I didn’t Cafe Society because it’s not about the Wire, but knowing the Wire might help people answer my questions because they’ll know what I learned from watching the Wire.
I looked up “shipping” on Wiki and it didn’t really address my specific questions straightforwardly, so I turn to Dopers who are in the mood to share their knowledge.
During Season 2 of the Wire we were introduced to the troubles of stevedores, the people who load and unload cargo ships. The location was Baltimore, the time circa 2003, well before the current recession.
These stevedores were in deep shit because there were far fewer ships arriving in their harbor needing their cargo-handling services.
The union leader in the show was paying a lobbyist to get the governement to commit to dredging something, not sure what, so that more ships would come to the harbor and provide work.
So my questions, prompted by this limited exposure via fiction to the daily details of shipping, are:
Who owns cargo ships in general, and do those owners decide where they will dock and then just sort of let it be known they have space? Are they sometimes owned by manufacturers outright when they are big enough to need whole ships?
Who do the stevedores work for?
Who owns the harbors where cargo ships dock?
Any idea why “dredging” something would make more ships come? If the harbor is too shallow, are some cargo ships…ummm, can’t think of the terms… when the part of the ship that is underwater is smaller/shorter/less deep…than others, allowing some cargo ships to use a shallow harbor when others cannot?
What makes a harbor appealing to a shipper?
How many commercial harbors are there in North America? Are there commercial harbors along our Southern coasts, and do ships come from South America?
Do all Western harbors work with ships coming from Asia and Western from Europe?
The show portrayed the stevedores as having serious problems with enough work. In 2003 wasn’t China sending us huge amounts of goods? Was this manufactured for the show, did it have only to do with Baltimore, or has there been some major change in the way shipping works now vs. in the 70’s, for instance, that would lead to many lost jobs long before this recession?
How many of those cans, which appear to be the size of semis, can be carried on a typical cargo ship?
Wouldn’t it be insanely simple, as portrayed in the show, to smuggle pretty much anything you damn well pleased into this country via giant shipping containers? There’s no way that every can gets opened and inspected for contraband! Do they x-ray or use dogs or something?
As the the dredging - dredging can make the harbor entrance and channels deeper, and it can also make it wider. It is also needed to clear out deposits that form in the channels naturally.
The depth needed for the largest modern container ships is 50 ft, while most of Baltimore Harbor is dredged to 35-45 ft. As I understand it, parts of Baltimore Harbor had been dredged to 50 ft in the 70s but either the portion done was insufficient or the channel was not maintained sufficiently and filled in. The Army Corps of Engineers finished a dredging project in 2003 which they claim has brought a flood of shipping to the Port of Baltimore.
Too late to edit:
I believe the 35-45 foot depth was sufficient for the old Panamax size of container (so named because it was the maximum size ship that could pass through the Panama Canal) but they enlarged the Canal so the ships got bigger too. As time passed Panamax sizing would become obsolete, so too would the Port, unless the route got deeper.
I don’t know all the answers to your questions, but here are answers to a few:
How quickly we forget. Granted, the '02-'03 recession wasn’t nearly as bad as the current one, but it wasn’t exactly a boom time either.
The word you’re looking for is “draft”, and yes, some ships have a deeper draft than others.
List of ports in the United States, ranked by tons traded. List of all ports in North America, by geography. Note in the first link that seven of the ten busiest ports are on the Gulf Coast. My impression is that this is a combination of the oil trade in the Gulf of Mexico, coupled with the fact that if a ship is coming from India or the Persian Gulf (say) and can’t fit through the Suez Canal, it’s going to be approaching North America via the South Atlantic.
An interesting Wired magazine article I happen to have just read a few days ago about a container that was found to be giving off radiation at a port in Italy - I think you might enjoy it.
I don’t have the answers to your other questions, but as for the lack of work for stevedores, that has a lot to do with automation and modern containerization techniques, which greatly reduced the amount of time and effort needed to unload a ship.
And note that the 8th port on that list is Huntington, West Virginia – a port which is on none of the coasts of the United States. From visiting that city several times, my guess is that most of the freight through that port is coal loaded onto barges that go up and down the Ohio River.
