In light of the prospect that the shipping disruption and the shortage of containers and vessels will carry on throughout the holiday season, and probably into 2022, several American retailing companies, such as Amazon, Walmart and Coca-Cola, are intending to find out the alternative to retain their flow of merchandise from Asia, especially for China. As a result, those giant retailers turn to charter the container vessels to ship their own containers instead of relying on the container lines.

Amazon charters hundreds of containers to transport their own goods.

According to Alphaliner, Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has offloaded its own containers in Houston from the general cargo ship Star Lygra, G2 Ocean, which is a joint venture of leading break bulk and bulk shipping companies Gearbulk and Grieg Star. 

After leaving China on August 27, the Star Lygra transits Panama Canal at the end of September. After five days of offloading containers in Houston, the vessel has departed for Baltimore.

Walmart has also taken shipping matters into its own hands, chartering a number of ships.

The giant supermarket chain decides to ship some of its merchandise on the transpacific through the tonnage it controls instead of paying extremely high rates to global container liners for shipments that tend to arrive late.

According to Ocean Audit, a New York-based consultancy, Walmart has already accomplished two cruises, both arriving in the U.S. in August and using Walmart-branded 53ft containers. The first one has 177 53ft containers on board, and the last one has 247 similar sized containers.

Coca-Cola turns to charter vessels normally used for grain and coal to ship raw materials.

Due to shortages disrupting global transportation, Coca-Cola has to come up with more economic ways to boost the transportation of their goods and materials. 

According to the Procurement Director from Coca-Cola, the company has chartered 3 2,800TEU bulk vessels which typically transport items like coal and grain to transport ~60k tonnes of materials and subsequently keep its production lines running across the world.

Do you want to facilitate your freight forwarding business? Check out GoFreight today for real-time freight visibility and management solutions for all of your freight forwarding needs! Sign up for our free demonstration here.