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That structural shift is already visible across major trade lanes. Volumes are responding to restocking activities rather than following clear seasonal patterns. Forward bookings ahead of anticipated cost increases and major retail cycles, including Amazon Prime Day and other midyear campaigns, are prompting companies to move shipments earlier and more frequently throughout the year.
“ The Hormuz crisis is the reason why the Red Sea crisis is not resolved.”
“ The idea that supply chains have returned to a stable rhythm no longer reflects reality,” she said.“ Businesses need to operate in a constant state of adjustment, where
flexibility and real-time insight are essential to staying ahead of demand shifts and disruptions.”
Toh’ s view echoed those of Jain and other transportation analysts who believe the traditional supply-demand calculus has been skewed by the same volatile and irregular demand patterns that have made the timing and strength of peak seasons more difficult to predict.
“ To understand what’ s really driven freight rates over the past few years— despite rising nominal capacity— the market needs to look beyond ocean capacity and focus on supply chain choke points,” Jain said.“ It doesn’ t matter if you have plenty of ships if you don’ t have boxes in the right place. It doesn’ t matter if you have plenty of ships and plenty of boxes if you can’ t dock your ship in a port, or there is no yard space, or you can’ t evacuate your box because there is congestion on the rails or the road. The market needs to rewire itself to understand this.”
email: greg. knowler @ spglobal. com it looks like volumes are beginning to pick up. There seems to be strong demand for equipment.”
Container production heading into the recent crises had mostly been steady, Sappio said. Chinese manufacturers produced 2.2 million TEUs of new containers in the first five months of 2026, slightly behind the recent pace of around 6 million TEUs per year, according to Seacube’ s internal data. Global container inventory reached nearly 60 million TEUs, split roughly evenly between owned and leased containers.
Along with buffer capacity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, carriers are serving more new trade routes outside of North America, requiring additional containers, Sappio said. Many of those routes are one-way trades, with limited or no backhaul cargo, requiring carriers to keep more buffer capacity than they did previously.
The two-year diversion of ships around the Cape of Good Hope, which adds two weeks to transits from Asia, also means ocean carriers can turn their containers less frequently than they could when they were using the Suez Canal.
Lead time for leasing a container is between six and eight weeks, longer for specialized refrigerated containers,
Mariusz Bugno / Shutterstock. com
Sappio said. Lease rates range from just under $ 1 per day for a dry container and between $ 4 and $ 5 per day for refrigerated containers.
While the current demand is stretching lead times closer to two months, Sappio said overall leasing rates remain somewhat flat and would need to come up to incentivize faster production.
“ There’ s an unexpected surge in demand globally, and that’ s causing depot inventories and newbuild stocks to be stressed a little bit,” he said.“ I wouldn’ t project there being a container shortage; I think the manufacturers will keep up, but I think it’ s going to be a tight summer.”
email: michael. angell @ spglobal. com www. joc. com July 6, 2026 | Journal of Commerce 13