Have you ever wondered why we still use ships for cargo transport despite another much faster
mode of travel, air, being available?
A ship could take days if not weeks or months to reach its destination whereas for an airplane
it's just a matter of hours.
We did some digging & found out why.
Here are the reasons.
Considering the costs, it is really very cheap to transport the cargo by ships.
It is so cheap that Scottish fisheries actually save money shipping their cod fish to China
for processing and then ship it back to Scotland for packaging.
A plane needs to be adequately fuelled to get from Point A to Point B and it consumes
tons of it just to trade for the speed it needs to keep the whole thing aloft.
And aviation fuel is not cheap.
A Container ship's capacity is measured in twenty foot equivalent units or TEU.
Typical loads are a mix of 20-foot and 40-foot (2 TEU) ISO-standard containers, with the
latter being predominant.
This is a typical TEU container.
How much can you store in a TEU container?
Roughly 20 metric tons of cargo if you pack it to max weight allowance that is 45,000
pounds.
That's about 13 Toyota Camrys ignoring volume.
It costs about 450 US dollars to transport one TEU container from Los Angeles to Shanghai.
So for 450 US dollars you can ship the equivalent weight of 13 Camrys across 6,500 miles of
ocean.
And this cost keeps getting cheaper because container liners are building ever larger
container ships.
The current record holder is the MSC Oscar class of container ships with a carrying capacity
of 19,200 TEUs.
This is one of the largest ocean going vessels ever built.
Here are some fun facts of the carrying capacity equivalence for the MSC Oscar.
To transport the 19,224 TEU capacity of the MSC Oscar you would need 1100 Boeing planes
or thirty-five 8000 feet long trains or 11,400 heavy trucks.
70% of all international trade is shipped by vessel at some point in their supply chain.
As you can see, space and weight isn't much of a problem for ships which makes maritime
freighting an extremely cost-effective method, while air freighting a more expensive one.
As mentioned before, ships can carry up to 10s of thousands of containers at any point
of time and there are large number of ships, hence their cargo carrying capacity is just
huge.
Also, it is easy to find a ship to ship off your cargo into.
But, not so much for an airplane.
The airplanes can load only one container at any time and pretty much, that's it.
Another point to consider is transportation of hazardous goods.
Some materials are just simply incompatible with air transport.
Different types of Ship are built to adapt different types of cargo especially dangerous
cargo while this is not a case in airplanes.
This is a gas tanker which can carry different types of gases like LPG, LNG and ammonia in
liquid form.
This is an oil tanker used to carry Crude oil to different parts of world.
Likewise, Ships have been built to carry Petro products and chemicals, trucks rail and almost
everything which is not still possible with aircrafts.
Now, as you know planes are very delicate structures and a minute mishap can lead to
a disaster so a lot of guidelines have been made for air shipments.
Items such as magnets in the cargo can create a havoc influencing the navigation systems
of the plane.
Some countries & islands don't have proper airport facility.
It is easy for ships to deliver products to these destinations.
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