Container Shipping Quarterly

Special Report

being Saudi shipping,” Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis CEO Alan Murphy wrote in the firm’ s Sunday Spotlight newsletter.“ But from a risk perspective, this is also akin to the Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of shipping switching to a Suez routing, as the conditions could change from one day to the next should the Houthi choose to resume attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea.”

Tipping the scale?

If the security situation remains stable and secure, the benefits of returning to the Red Sea routing are clear: ships transiting the Suez Canal cut 14 days of their transit times and consume up to 30 % less fuel compared with the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope.

However, those benefits may not immediately translate to lower costs for shippers, according to Destine Ozuygur, senior analyst at Xeneta.

“ I doubt the reduced fuel cost will offset what carriers are charging shippers because of the higher insurance rates, piracy risk surcharges, and Suez tolls,” Ozuygur told the Journal of Commerce.

“ The real challenge is that several carriers are running strings through both routes, and some strings employ both simultaneously with Cape westbound and Suez eastbound,” she added.“ If theoretically one or two carriers committed fully— eastbound and westbound— through the Suez on all their strings, then we could compare their pricing against those that have not committed at all.”

“ Normalization of the Red Sea will create a sharp drop in demand.”

MSC, for example, began imposing a $ 55 per TEU piracy risk surcharge and a $ 36 per TEU Suez Canal surcharge for all Asia – Med and Black Sea routes on Sept. 15. The Suez Canal Authority in July added a 12 % surcharge for container shipping to its standard toll fees, with a one-way transit costing up to $ 1.5 million for an ultralarge vessel of between 14,500 and 23,000 TEUs.

In the longer term, with a record amount of vessel capacity set for delivery in the next few years, the Red Sea return could tip the global container ship fleet into overcapacity. The diversion of nearly all services that had been transiting the Suez prior to the security crisis around southern Africa absorbed an estimated 8 % of global capacity.

“ Normalization of the Red Sea will create a sharp drop in demand when distance is taken into account, and a gigantic order book is about to be delivered as well,” Murphy wrote in a previous edition of Sunday Spotlight.“ The numbers essentially show that this does not add up.”

At more than 13.7 million TEUs, the current container ship order book is equal to roughly 40 % of the existing fleet, according to Sea-web, a sister company of the Journal of Commerce within S & P Global. More than half of that newbuild capacity, 8.5 million TEUs, is scheduled for delivery in 2027 and 2028.

Even if underlying baseline head-haul container

Frontloading, tighter supply drives US port trucking rates higher

By Michael Angell

Shippers face double-digit increases in spot drayage rates, particularly at East and Gulf coast ports, due in part to higher fuel prices and tighter equipment and driver availability. Some shippers are also tapping fewer drayage carriers than they have previously due to risk concerns following the verdict in a US Supreme Court case that expanded truck broker liability.

Spot intermodal trucking rates from major East and Gulf coast ports were up 9.3 % and 19.8 % year over year, respectively, in the week of Sept. 7, according to the Drayrates-JOC National Drayage Price Index. Mid-Atlantic and Southeast ports are driving much of those gains on the East Coast, with drayage rates out of Norfolk, Charleston and Savannah all rising by double-digit percentages from the same week last year, according to the index.

Norfolk and Savannah reported year-over-year increases in import volumes between May and July. The Georgia Ports Authority said it saw between 1,000 and 1,500 more daily truck transactions in late July compared with June. Houston saw year-over-year import gains in May and June, with a small dip in July.

Most of the drayage rate gains have come since the

12 Journal of Commerce | October 5, 2026 www. joc. com