How Ocean Shipping Works (And Why It's Broken)

This video was made possible thanks to Curiousstream. Watch an exclusive behind-the-scenes video that finally answers the question of how we make these videos by signing up for the Curiosity Stream Nebula package at Curiousstream.com Wendover, in the early morning hours of August 22, 2021, Maersk. essec departed birth 402 in the ports of los angeles, california, after sailing through the breakwater, the ship made a turn westward beginning a two month voyage of seventeen thousand miles and twenty seven thousand kilometers from america to asia and back .

shipping

industry a fairly ordinary trip on a fairly ordinary ship just 15 years ago, although the maersk essex would have been truly extraordinary, you see the essex has a capacity for 13,092 20 foot containers or equivalent 20 foot teu units In 2006, the Zen Los Angeles entered service with a capacity of 9,600 TEU, which was heralded with proclamations of a new era for

shipping

, as the Gen was ranked as the largest

ocean

-going container ship in the world. summer 2021, although the Ever Ace embarked on its maiden voyage from Asia to Western Europe.

With a capacity of 23,992 tu, two and a half times more than the largest ship from a decade and a half ago as a point of comparison, this means that this ship could carry every container in the nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, with capacity for 100,000 people received in 2020 in one go and then add Bermuda's annual container traffic to that now this trend towards ever larger ships is indicative of another major trend in shipping industry consolidation that recognizes the incredible economies of scale in an industry based on the principles of economics. of scale, larger container shipping lines have recently worked to gain a cost advantage that their smaller competitors could not by adding a greater number of containers on fewer ships.

This is both cause and effect of the fact that in 2000 the top 10 shipping lines controlled 51 percent of the global market, but now they own 85 percent, bolstered by historically low shipbuilding costs. Maersk MSC Evergreen and others chose to commission these new giant ships rather than purchase or refurbish used ships to operate their busy routes from Asia to Europe and Asia to the Western North. the routes of america, so a 13,000-tu behemoth like the essex, which broke a record in the wrong year, is now nothing more than a fairly ordinary workhorse: a ship set on a regular route from los angeles, After 10 uneventful days crossing the Pacific, the Maersk Essex stopped at its first port of call in Yokohama, Japan.

The stop lasted 8 hours while cranes unloaded containers from the Americas and then loaded more bound for both the east and towards the west, although the essex withdrew its lines, moved away from the dock and sailed carefully to leave Tokyo Bay once it reached open waters, however, it actually slowed down slightly for rather strategic reasons, as seen In 2008, in the early days of the financial crisis, shipping lines faced a perfect storm of circumstances, shipping demand was at rock bottom and fuel costs were through the roof, lines had to innovate. to survive, so a Maersk task force came up with an incredibly simple proposal: just go slower.

You'll find that most vehicles, boats are more efficient at slower speeds, but companies were always concerned that operating a boat long distances below its designed cruising speed could damage its engine, a quick way to waste any fuel savings, but Maersk proved this belief false and so began operating many ships at between 14 and 18 knots instead of 22. This proved financially advantageous, with most industry players seeing between 10 and 25 fuel savings on a given trip and Over time, going slower became standard practice across the industry, of course, when shipping market direct lines will operate at higher speeds as they prefer to carry cargo at your destination and pick up more containers sooner, but when not, it's an easy way to reduce simultaneously. operating costs and removing capacity from the system when it is not needed, this is exactly what the Maersk Essec did after leaving Yokohama without needing to quickly reach its next destination.

She slowed to 12 knots as she meandered through eastern China. sea, which does not seem to be a notable practice, but slow sailing has been one of the most important industrial innovations of the 21st century, given the slow pace that it took the Essex in five days to reach the port of Shaman China, where it was detained for some 36 hours as thousands of containers were unloaded on the afternoon of September 8, although departing once again ready to venture deeper into the Far East on this leg of the journey through the South China Sea, the ship passed closer from the country.

Since most of their crew members call the Philippines home, with few labor laws regulating who can work on ships sailing in international waters, it is natural for cost-conscious shipping lines to seek staff from countries with which lower cost of living, in short, seek those who can least pay arise from a mix of culture, tradition and education The Philippines has established itself as the largest source of maritime labor in the world around 77 young unlicensed sailors and poorly paid help with some of the more physically demanding tasks The tasks are from the Philippines in general, the industry, unaffected by national borders, is incredibly international.

