The Inland Mystery

Assessing the flow of containers through ports and trying to come forth with a sensible forecast is turning into a major challenge. Having seen the dramatic growth in volumes in some of the major ports in both Europe and North America my natural inclination has been to try to establish what is driving any one individual’s port’s activities. Two major factors stare us in the face, certainly natural trade growth at the national level, and the shifting market share resulting from competition between ports.

But where do all these containers go?

Doing the rounds of the industry, this turns out to be something of a mystery.

The port authorities, on the whole, do not have a clear idea of what happens beyond the port gates. This is particularly true of the landlord ports. Neither are the terminal operators so well informed. The shipping lines know what happens to the 30-35% of the containers that they control to their final destination, but for the rest – no clear picture.

So the answer must lie with the transportation providers – the railroads, trucking and barge companies and the 3PLs. National statistics on either side of the big pond are such that there is no independent way of verifying the inland origin and destination of the boxes, so we are increasingly seeing attempts that try to establish what is happening. In the US the federal government has its commodity flow survey, but it is domestic only and is only a small sample. In Europe various institutions are involved in data collection, but nothing is consistent. Researchers have built gravity models, but these do not replace true flow surveys.

In the past, one of the main problems has been the inability to reconcile foreign trade data with the port data in a way that makes the stretch to the inland possible. More effort is needed here to achieve a better understanding of traffic flows that will help not only the ports to improve their own traffic planning, but also for the authorities to be able to work more closely with the industry to develop the transportation infrastructure that is needed, but which is currently insufficient to deal with cargo surges. Again, that word: planning.