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A comment on Panama Canal drought forces Maersk to start using land bridge for Oceania cargo. Parent comment

Re:Panama Canal drought forces Maersk to start using land br... by sen on Sunday January 14, 2024 @05:01AM (#38989049)
All cargo/intermodal logistics stuff is measured in TEU’s, aka “Twenty foot Equivalent Units”, eg a standard shipping container. The sizes actually vary but for thinking about the numbers, pretend they’re all standard twenty foot containers that you see on trucks.

The average container ship can carry anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 TEU, with the newer VLCS and ULCS ships carrying up to 25,000 TEU.

That’s 5-25,000 containers on a single ship, and there’s estimated to be around 20,000 container ships currently operating.

Global container trade is somewhere near 1 Billion TEU per year currently.

All of that is ignoring Bulk Cargo such as oil/liquid tankers, dry goods (grains and ores, etc), and other non-containerised goods.

Every single number in this industry is mind boggling.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Panama Canal drought forces Maersk to start using land br... by Ekaros on Sunday January 14, 2024 @05:46AM (#38989280)
Might be useful to imagine all the stuff you buy in a year, even well packaged. And now multiply that by amount of people that aren't essentially sustenance farmers...

Now that I think of it, maybe 1 billion TEU is not that much. Single person does not even use full container...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Panama Canal drought forces Maersk to start using land br... by marcosdumay on Sunday January 14, 2024 @11:51AM (#38992003)
Just remember that for making the final product you buy, there are several "generations" of components that also need to be transported.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Panama Canal drought forces Maersk to start using land br... by CPLX on Sunday January 14, 2024 @05:12AM (#38989117)
> pretend they’re all standard twenty foot containers that you see on trucks.

Just for clarity the standard shipping container we’re all familiar with visually is 40 feet long, and is two TEU’s.

[ Parent | on HN ]