4 ms·
i don't think you fully appreciate how cheap (relatively) boats are, it's why trade between the US and China works even for the cheapest of goods.
by tetrep 11y ago
i don't think you fully appreciate how cheap (relatively) boats are, it's why trade between the US and China works even for the cheapest of goods.
- refurb 11y agoThis is a great point. Operating a tanker ship might appear expensive (hundreds of thousands per day), but when you spread that cost across the cargo it holds, it's actually pretty cheap. I remember hearing that shipping something from China to the US can be under $1 per pound.
- greeneggs 11y agoI think $1/pound is too high. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) has it at $1102 to ship a forty-foot container (FEU) from China to the US west coast [1]. A 40' container has a 61,200 lb payload capacity [2]. That's 1.8 cents/pound. How close the cost gets to this depends on the payload density, but $1/pound seems high. [1] http://www1.chineseshipping.com.cn/en/indices/scfinew.jsp http://www1.chineseshipping.com.cn/en/indices/scfinew.jsp [2] http://www.dsv.com/sea-freight/sea-container-description/dry-container http://www.dsv.com/sea-freight/sea-container-description/dry...
- refurb 11y agoI didn't know the exact number that's why I put "less than $1/pound". You are correct though. If you look at some of the products like fruit that we get from Asian, the cost per pound would have to be pennies or else they couldn't charge $2/pound for the produce in the US.
- narrowrail 11y agoAccording to the recent earnings report from North American Tanker [0], their cost per day is $12K, while they charge $35K/day on the spot market. This is for their Suezmax, which can hold 1M barrels of crude. [0]Warning PDF:http://hugin.info/201/R/1966091/717954.pdf http://hugin.info/201/R/1966091/717954.pdf