Carrier reliability ticks up to 81%





But with one in five container ships still late on major trades, some freight professionals say they would pay for punctuality
Schedule reliability among the major container shipping lines increased markedly in May, according to research just published which covers 9,400 arrivals world-wide.The SeaIntel analysts behind the research found that overall reliability, measured as a vessel making its destination within one day of schedule, jumped from 78% to 81% last month.The results still mean, however, that around one in five vessels is late – a proportion criticised as unacceptably high by many in the freight industry, including members of the Lloyd’s Loading List.com LinkedIn group.Rogeria Correia told our LinkedIn group: “The extra time in the transportation pipeline is costing shippers large sums of money. Surely it is time the lines and their customers put their heads together and came up with rates-to-transit time packages that everyone can live with.”Consultant Steve Johnson agreed: “You pay for definite transit time with air so why not ocean?“It would attract customers that need or want lower costs than air but are willing to pay for the service. Failure to meet the transit would require a give back – something the lines don’t do now.”Maersk Line has, in fact, introduced a financial clawback with its Daily Maersk guarantee, but the wider industry has yet to follow suit.Commenting on the reliability report, SeaIntel Maritime Analysis CEO Lars Jensen said that recent improvements were primarily driven by increased reliability on the main east-west trades: Transpacific, Transatlantic and Asia-Europe. “This might indicate that the somewhat lower performance seen in the last couple of months might have been related to the carriers’ re-shuffling of networks as they were implementing their new alliances,” he added. “If that is the case, the new-found improvement in reliability will be good news to the shippers.”In terms of top performance, Maersk Line and Hamburg Süd shared the honours in May. Maersk Line is the most reliable when “on time” is measured as the same day or one day before, while Hamburg Süd is the most reliable when “on time” is measured as within one day before or after schedule.APL maintains the number three position and is the first carrier to have consistently held this position for four consecutive months.Despite having the lowest reliability among the top 20 lines, MSC is the carrier that improved the fastest from February to May. In this period, MSC improved its reliability by as much as eight percentage points.

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