The book The Boxby Marc Levinson covers the invention of the modern shipping container and the effects it had on unions, stevedores/porthands, global shipping, etc. I read it for a class at school, but I found it to be quite fascinating and given the breath of your questions, Stoid, I’d recommend it for you. It read almost like a novel - it surprised me just how recently the now-ubiquitous container came into common use, and the methods of coping with adapting labour, modernizing ports (and how New Jersey became more important than New York) and standardizing… it wasn’t enough to just create the box, you had to get the trucks, ships and trains to all accept the same size too.
“1.Do those owners decide where they will dock and then just sort of let it be known they have space?”
Pretty much so, no different than a trucking company really.
“2. Who do the stevedores work for?”
A rather large transport company who leases the dock space.
“4. Any idea why “dredging” something would make more ships come? If the harbor is too shallow, are some cargo ships…ummm, can’t think of the terms… when the part of the ship that is underwater is smaller/shorter/less deep…than others, allowing some cargo ships to use a shallow harbor when others cannot?”
Nearby ports are in competition with each other so they will lobby the government to dredge so bigger ships can visit rather than go to a nearby port that is naturally deeper
"10. Wouldn’t it be insanely simple, as portrayed in the show, to smuggle pretty much anything you damn well pleased into this country via giant shipping containers? There’s no way that every can gets opened and inspected for contraband! Do they x-ray or use dogs or something? "
They can x-ray the whole container and some are randomly opened, however I’d imagine they mostly use profiling or intelligence to track down illicit goods.
I’ve been working as a lawyer in the field of commercial shipping for a couple of decades.
Cargo vessels are owned by a wide variety of entities. There are innumerable types of ship and trades and it varies between them. There are bulkers that carry bulk commodities like wheat, coal, iron ore. There are car carriers. There are container vessels carrying general containers. There are reefers (specialist refrigerated vessels). There are tankers for oil, orange juice, and other liquids. There are gas carriers for LPG etc. There are banana ships.
As to nationality, there are nations that punch above their weight in private shipowning such as Greece, Japan, several nations of Western continental Europe (Germany, Holland, Norway and others), Hong Kong and Singapore. Some countries have large national or quasi-national fleets such as China, Russia, and India. Bear in mind that the actual nation of residence of real owner is often hidden behind flags of convenience and professional shipmanagers.
The style of the owners varies from wealthy individuals to large corporations. Most of them (even the largest) you have never heard of. Most household name companies that you might think as owning ships don’t: they charter in ships. Actual shipowners are almost always a business to business operation. They don’t do retail.
Shipowners don’t usually operate ships for their own commercial ends. They charter their ships to others (charterers). Charterers may be large shipping lines. Don’t be fooled by ship names: charterers often have naming rights to ships they charter but usually actually own few if any of “their own” fleet.
Very, very few end users of shipping services have the expertise and want to make the investment and run the risk of commercial shipping. Some of the oil majors still own some ships, I think. Very, very few. They charter in.
Charters are very often in “chains” that is, the owner charters to a charterer, who charters to another charterer and so on. Could well be three layers of charterer before you get to the final charterer.
Depending on the trade, the final charterer is usually the one who decides what is carried and where, and is responsible arranging the berth.
The commercial model adopted depends very much on the trade.
The bulk trade is dominated by the tramp market: ships are just brought in piecemeal for voyages on a one-off basis (or for perhaps a few voyages in a row). Typically the ship will be chartered (potentially via intervening charters) to a final charterer on a voyage basis. The final charterer is probably a buyer or seller of the bulk commodity concerned (a sugar or coal trader for example).
The tanker trade is similar but is perhaps more regular.
The container trade is dominated by big name shipping lines, who own or more commonly charter in ships, which run them on liner (ie scheduled) routes. They carry containers for customers directly or more commonly via third party retailers of container traffic (freight forwarders or Non-Vessel-Owning-Common-Carriers).
As above, if you have to generalise you would say “the final charterer” but it varies. For example, in the bulk trades if the seller of a commodity sells on FOB (free on board) terms it will typically arrange the stevedores at the loadport, while the buyer at the other end will arrange matters at the disport.
