through its website. Hapag-Lloyd is also developing an application programming interface (API) so shippers, logistics partners, and solution developers can integrate the location data into their own systems. Besides simply monitoring a shipment’s progress, Live Position can help recover cargo when something goes wrong. If a marine terminal loses track of a customer’s container while it is parked in the port, for instance, Hapag-Lloyd can identify the container’s location with Live Position, making it quick and easy for the terminal to recover it.
34 Inbound Logistics • October 2024
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