Re:A live map of marine traffic
by andy_ppp on Thursday June 20, 2019 @02:31AM
(#20230433)
You should be able to predict the price of shipping things if you know where all the ships are... or even slow down or speed up vessels to obtain a maximum price at the next port. But if everyone starts doing this it will probably just make everything worse.
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Major shipping lanes have strict and well known schedules. Of course not without accidents of various nature.
Most dull problems actually happen in ports (customs etc)
I'm surprised no-one has automated shipping yet, I was pretty surprised how huge the margins were (usually 100% profit) and how big the shipping industry is.
The right startup in this area could be very effective I think.
They actually kind of have... the crew on a big ship do very little “shopping” and a hell of a lot of maintenance. The open sea is a very hostile place and most of the work involved is keeping the ship healthy in that environment.
Re:A live map of marine traffic
by Workaholic_87 on Thursday June 20, 2019 @12:34PM
(#20234545)
Agreed. Nowadays the majority of the crew's time is spent either doing maintenance or filling out paperwork to satisfy regulatory requirements - very little involvement with cargo operations (w/ the exception of some specialty liquid cargoes)
Re:A live map of marine traffic
by Workaholic_87 on Thursday June 20, 2019 @12:24PM
(#20234416)
I've never heard any one classify maritime shipping as high margin. Having spent over a decade in both ocean and inland waterways operations, my experience has suggested more on the order of 5-10% net margin at best
Margins are high because there are A LOT of risks, starting from superexpensive vehicles and equipment which is never evenly loaded, and ending with bureaucracy, incredibly punishing contracts and weather.
Flexport? Or do you mean a different angle of automate?
Flexport do freight forwarding which is the organising of getting cargo from one place to another, not the actual shipping.