In the container trade it will be the final charterer, usually the shipping line.
Harbours are commonly natural phenomena. Though they could be artificial. Wharves and terminals and artificial harbours(which is probably what you mean) vary in ownership utterly from government or quasi government owned public facilities through to private facilities built by mining and oil companies through to public user terminals owned by infrastructure corporations.
Ships keep getting larger and require ever greater draft and larger ships are generally more efficient. Accordingly, port facilities that used to be based on canals, rivers and inland harbours are more and more to be found further out, where there is more room and more depth. The containerised world of shipping is tending towards a “hub and spoke” model with mega-terminals as the hubs.
What do you mean by “shipper”? If you mean a shipowner, then probably if they are being paid by the day as they generally are they don’t care too much as long as its safe and they are getting paid.
If you mean someone with cargo to ship and/or who is paying for cost and time, what they want is something close to source of cargo, deep, with a short pilotage, the shortest distance to destination, no congestion, and fast and efficient stevedores.
(1) don’t know (2) yes (3) yes.
I suspect you meant “Do all Western harbors work with ships coming from Asia and Eastern from Europe?” I’m not an expert on the US trade. However, while there may be some bias towards the pattern you indicate, bear in mind that it is may well be more efficient to send a whole ship from Europe to the Western coast than it would be to berth it on the East coast then tranship by road or rail across the continent, if the ultimate destination is, say, LA.
I don’t know about Baltimore particularly, but see answers 4 and 5. I suspect that Baltimore is not a hub (too inland?) and has been cut out of general containerised trade, and does not have the manufacturing or commodities base to generate local trade.
Shipping containers, not cans. I’m not sure I can come up with a “typical” here. From 100 to over 10,000, but maybe 5,000-8,000 would be a decent median
There are checks using x-rays and dogs and so on but I don’t think I’ve heard of anywhere that checks 100%, so yes to a degree what you say is right.
Actually I just realised that my answer to Q2 depends what you mean by “stevedores”. Let me try again.
The term can mean the individual workmen. They would typically work for a stevedoring company. A stevedoring company (also often referred to as a “stevedore”) would, if you have to generalise, work for “the final charterer” but it varies. For example, in the bulk trades if the seller of a commodity sells on FOB (free on board) terms it will typically arrange the stevedores at the loadport, while the buyer at the other end will arrange matters at the disport.
Harbour tonnage is dominated by heavy bulk, like oil, coal and ore. A container port deals with much lighter, but more expensive per weight items, like Chinese toasters. So the relevant statistic for Baltimore is the total value of cargo.
As some have hinted, the questions 4 and 5 are connected. Operators with big ships are taking the market with their cheap prices. Thus dredging makes the thriving operators come to the harbor. Not dredging leaves the dying operators. Cargo ships growing bigger is perhaps the most clear trend in the past 3000 years.
I’ve not seen the show but here’s something else to consider: dockworkers in general were - at least in the U.K. - notorious thieves. Containerisation largely put a halt to that, so if it’s not a container port, that may well be a significant concern.
It’s a big plotline in the show - containers sometimes “disappear” accidentally, getting mis-registered and lost in the stacks, so some of the stevedores utilize that to make containers “disappear” deliberately before selling off the goods. When the head of the union finds out he rips into one of the thieves on the grounds that it damages the reputation of the port and pushes traffic elsewhere.
One thing about shipping containers: IIRC, their length and widths are standardized, but their heights aren’t, and the various containers for different commodities means that they are not as standardized as we would think.
There is an in-exact measuring unit called the TEU - twenty-foot equivalent unit - which is approximately the volume of a 20-foot long shipping container. Oddly, the 45-foot long containers are called 2-TEU. A ship’s capacity is determined in part by the number of TEUs it can handle, and can vary from a few hundred to 10 000+.
The very first shipping containership was the SS Ideal-X, a former WWII tanker that was modified to carry 58 containers. Her maiden voyage as a containership was in 1956.
Really, The Box was a good enough read that this thread is making me think I’ll read it again. That is a very rare occurrence for school books!