shipping
Global shipping: What it costs
May 16, 2012: 6:41 AM ETThanks to automation and economies of scale, global goods are getting cheaper to ship.
By Anne VanderMey; graphics, Nicholas Rapp
FORTUNE -- Next year the Danish shipping giant Maersk will launch the largest container ship in the world, the 1,312-foot EEE class. Though only a few feet longer than today's biggest ships, it is designed to hold 18,000 containers, some 2,500 more than the largest vessels today can hold. As ships have gotten bigger, economies of scale have improved, and the cost of shipping has dropped dramatically over the past few decades. It costs only $1.50 to move a DVD player from China to the U.S. Oil, grain, and iron ore are more expensive because ships make the return trip empty. The route counts too. Carriers charge for the risk incurred by passing through piracy hotspots such as the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen. Transport costs for Africa are the highest in the world, while costs in developed nations are the lowest, thanks to automated ports (soon to feature robotic stevedores) that cut labor costs and increase efficiency.
For more on the future of shipping, click on the links below
Intro
What it costs
A booming network
A bigger, better box
Ports go high-tech
This story is from the May 21, 2012 issue of Fortune.
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The future of global shipping
Almost 90% of all goods traded across borders travel by sea. Here's a look at how they get from point A to point B and everywhere in between.
By Anne VanderMey; graphics, Nicholas Rapp
FORTUNE -- Not since 1956, when a North Carolina truck driver named Malcom McLean created a standard-size container for cargo, has global shipping seen such radical change. Carriers are bigger than ever, ports are becoming automated, and MORE
May 16, 2012 6:40 AM ET -
Shipping containers: A bigger, better box
The basic unit of global trade is being updated for high-tech commerce.
By Anne VanderMey; graphics, Nicholas Rapp
It's not simply a steel box. Globally, shipping containers carried some 1.5 billion tons of goods last year across the ocean, and some 17 million flow in and out of all ports annually. The container, like everything in the industry, is bigger than before -- generally double its original size (see illustration). It's MORE
May 16, 2012 6:39 AM ET -
The Panama Canal's big dig
As worldwide shipping grows, the century-old passage is growing to meet the need.
By Doris Burke, senior research editor
FORTUNE -- The shipping industry has outgrown the nearly 100-year-old Panama Canal, so the canal is adding a third lane with wider, deeper, and longer locks. The eight-year, $5.25 billion project will add three 1,400-foot-long, 60-foot-deep chambers to each end of the 50-mile route connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans -- an MORE
Apr 24, 2012 5:00 AM ET -
America's untamable river trade
The nation's barge operators have to wage a continual, chaotic, slow-motion battle of logistics.
By Ken Otterbourg, contributor
FORTUNE -- A standard barge is 35 feet wide and 195 feet long. It is 12 feet deep and sinks nine feet below the surface when loaded, pushing through the water like a brick. A standard tow has 15 of these barges -- three wide and five long -- winched together with cables and MORE
Dec 16, 2011 5:00 AM ET -
Empty container city
By Beth Kowitt, writer-reporter
Importing more than you export means lots of empty containers. That visual manifestation of our trade deficit is what drivers see as they pass the Port of New York and New Jersey on the New Jersey Turnpike. In the first eight months of 2010, the port saw the equivalent of 700,000 more full 20-foot containers enter than leave.
45% of containers exported from port operator APM Terminals' Port MORE Nov 5, 2010 3:00 AM ET
