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“ We’ ll certainly need to see whether the industry can absorb that,” he added.“ Common wisdom would tell us that 2028 and 2029 could certainly see some overcapacity, probably not everywhere all the time, but certainly some.” Habben Jansen said carriers could also respond by scrapping older ships, slowing vessels, idling capacity or canceling sailings.

Firm demand signals

Michael Aldwell, executive vice president of sea logistics at Kuehne + Nagel, told the panel he was“ relatively constructive” on 2027 because of firm demand signals and the growing complexity of physical supply chains.

Aldwell said companies were replacing concentrated, single-source manufacturing strategies with networks spanning four, five or six sourcing locations. That shift made supply chains less efficient, but it also created more consistent and diversified cargo flows.

“ Even if it is difficult from a rate perspective, the volume growth is going to be there because we see substantial demand out there in the market,” Aldwell said, adding that“ complexity is getting higher, not lower.”

“ Hopefully, we have no traumatic disasters to negotiate, but if we must, everyone is ready and we’ ve trained that muscle as an industry to be ready to react when we have to,” he said.

While Jensen is predicting the next industry downturn will begin early next year, as a caveat he said the start of Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea in November 2023 demonstrated how quickly geopolitical events could overturn conventional forecasts.

“ I was one of the analysts predicting that 2024 was going to see a significant cyclical downturn,” he said.“ Did that happen? Absolutely not.”

Instead, diversions around the Cape of Good Hope extended voyages, absorbed capacity and helped make 2024“ a bonanza of a year for the carriers,” Jensen said.

Jensen’ s assessment broadly aligns with that adopted by Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis, which forecasts that cyclical overcapacity will peak in 2027 at a level comparable with the container shipping price wars of 2016, although not as severe as the imbalance during the 2009 financial crisis.

The Sea-Intelligence overcapacity forecast assumes the Red Sea crisis is resolved, releasing capacity that has been tied up by longer voyages; a prolonged crisis would absorb ships and mitigate the projected surplus.

The supply pressure on the industry is substantial. Around 14 million TEUs of vessel capacity is on order, equivalent to 42 % of the existing fleet, while less than 300,000 TEUs has been recycled during the fleet’ s latest five-and-a-half-year expansion, according to data from Journal of Commerce sister product Sea-web.

Shipping association Bimco expects fleet capacity to grow by about 9 % in 2027 as deliveries accelerate, with a return to normal Suez Canal transits potentially adding further effective supply. RBC Capital Markets is expecting global demand growth of 3 % a year until 2030.

North American logistics M & A accelerates with C. H. Robinson-RXO deal By William B. Cassidy email: greg. knowler @ spglobal. com

C. H. Robinson Worldwide’ s $ 5.8 billion takeover of RXO, the biggest logistics deal ever in the US, is the clearest sign yet that merger and acquisition activity in the space is heating up, with more deals likely in the works.

That’ s down to several factors, including shipper demand for end-to-end service across multiple modes and markets and the rapid advance of artificial intelligence. Logistics providers are looking for bolt-on acquisitions that quickly deliver new services.

Both of those factors come to the fore in the purchase of RXO by C. H. Robinson, announced Oct. 5. C. H. Robinson has spent the past couple of years developing its proprietary Lean AI technology and operating model; it will roll out both across RXO’ s brokerage platform.

“ We think our generative AI and agentic AI technology will be super beneficial as we go into RXO,” C. H. Robinson CEO Dave Bozeman told Wall Street analysts during a conference call announcing the deal. AI will help the companies find $ 300 million in“ synergies,” he said.

When it comes to domestic transportation management( DTM), C. H. Robinson is the largest player, with about $ 11.7 billion in DTM revenue in 2025, while RXO ranks fourth, with $ 5.7 billion in revenue, according to

28 Journal of Commerce | November 2, 2026 www. joc. com