You can't really ship from Brazil to the US (or vice versa) by train or truck because there isn't a continuous land route between the Americas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darién_Gap

In this age of remakes, this calls for a movie about the dangerous overland trip taken to deliver coffee through the Darien Gap, in the style of Sorcerer (1977): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076740/ (which is already a third remake or so.)

Also reminds me of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo

Shipping efficiency generally: Boats > trains > trucks > planes

Aircraft are only used in time-sensitive situations. The standardized cargo container improved shipping efficiency, but in its absence boats are still the best method of transportation.

The fact that they're waiting for the cargo containers means that it's costing them less to wait than other options. I imagine if they were desperate they could hire out some cruise liners and stuff them with coffee. They'd have to be loaded and unloaded by dockworkers though, not sure if any port would support that anymore...

The only even remotely break-bulk pier I know of here in Baltimore, unless you count stuff that's too big to containerize, is the one at the Domino Sugar plant down at Locust Point. That one might actually be pretty well suited for unloading raw coffee beans with the same bucket lift gear they already use for raw sugar.

Probably have it shipped in the same often ill maintained freighters, too - a few years ago I watched an osprey pull a three-foot length of steel wire out of a crane cable on one of those boats. Impressive that the bird could do it, less so that the line was in such a state that a loose wire was there to be pulled out of it. But you could fill their holds with loose beans, no problem.

Doing break-bulk with sacks of beans in a cruise liner could work, but you'd probably end up paying eighty or a hundred bucks a pound for the coffee - I don't get the sense that either cruise ships or longshoremen work cheap. Better just to lay in a supply now, before the shortage shows up in prices at places like restaurant supply stores, and wait it out.

(That's what I just got done doing, anyway. Not like I won't drink it in any case...)

There is a breakbulk in Norfolk, VA at Norfolk Southern's Lambert's Point. There's breakbulk at Portsmouth and Newport News Marine Terminals.

Others have commented on the Darien Gap, but generally speaking, maritime shipping is roughly 1/3 the cost of overland by rail.

https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/comparing-mari...

The Darien gap might be an issue there.

Brazilian here. Most of the coffee production is in the south and south-east (São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Paraná). To get the coffee in bulk to where it can cross the gap, it has to travel thru shitty roads that have more craters than the far side of the Moon and some that aren't paved at all.

Then it gets to the Amazonas river. It's so wide, some Portuguese navigator tought it was a fresh water Sea. There's only one bridge conencting the city os Manaus in the north bank to south and sone ferries scattered all over.

Then you have to cross half the Amazon jungle to get to a port in Colombia (Venezuela is not an option for obvious reasons).

Tl;dr, the Darian Gap is the least of your problems if you want to move coffee by land from here to the US.

Pipelines are cheaper than roads. A not-quite-totally-silly idea would be to send brewed coffee concentrate up a pipeline. After you stop laughing, you kinda want to run some numbers...

Also Brazilian here, wouldn't an alternative path be to go even further southwest, leave the country, and only then move north more or less following the Pacific coast? That would both avoid all these shitty roads and remove the need to cross the Amazonas.

Looking at google maps, it sort of looks like it goes from the jungle to the Andes to the Atacama dessert.

I'm genuinely surprised at how impassible this all seems. especially the Andes.

The Andes rival the Himalayas in all respects.

Shipping freight by road to the Pacific means going through Argentina and Chile. I don't think Peru and Bolivia have the maintained roads to do it.

As far as I know, there are only four paved mountain passes between Argentina and Chile. Paso Paso de Jama is probably the most practical, and I think the one carrying the most freight currently.

The other three-- Cardenal Antonio Samoré, Paso Libertadores, and Pino Hachado-- are much farther south.

None of these routes would be cost effective for the international coffee trade at any scale. Take a look at some photos of Paso Libertadores to see what I mean.