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Bigger Isn't Better As Mega-Ships Get Too Big and Too Risky
HughPickens.com writes: Alan Minter writes at Bloomberg that between 1955 and 1975, the average volume of a container ship doubled -- and then doubled again over each of the next two decades. The logic behind building such giants was once unimpeachable: Globalization seemed like an unstoppable force, and those who could exploit economies of scale could reap outsized profits. But it is looking more and more like the economies of scale for mega-ships are not worth the risk. The quarter-mile-long Benjamin Franklin recently became the largest cargo ship ever to dock at a U.S. port and five more mega-vessels are supposed to follow. But today's largest container vessels can cost $200 million and carry many thousands of containers -- potentially creating $1 billion in concentrated, floating risk that can only dock at a handful of the world's biggest ports. Mega-ships make prime targets for cyberattacks and terrorism, suffer from a dearth of qualified personnel to operate them, and are subject to huge insurance premiums. But the biggest costs associated with these floating behemoths are on land -- at the ports that are scrambling to accommodate them. New cranes, taller bridges, environmentally perilous dredging, and even wholesale reconfiguration of container yards are just some of the costly disruptions that might be needed to receive a Benjamin Franklin and service it efficiently. Under such circumstances, you'd think that ship owners would start to steer clear of big boats. But, fearful of falling behind the competition and hoping to put smaller operators out of business, they're actually doing the opposite. Global capacity will increase by 4.5 percent this year. "Sooner or later, even the biggest operators will have to accept that the era of super-sized shipping has begun to list," concludes Minter. "With global growth and trade still sluggish, and the benefits of sailing and docking big boats diminishing with each new generation, ship owners are belatedly realizing that bigger isn't better."
So don't try to be bigger and better because you will be a target. Got it. Thanks, bullshit media!
I don't see anything in the links that really is specific to mega cargo ships except for the need to improve docks (tends to be a once off cost though). The decline in shipping affects ALL ships big and small and if anything the economies of scale will likely mean the smaller ships will be driven out of business first as the larger ships have reduced costs per container. the cyberattack and terrorism stuff is just a bullshit, any cargo ship carries potentially hundreds of millions in cargo and any are equally good targets, if anything the extra security and better trained crews on these make them somewhat safer.
german economy newspaper FAZ covered this already in march: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wir...
Rail transport is more efficient than truck by an order of magnitude, but water based transport, even on a river like the Mississippi, is two orders of magnitude more efficient than rail - especially for large cargos.
Boats are even more competitive than rail once you start looking at routes like Hong Kong -> Los Angeles or London -> Mumbai
The bigger the better, growth will continue to feed these monsters, and the larger they get, the more efficient they are. I'm not really sure what the article is blabbering on about, beyond some hand-wavey fear-mongering.
moox. for a new generation.
The Explorer class ships (to which Benjamin Franklin belongs) are built in South Korea and China.
And to add further insult to injury, the main engine is made in Finland!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Wrong Franklin but appropriate as he wrote about the Gulf Stream and sailing, from his biography:
"Yet I think a set of experiments might be instituted, first, to determine the most proper form of the hull for swift sailing; next, the best dimensions and properest place for the masts; then the form and quantity of sails, and their position, as the wind may be; and, lastly, the disposition of the lading. "
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The 2009 recession saw the biggest ever fleet sitting idle off the coast of Singapore. There were a huge number of contract disputes as shipyards tried to force their clients to pay for the ships they were already building, and keep their sub-contractors busy. Today many shipyards are still facing bankruptcy or folding. There is still a massive oversupply of shipbuilding, as well as an oversupply of ships.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Wow... so much information, and so much of it wrong.
You think taxation is the reason that ships use other countries' flags? Typically not. It's more about regulation. The UK is trying to win back registrations by having more responsive regulators, not by cutting taxes. Most registrations are in countries that simply have little/no regulation. Furthermore, it's simply silly to think of ship registrations as being even remotely indicative of anything. This is a ship that was built in China, owned from France, and travels around the world. Why does it even matter where it's registered?
Why do you claim that Ben Franklin would have hated the trade situation with China? My understanding of Franklin is that he would have been a big supporter of the idea of comparative advantage. The idea hadn't been developed during his lifetime, but he was a pretty smart guy and was always interested in adding new ideas to his repertoire. You could learn from that. Besides, we really don't send much raw material to China, so I don't see where you're getting that from.
Furthermore, while a supporter of independence, Franklin was hardly anti-anglo. There's a big difference between wanting to be independent and thinking of a whole nation as your enemy. Few American revolutionaries wanted to be enemies with England, they simply wanted to be independent of it. It's such a big difference, and you've completely missed it.
Earth Wrecker? Such mega ships are hugely efficient, so if anything it should be Earth Saver.
Ignorance isn't something to be embarrassed of, but being so purposefully ignorant, and publicly boasting of your ignorance the way you have.... shame on you.
For a start cargo insurance isn't carried by a single entity, it is naturally spread around all the people who are shipping items. So a larger ship does not have a material effect on insurance as you still just insure your containers. Also, with ocean shipping, time taken is not as important as with air travel, so true hub and spoke systems can work exceptionally well. You use massive ships to carry between hubs and smaller ships to run to smaller ports. If it adds a week to the shipping no one really cares.
As for crew. The Benjamin Franklin requires 24 crew. That is hardly hundreds of hands that is going to have a material impact on the cost of shipping. The MSC which is slightly larger has a max crew capacity of 35 but are operated standard by a crew of 13, again not breaking any economics.
