34 American Journal of Transportation American Journal of Transportation ajot.com DIRECT PORTS OF CALL: Antwerp, BE > Southampton, UK > Cork, IE > Chester, PA (US) > Wilmington, NC (US) TRANS-ATLANTIC OCEAN CARRIER www.icl-ltd.com Schedule Reliability Empowered Team Members Specialized Equipment Fixed Weekly Service LCL Refrigerated Knowledgeable Professionals enough to be its own alli- ance but has slot agreements with Zim which with the acquisition by Hapag Lloyd is likely to shift into Gemini in the future. However, MSC has acquired a 50% stake in Sinokor Merchant Marine (19) principally as a move to secure tanker tonnage. How- ever, Sinokor does have a fleet of 69 boxships of over 125,000 TEUs, that operates largely as a feeder ship fleet. It is worth noting that the carriers inside these alli- ances aren’t permitted to collaborate on freight rates but rather the alliances share slots on each other’s vessels as well as equipment swaps and other backroom support- ing activities. However, the biggest feature of the ocean carrier alliances is the coordina- tion of vessel rotations. In the US there are few mega- ports such as the Port of New York/New Jersey and the San Pedro ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in which all three alliances call — especially for the first call inbound. Most US container ports are battling to secure an alliance call. From a port authority’s perspective, the loss of an alliance call means a great deal more than the loss of a single ocean car- rier. It is a catastrophe, as the port’s shippers often have no choice but to re-route their freight through another gate- way. Conversely, gaining an alliance call is often a great boost for a port. Among the smaller to mid-sized US ports an alliance call can be the difference between staying relevant to local shippers or slowly fading into oceanfront real estate. Next Gen on the Way Back in last November Alan Murphy, the founder and CEO of Singapore-based Sea-Intelligence, a container shipping analysis and data firm made an interesting observation that is still true today in 2026, “the order book... we have over two- thirds of the current order book of vessels more than 20,000 [TEUs]. So, we’ve got a lot of mega vessels coming on screen over the next three to four years. And that will shift that dynamic very heav- ily of the TEU fleet. The big vessels go East-West.” And what that means is “we have an awful lot of capacity coming on screen over the next few years. And that’s good news if you’re a ship- per. Because everything else equals by the relationship of supply and demand. And we will have more supply coming on.” A great deal of the ocean carrier orderbook is concen- trated at the top — really the top four containership oper- ators. MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM, and COSCO are the only containership operators with over a million TEUs in ship order. They are also the only carriers with over 100 ships on order. Evergreen, the number eight carrier with 908,528 TEUs (75 vessels) is close but it shows just how many TEUs are in such few hands and how likely it is to remain that way. Another aspect of Mur- phy’s observation is that more ships should, but proba- bly won’t, mean lower freight rates in the near future. The reason for this incongruency is the regular occurrence of disruptions — currently the US/Israel–Iran conflict has all but closed the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz to containership traffic. And without the availability of the Suez Canal route, con- tainerships on the Far East to Europe have been rerouted around the Horn of Africa. When and how the Strait of Hormuz will again open is up in the air and even if it does, will it be secure enough for a return to regular container- ship traffic? So, from a freight rate perspective the increase in bunker fuel costs (surcharges) and the increased distance and route complications to (OPERATORS – continued from page 30) organizations manage com- pliance at scale,” says Brian Hodgson, GM, Trade Com- pliance, Descartes. “Tradi- tional screening tools tend to generate large volumes of potential matches, many of which require manual review but pose little real risk. By applying machine learning to better distinguish between low-risk and high-risk results, these solutions help reduce false positives while main- taining oversight — freeing compliance teams to focus on genuine risk, improving effi- ciency and consistency across increasingly dynamic global trade environments.” AI-Empowered Risk Mitigation “We are entering a new as well as state programs like California’s Advanced Clean Fleets, are influencing fleet managers to lower emis- sions, zero-emissions trucks, and in many places, electri- fication or alternative fuels. Reducing fuel consumption through better routing and educating drivers to eliminate practices like excessive idling are making a difference. Some companies are using mixed fleets, testing electric vehi- cles as a pilot before invest- ing heavily in this equipment. Many large shippers are asking fleets to report their CO2 levels and to share plans to reduce emissions. New software appli- cations are being designed to provide high-level insights into a fleet’s fuel consumption. In the US, ATA Presi- dent Chris Spear told a group of industry leaders that the requirement that fleets con- vert to zero-emission trucks has become less aggressive. “The new administration and congressional majorities are more sympathetic to truck- ing’s concerns about timing and feasibility.” Spear said. “Electrification has wonder- ful attributes for our industry in a whole host of venues.” For many fleets, elec- tric trucks currently seem more suited for short-haul or regional routes where charging infrastructure is available. It is unclear if or when the current US regulatory policies may change again. Analysts rec- ommend that fleet managers planning for the next five years monitor battery technology improvements, governmental incentives, and the total cost of ownership comparisons of equipment. Fortunately, with AI, telematics, and a range of new technologies to measure per- formance and optimize freight management, fleet managers are well-positioned to make smart choices and adapt to changing dynamics, from the economy to global unrest. era of intelligent logistics,” Appoo from WiseTech con- cludes. “The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and other geopolitical events have esca- lated the need to not only better predict the impact of major disruptions but also be able to execute pre-planned risk mitigation actions imme- diately. Vast amounts of intel- ligence and data related to changing regulations, policies, tariffs, sanctions, embargoes, restricted parties and other industry data create an envi- ronment where logistics oper- ators need to have the ability to make safe and compliant decisions in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world. Leveraging these rich datasets through AI in an inte- grated way in logistics sys- tems will help identify which shipments may be at risk and put risk mitigation plans into action — immediately.” John Lash, Group VP of Product Strategy at e2open, adds, “Twelve long months of trade wars – defined by on-again, off-again tariffs – have taught us that the only certainty in trade policy is uncertainty. As we enter this new era of permanent trade volatility, look for tariffs to become increasingly embed- ded in the core SCM tools used for planning, sourcing, and logistics — it’s simply too disruptive to do in siloes anymore.” (INNOVATION – continued from page 25) (TRENDS – continued from page 28) the rotations [blank sailings] adds up to more ships, more time and ultimately higher costs for the shipper. It has been said many times over the last decade, but disruptions are better for the container- ship operators’ bottom line. On the other hand, the ship- per is just happy if they are simply able to pass through the added costs. The Question of Consolidation With the containership fleet already top-heavy is consolidation of carriers still in the cards? In 2026 we see the likely purchase of Zim by Hapag Lloyd and the Sinokor stake taken by MSC, with an asterisk that this was largely a move to build the tanker busi- ness. While it is difficult to see more consolidation with the top ten carriers, there is motivation for another round of mergers. The motivation is simple — the economy of scale. And while the alli- ances provide competitive leverage, ownership enables a pricing advantage that alli- ances do not have because of anti-trust regulations. With Zim off the board with the sale to Hapag Lloyd, Yang Ming would look to be the only acquisition left in the current top ten but regional carriers like Wan Hai Lines at number eleven or Pacific International Lines (PIL) or even Regional Container Lines at 21 could be of inter- est under the right circum- stances. The major barrier is that economy of scale works best when ships are of simi- lar size and in most cases the carriers out of the top ten are running smaller vessels that wouldn’t match well with existing rotations. But if any single obser- vation has remained true over the last two decades of con- tainer ship operators, the big likely are getting bigger.
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