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Comment by kansface | Hacker News Reader

A container must cost at least a couple thousand dollars... a ship carries, what, 1000 or so? That's roughly 2 million dollars being "thrown away". Maybe they can build them for half that in China? I suppose if the turnaround time is in months, this makes sense. Someone will make a tidy profit returning the containers at some point (although I have no idea what their lifecycle is like).

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Ultralarge ships (top 161 in the world edit: that number of ships is a decade old, sorry) all carry at least 5,000 40' containers (and up to 10,000). That sounds like a lot, but right now the Chinese factories are cranking out about the 600,000 a quarter. (Note, I'm talking about 40' containers, but the industry talks about 20' so you may find double my numbers on a search.)

They seem to cost about 2,500-4,000 to purchase new, so theoretically they could make 20-28MM loading them with empties (if they were worth the same as new). I don't know how long it would take to load the ships with cargo, but there are currently $24MMM (that's 24 billion) in goods anchored outside the port of LA waiting to be unloaded. So 3 orders of magnitude higher. How much of a premium must load/unload capacity be at right now?

If we weren't truck limited, we could just move all the empties far away and stockpile them until they can be profitably returned. But I know people who have tens-of-thousands of dollars in tons of raw materials (think universal inputs) stacked in a warehouse they have to vacate soon and they cannot even give it away because of transportation costs. They're going to have to pay someone to take away the things they (correctly assumed) they could buy for almost nothing last year and would be worth more today.

Note that containership capacity is specified in "TEU" (twenty-foot equivalent units), based on the original shipping container specification, but that the vast bulk of containers are forty feet in length.

So the Maersk E-class capacity of 10k--14k TEU translates to 5k--7k containers of the size you're probably used to seeing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-class_container_ship

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit

> Note that containership capacity is specified in "TEU" (twenty-foot equivalent units), based on the original shipping container specification, but that the vast bulk of containers are forty feet in length.

I did in fact note that:

>> (Note, I'm talking about 40' containers, but the industry talks about 20' so you may find double my numbers on a search.)

I found your comment confusing and inaccurate on the point of container measures.

There's a specific standard for describing sizes (TEU), and, confusingly, an overwhelmingly prevalent size actually used and which most people will be familiar with of precisely twice that length (40'). The ships you referenced would be carrying 5--10k TEU, not 5--10k 40' containers.

Its' a minor point in the context of the Flexport story, but the inaccuracy seemed worth clarification. That is all.

The ships I referenced were carrying 10-20k TEU, and therefore 5-10k 40' containers. I did all the conversions to 40' lengths from TEU, because it seemed like it would otherwise confuse people. Hence my note about the numbers people looked up being twice what I was quoting.

If you feel like I'm inaccurate after that clarification, then let's continue. I'd hesitate to continue a nomenclature argument online, but since it changes the numbers I've been talking about be a factor of 2, it seems worth resolving.

Less inaccurate than unclear.

Explanation appreciated.

To add: 14k TEU capacity is considered tiny nowadays. The biggest vessels are 20k+ TEU (e.g. 22k).

A 40' container is either 2 or 2.25 TEU. The .25 is when the container is a bit higher than standard. Though nowadays loads of containers are a bit higher. The extra .25 is ignored in various cases (basically when it doesn't matter).

Actually just under 24k for the Evergreen A-class ships (23,992), I'm just discovering:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_A-class_container_sh...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ship...

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