A Danish-owned ship will be built in South Korea, registered in Panama, captained by an American and crewed by sailors from the Philippines, India, Bulgaria, Russia and beyond the westernmost point. Maersk's voyage to Essex was here, the port of Vangtai, Vietnam, docked at her dock on September 10. These short port visits offer most crew members some rare moments of continuous free time while the cranes take care of the work of loading and unloading the ship that the crew is normally on. They are allowed to leave the ship, see the sights, experience some nightlife as long as they return on board on time;

However, due to the border restrictions imposed by many countries in response to the coveted 19 pandemic, this practice of brief visits to foreign countries has become impractical or impossible to further tighten an already difficult lifestyle, so after 44 hours physically but not practically in Vietnam, the Essex began turning its propeller once again on September 12 and the crew members returned to an endless routine in an endless

ocean

, now some of Vietnam's main exports include shoes, clothing and textiles. These are not usually very high priced products; For example, a box of cheap shoes takes up a good amount of space, but can only sell for twenty dollars in the US, however, the fact that a company can make shoes in Vietnam ships them all over the world up to The US and still make a profit with a selling price of 20 is indicative of how incredibly economical shipping is on a human level before the tumult that Covid brought to the industry, shipping lines typically charged around a thousand dollars. transport a 20 foot container from asia to the united states that 20 foot container could hold about 3,500 shoe boxes, which means the cost of transporting a shoe box 8,000 miles or 13,000 kilometers across the world from a port in vietnam to one in california it was about 30 cents when people talk about shipping enabling globalization, this is what they mean.

The fact that transporting a box of shoes literally to the other side of the world costs less than a single McDonald's chicken nugget means that location and distance are hardly factors in today's world. From manufacturing The Maersk Essex's next stop was Hong Kong They were adopted at the Pretty Sim container terminal for 32 hours between September 15 and 16 Then they took a slow, winding path around the territory It dropped anchor for 24 hours and then made its way towards the port of yanchan located near the shenzhen factories, now with capacity for 13,092 containers, there are, of course, 13,092 different places where a container could go on the maersk essex naturally, in practice it is far from Random, complex and expensive computer programs process a wide variety of factors to spin.

To start, determine the ideal storage plan for a given trip, there are obvious things you want in the case of this trip: The containers for Yokohama should be placed on top of those for the shaman so that one does not have to unload the containers for the shaman to get there to Yokohama. those that are there, then the program must ensure that certain containers are in particular positions, refrigerated containers must be in a location with a power supply, while those carrying goods with potential for leaks, such as animal skins, must be placed in a place where the crew can easily access it during the journey, while other containers should not be in particular places.

This table shows the regulations for the storage of hazardous materials. It states that items that are dangerous when wet, for example, should be stored at least six meters away from radioactive locations. Substances, while corrosive materials must be stored in a completely different compartment of the ship, infectious substances on top of these and a multitude of additional factors, the ship has to be approximately balanced, which means that, in general, the plan of Storage is a massive game of 40 Tetris that only a computer can perfect. After 52 hours of implementing that plan, the Essex made a quick overnight trip up the coast to return to Shaman, where it made its longest stop yet. 56 hours loading a last batch of containers.

This was also the last opportunity for the ship to load food and fuel before what would be by far the longest leg of its journey, finally, just before 6 a.m. on 24 September, loading was completed and it arrived time to transport another payload of thousands of containers to North America. Maersk Essex passed through Taiwan. It made its way through the East China Sea, then crossed the gap between South Korea and Japan, after hugging the country's coast, sailed through the busy bottleneck of the Tsugaru Strait and entered the cold open waters of the North pacific. The Essex entered American waters for the first time.

While sailing near Alaska's Aleutian Islands, but then leaving the country's exclusive economic zone when its course began heading south after nearly two weeks in motion, the ship's path began to parallel the California coast. until the Essex passed the state's Channel Islands and turned east. on October 6 it slowed to a stop, dropped anchor and then stayed put on October 7 it did the same nothing else happened on October 8, 9 and 10 in fact, for the next 17 days, a stretch longer than its transpacific voyage in which the maersk essex stopped anchor in sight of the largest city in california waiting for an open birth finally the time came on October 23 after 62 days, the maersk essex arrived right where birth 402 began in the port of Los Angeles Now the Port of Los Angeles is located right next to the Port of Long Beach and, while the facilities are technically independent of each other, taking advantage of shared infrastructure such as roads and railways, the complex handles about 40 of the entire container cargo entering the country, this is because, like most ports in the industry, they benefit greatly.

