Red Sea reroutes and the price of a sofa
When ships avoid the Red Sea and sail around Africa, a sofa from Turkey to Dubai takes a strange route. Jonathan explains the extra two weeks and who pays for them.
What a port strike does to a shoe shop
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Show notes
What a port strike does to a shoe shop
A container of trainers leaves Ho Chi Minh City bound for Auckland. Nine days into the voyage, dock workers at a transhipment port walk out. Jonathan traces what that did to the shop that ordered them, step by step.
- Transhipment explained, and why most cargo changes ships at least once
- How nine days at the dock became six weeks of knock-on delay
- Demurrage and detention, the fees nobody warns you about
- The shop owner who sold last season's stock at full price
- What a small importer can write into a contract next time
With thanks to the forwarder in Singapore who shared the actual booking.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to Forty Feet of Steel, I am Jonathan Tay. This is the show where we follow things, actual things, around the world, and find out why they are late. Today we are following one container of trainers. It leaves a factory outside Ho Chi Minh City, sails to a transhipment port, and is supposed to reach a shoe shop in Auckland in time for the school holidays. Nine days into that voyage, the dock workers at the transhipment port walk out. The strike lasts nine days. The shoe shop's problem lasts three months. I am going to show you how that happens, with the real booking in front of me, including the fees that landed on the shop owner's desk that she had never heard of. If you import anything, listen closely. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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