Trends to Watch
- Ocean - TPEB Carriers continue to price in order to win volumes in a market seeing soft demand and no material peak season. Rate reductions have slowed to the U.S. West Coast (USWC) while further reductions continue to be seen to the U.S. East Coast (USEC).
- Ocean - TAWB CRD to ETD is improving to 12 days as the on-time performance and vessel delays are improving month on month. Recommendations: book 2 or more weeks prior to CRD to secure space, minimize CRD changes as much as possible, and leverage Premium products to guarantee equipment and loading for your most time sensitive cargo.
- Air - Asia Runway maintenance at Shanghai continues through early summer, with airport officials estimating the impact being ~10% capacity on CN -> US and ~25-30% capacity on CN -> EU. There is still enough capacity to move the demand from Shanghai and no backlog as of now but rates from China are going up as a result.
- Regional Update - Europe Italy: Ocean capacity is available and rates are stable. For air freight, capacity is increasing slightly with the summer season approaching and more flights being scheduled.
- Regional Update - Asia Taiwan is seeing an increase in US exports YoY as companies shift manufacturing away from China. Capacity on both ocean and air are steady and consistent. More broadly across the region, there is ocean capacity available on most lanes, although APAC to LATAM and EU are tightening up and carriers continue to roll and blank sail to maintain stable pricing.
According to the Flexport’s weekly market freight update report on May 24, 2023,
Upcoming Webinars
- The State of Trade: Are We Heading Toward a Recession, Or Not? Thurs, May 25 @ 9:00am PT / 12:00 pm ET
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- North America Platform Demo Weds, June 14 @ 12:00pm PT / 3:00pm ET
This Week In News
After Last Year’s Inventory Tidal Wave, Where Do Retailers Go From Here?
Having hit a peak in October ‘22, U.S. retail inventory levels are still bloated. This means many businesses (retailers, wholesalers, and 3PLs offering distribution services) are left with high storage costs. These organizations are already dealing with looming uncertainties around this year’s peak season, and the mounting opportunity costs of having working capital tied up in storing unsold inventory, making the situation that much more important to resolve as soon as possible.
Flexport Taps Uber Freight Executive To Build Truck Brokerage
Building on the acquisition of Shopify Logistics, Flexport announced this week that Bill Dreigert was joining the company as the new head of trucking. Most recently, Dreigert helped launch Uber Freight, the tech company’s offering that pairs shippers with truckers to move their goods. According to CEO Dave Clark, “his mission in this new role will be to develop and scale our end-to-end customer offering for trucking.” The move is part of Flexport’s wider goals of providing customers with full-service, end-to-end logistics solutions.
Read more news summaries like this in weekly Supply Chain Snapshots
For more details, please visit Flexport’s Ocean Timeliness and Air Timeliness indicator pages.