From the economies of scale seen for imports from Asia, it rarely makes sense to send ships to the east coast despite it being the side of the country where the majority of the population lives, because that would require a route through of the Panama Canal, whose largest set of locks can only accommodate ships up to 14,000 TEU smaller than many new container ships, and yet transit fees run into the hundreds of thousands. Getting space can be difficult and the route through the canal significantly prolongs travel times, which is why most Asian imports are unloaded on the West Coast, but the United States actually only has five major container ports. deep in the Pacific of Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Tacoma and Seattle, located in by far the largest metropolitan area on the coast.

The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have naturally evolved into the busiest as they have the greatest access to labor, transportation and infrastructure. These three factors are the most important for theports because, after all, no one ships things to the port of Los Angeles, they ship things through the port of Los Angeles, it's all about getting cargo. containers from ship to onward transportation as quickly and efficiently as possible now the port itself is essentially the owner of several private companies that actually manage each container terminal, for example this facility is managed through the use of terminals, This is by everport terminal services east of Phoenix Marine Services and this is where the Maersk Essex began and ended its journey through APM Terminals.

Now, once the Essex was docked, the first step was to physically remove the containers from the ship, which was accomplished with these huge cranes, each of which typically unloads 30 to 40 containers per hour onto trucks that move them to a temporary storage location somewhere in the terminal, then there are three possible methods of transportation: First, they could be loaded onto a smaller ship or barge that moves the containers to a smaller nearby port, although this is rare in Los Angeles in compared to a place like the Pearl River Delta, where there are many more population centers with access to water and industrial areas.

Second, they could be loaded onto freight trains. This direct access to the railroads, the cheapest method of land transportation, is in fact a The main advantage of the Port of Los Angeles, by far the most common method of transportation from the Port of Los Angeles, however, is trucks that enter through the terminal gates, hook up to a waiting container and then drive it to its final destination, whether that's across town or across the country, so why did the Maersk Essex have to wait 17 days just to unload your cargo? What part of this system is

broken

? In short, there is no contributing factor to supply from Asia to North America. chain slowdown, but the system is simply overloaded.

Most indicators suggest that demand for trans-Pacific shipping has increased by about 25% compared to the pre-pandemic baseline, which is not a massive increase, but it is something like congestion in highway traffic is an exponential problem. When a lane is closed on a busy four-lane highway your trip takes more than 25 percent longer. Stopping and starting takes time that adds up and slows the overall flow exponentially. This is Why Ramp Meters Work: They prevent Excess traffic enters a road, keeping it at capacity and flowing freely, so even if it takes longer to get to the road, each person's total travel time is less.

It is the same situation with maritime transport. It is a system with capacity. so when overloaded by 25 the deceleration is more than 25, once a container is unloaded it is placed in a sprawling terminal filled to the brim with an increase in traffic more trucks than usual are waiting in queuing through the terminal gates to pick up your cargo, which means picking up a container takes longer, which means a truck can't get back to the terminal as quickly, which means there are fewer trucks available to pick up containers , which means that more and more containers are stacked at the terminal and containers are leaving the port. less fast there is less space for new containers which means it takes more time to unload ships which means ships have to wait longer to arrive at the port which means there is less shipping capacity as shipping times Journeys are longer and ships cannot return to Asia to pick up new cargo as quickly as possible, meanwhile all the congestion means terminal operators are restricting or prohibiting shippers from sending empty containers back to Asia, which means shippers in Asia are struggling to find containers to use, which means they have to buy new ones. containers, which increases your shipping costs and then all the supply chain chaos means shippers ship goods sooner, which increases demand, which promotes supply chain disruption, it's not so much a vicious cycle but vicious web chaos compounding chaos, this is what happens when disruption hits an industry designed to be extraordinarily standardized a system so dependent on economies of scale that the world's largest economy has to rely on five points of interface with the world's largest manufacturing center is a perfect system a system responsible for many of the revolutions of the last century but the systems that depend on perfection are the most vulnerable to disruption for now, although the gears keep turning, Mars, Essex It's there somewhere between California and Vietnam, transporting another load of containers from continent to continent.

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