Sweet spot for oil transport with atb 120k to 180k. Bigger than that the economics go down the tubes.
Seems likely the number of ULCS is going to be limited for economic reasons, each trade can only take so many. At one time big tankers kept growing bigger but I thought that they eventually hit a limit for practical, not just economical reasons.
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Iâm sure that seems like a terrible idea to the powers that be, and it isnât really necessary. A hefty surcharge on the misdeclared portion should suffice to bring the problem down to manageable proportions, and simply keeping a record should take care of the safety aspect.
Why isnât lean logistics principles limiting the size of container ships already?
I apologize for the thread drift here but:
Welcome to Fort Lauderdale! A clever financing scam allowed a pseudo âhigh speed railâ company to take over the rail line that cuts the city in half. Increased box train traffic on that line stops all east-west traffic for long periods during rush hour traffic on almost a daily basis. The city outgrew its road capacity years ago but with Miami increasing its container traffic and Fort Lauderdale lacking any marshalling yard space, when they make up a miles long train to head north, one of the major east west arteries is blocked by an essentially stopped train for half an hour at a time during the morning rush hour. The resulting gridlock is obscene.
What is most frustrating is that barely a mile to the west is a virtually unused north south rail line that runs under overpasses on every major road.
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IDK, on the PCTC the rate the cargo can be loaded / discharged is limited by the fact they only have two ramps. More LOA, same load/discharge rate
With a ULCS as LOA increases then more cranes can be added so that loading one ULCS is going to be about the same as two smaller ones.
Just guessing.
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Because the big bucks are made in cost per ton per mile.
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I think the ships are a good example of lean logistics. For the end user they are floating warehouses in transit. Back in the day SeaLand had the contract with Toyota for some of their car assembly plants. The plants did not carry much inventory so schedule integrity was important.
As long as they can fill up the ship the economies of scale is on their side.
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As a former Fort Lauderdale resident (mid 80s), I feel your pain. . . .
Had many crew changes there. Not pretty some times.
I returned to the offshore when it picked up but containers used to be certified for 9 high stacking and I donât know when it was increased but generally one was limited by the stack weight of the ship.
After the loss of the Munchen all containers were weigh bridged in Hamburg and Bremerhaven and I think the practice spread throughout Europe.
All modern straddle carriers sense the weight of any container they lift.
The worst case of an overloaded container that I experienced was in Houston where they filled a 40â container with Zinc ingots because there was room right! Our brand new shipâs crane wouldnât lift it from the railway wagon.
Your âincrease the beamâ to lower the stack height is true, but the âspecial berthâ option is not viable unless numerous ships settle on a class for ship âUltra-Megaâ sizes, and build slips that can be worked from both ends. Thus, all self geared ships are excluded, which is not a problem (they slew their cranes to the offhsore side during port ops.). Sort of like the concept initiated in aviation to handle the Airbus A380 with its dedicated ramps.
In the 11 months since I wrote that the number of trains carrying containers has increased in number and length. Port Everglades is now hosting some of the fallout from other congested ports with the result that several of the major crossings are now regularly blocked for extended periods. Shuffling gridlock from the port to its host city is not a solution, it is a bigger problem. Spending taxpayer money to service giga box boats is insanity cubed.
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