Container rates for U.S. imports have normalized. Rates for America’s exports have not. Both spot and contract rates for U.S. exports are still up double digits from pre-COVID levels.
And rates are not the biggest cost issue exporters face, according to Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition.
He said that sailing schedules are now more irregular than before the pandemic, while ocean carrier communications to exporters are as bad as ever.
Consequently, exporters are paying more in detention and demurrage and spending more on storage and trucking due to insufficient communications on erratic sailing schedules than they did prior to 2020.
Read more in an article from American Shipper.