My girlfriend is in the business and it is a combination of a lot of things.
There's a lack of empty containers in China, there's a lack of ships/capacity as the traffic has spiked while companies have put shipping routes on hold for a while last year, there's Brexit which delays things as lots of ships which usually go to Europe also stop in the UK, there's Chinese New Year approaching and everyone is trying to get their orders in before China effectively closes for a while (even though that might be different this year), there has also been overcapacity in the shipping industry for years and companies have worked to consolidate and reduce that which kinda seems to have worked but now comes at a bad time for everyone who wants to ship but obviously good for the shipping industry and all of this on top of a much swifter recovery than expected....
There are probably more reasons still.
At least here in Europe more stuff is transported by train from China now but they're expensive as well and only account for a tiny amount of the totals.
My guess is that there was no slack sea cargo capacity between Shanghai and LA, so once air cargo disappeared, more cargo went by sea.
Rotterdam-Shanghai, I have no idea, timeline doesn’t fit with COVID. This article suggests collusion between shipping companies, and some train engineers testing positive de-stabilizing rail cargo:
azurezyq|5 years ago
lars_francke|5 years ago
There's a lack of empty containers in China, there's a lack of ships/capacity as the traffic has spiked while companies have put shipping routes on hold for a while last year, there's Brexit which delays things as lots of ships which usually go to Europe also stop in the UK, there's Chinese New Year approaching and everyone is trying to get their orders in before China effectively closes for a while (even though that might be different this year), there has also been overcapacity in the shipping industry for years and companies have worked to consolidate and reduce that which kinda seems to have worked but now comes at a bad time for everyone who wants to ship but obviously good for the shipping industry and all of this on top of a much swifter recovery than expected....
There are probably more reasons still.
At least here in Europe more stuff is transported by train from China now but they're expensive as well and only account for a tiny amount of the totals.
Unfortunately behind a paywall I believe https://www.economist.com/business/2020/10/10/how-covid-19-p...
Scoundreller|5 years ago
Rotterdam-Shanghai, I have no idea, timeline doesn’t fit with COVID. This article suggests collusion between shipping companies, and some train engineers testing positive de-stabilizing rail cargo:
https://theloadstar.com/box-shortages-congestion-and-high-ra...