Oh but lets throw in "cyber terror attack"!!!! That will get them. Oh piss off. The thing is slow and in the middle of nowhere most of the time. If you could some how take control of the throttle and the rudder, and somehow prevent the crew from cutting fuel lines, dumping fuel or fouling the props you MIGHT be able to crash it into a dock. Which while it would make a spectacular mess aint exactly the scariest thing I've ever heard of.
I dont understand. It seems the only risk is the author doesn't like whats happening.
Yes, the large container ships also have their problems as the infrastructure to handle those ships is not there yet. But it will be built, and then also the mega container ships will be able to be used much more flexible. Maybe for the next 20 years, not many new 400 m container ships will be ordered, but then they will be built again.
That ship represents a human population that is spilling way out of control, killing Earth's ecosystems and wreaking environmental catastrophe. It represents the stripping of resources from Earth on vast scales which is totally unsustainable. That ship is a symbol of humankind's failure, not progress. If you don't believe it, wait 100 years.
The ship is better than the smaller ships, because it uses less resources to run. Shipping a toothbrush across the ocean takes less oil than driving a mile to the store to pick it up. This is a symbol of progress and good things.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
People are good at simulated annealing to kick out of local minima to search for deeper, greener pastures elsewhere.
When regulation doesn't hamper them, that is.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
*ahem*
"No nation was ever hurt by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous." -- Benjamin Franklin
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Assuming a race to the bottom is the optimum route.
As we now live in the era representative of "Boaty McBoatface", I can't believe you're seriously asking humans "Holy what the fucking fuck" with regards to a ship name...
I realize that this is Slashdot and the centre of gravity for discussion is technology but I really think that storms at sea, fire, mislabeled volatile cargo and other more mundane issues are more likely to affect ships great and small than cyber attacks.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Really, the article simply illustrates the woefully ignorant state of reportage by "professional" news sources. No wonder the interwebs are kicking their ass.
The economies of scale are simply inarguable. The daily fuel consumption of a relatively ancient 8000-teu vessel is HIGHER than todays 18k+ teu ships like the Ben Franklin. IIRC it's about $25000/day.
And the fact that the US is scrambling to meet their infrastructure needs is more a comment on the decrepit state of US port and infrastructure that hasn't been materially upgraded since the 1970s. The rest of the world's major ports CAN handle them. (And handle them a shit-ton more efficiently thanks to US unions' lock on the shiphandling bottleneck.)
Ocean carrier profits are flat and worse, but that's nothing intrinsic to the size of the ships, there are just too many ships out there - and this was the result of ridiculous crude prices in the mid 2000s that prompted carriers all more or less simultaneously to make the long-term investment in new vessels. And considering a 10,000 teu ship would cost $150 million, they might as well build a 20,000 teu ship for $200, no?
The market currently reflects this gross surplus of capacity, that's all. As these carriers' new big ships all start to come online, what they'll do is retire the crappy, inefficient, polluting smaller older ships and replace say a 5 vessel string with 2-3 new ones. This means the same bandwidth, but less-frequent sailings.
Yes, the industry is due for a round of consolidation, but there's a certain point where the smaller carriers - the Yang Mings, the Zims, etc - aren't operating for profit anyway, they're being sustained by their state as a strategic/commercial resource. The largest carriers are (over the last 16 months) slaughtering each other on the TPEB and Asia/Europe routes, but that's each other and is likely to sort itself out long before pricing ultimately is transmitted through the value chain to the retail level.
It's too bad that Bloomberg couldn't have been bothered to find a professional reporter that understood the market.
-Styopa
Is "terrorism" the new word for "crime", and "terrorist" for "criminal"? We're going to need new dictionaries because I don't see how stealing cargo from a ship is poloitoical coercion or a method of resisting government
Twinstiq, game news
especially on fue
I know I'm repeating myself from the thread about Oasis-class ocean liner, but... How come this kind of mega-ship is powered by burning fuel ?!
Explorer-class container ships (e.g.: the mentioned CMA CGM Benjamin Franklin) are bigger and heavier than Nimitz class Aircraft carriers (e.g.: USS Georges H.W. Bush), and the later are powered by nuclear reactors.
I can understand that, in the case of tourism vessels, nuclear propulsion might sound as potential target for pirate/terrorists (though that hasn't prevent Russia to operate a few exploring/tourism nuclear vessels around the north pole).
But in the case of megaships? All the ware stored in the containers is *already* a potential target for piracy (as mentioned in the summary). Compared to potential billions worth of stolen merchandise, the nuclear propulsion is probably pocket change. It won't add much to the security challenge that these megaships are already facing.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Ships are getting bigger and bigger not because of "globalization", it is all down to physics and fuel costs.
Imagine a ship with length L. The hold volume ~ L^3, the drag area of the hull goes with L^2. Double the ship size, holding everything else constant, you move twice as much cargo volume for the same fuel.
Things get even better if you go for really, really big ships going at slow speed. Fuel burn goes with velocity cubed V^3, so for a given ship, if you half the velocity, your fuel burn per unit volume of cargo is reduced to 1/8th of that at the original velocity.
Physics and fuel economics is pushing the industry to use massive, slow container ships. Another cost benefit is that having fewer, bigger ships means paying less crew for the entire fleet.
These savings will have to be balanced with the insurance and security costs associated with a single vessel containing such a massive quantity of valuable goods, but "globalization" isn't the prime motivator.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Yeah, because clearly government is an all-or-nothing proposal.
You kicked the shit out of that straw man!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The GP didn't say anything about planned economies. He was replying to a post that mentioned regulation. There's lots of evidence that some regulation makes economies more efficient.