I have no figures for what they actually lose...but 10,000 a year
be a fraction of a percentage point of what moves...pretty safe bet
It's "Fun With Numbers Time"!
The Port of Seattle transships well over a million containers per
year. A loss of 10K containers would be 1% of that.
I don't have statistics for other ports but it seems reasonable to
assume that the major Pacific NW ports (Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, &
Vancouver) would handle 3 million plus so the loss is now 0.33% or so.
In the overall scheme of things, those ports aren't all that big. I'd
guess that San Francisco/Oakland handles more than any of the NW ports
and Long Beach probably handles at least as much as all the NW ports
combined. A very conservative estimate for the Pacific coast of North
America would be 7 to 8 million containers per year and ten million
might be closer to the mark so the loss would be between 0.10 and
0.14%
Now double that figure to include the Atlantic coast and the loss is
0.05 to 0.07%
Finally, remember that the REALLY HUGE container ports are in Europe
and Asia and it's easy to envision that 10K figure as only amounting
to 0.01% (or 0.0001x total containers shipped). That's pretty rare
statistically even though it is a lot of potential collision targets.
From an insurance point of view it's worthwhile to consider that quite
a lot of containerized cargo is "low value" material like unprocessed
fruits and vegetables, unprocessed hides (which sailors hate because
of the stench!), or even livestock (Not a favorite of the longshoremen
who have to clean the containers afterwards). OTOH: My guess is that
if you were to run into a lost container in the middle of the ocean
you wouldn't much care if it was full of potatoes or big screen TV's.
Numerically yours,
Alex
----- Original Message -----
From: "Meyer, Danny" <DMeyer@dallasnews.com>
> I have no figures for what they actually lose...but 10,000 a year
would only
> be a fraction of a percentage point of what moves...pretty safe bet
for
> insurance.
>
It's "Fun With Numbers Time"!
The Port of Seattle transships well over a million containers per
year. A loss of 10K containers would be 1% of that.
I don't have statistics for other ports but it seems reasonable to
assume that the major Pacific NW ports (Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, &
Vancouver) would handle 3 million plus so the loss is now 0.33% or so.
In the overall scheme of things, those ports aren't all that big. I'd
guess that San Francisco/Oakland handles more than any of the NW ports
and Long Beach probably handles at least as much as all the NW ports
combined. A very conservative estimate for the Pacific coast of North
America would be 7 to 8 million containers per year and ten million
might be closer to the mark so the loss would be between 0.10 and
0.14%
Now double that figure to include the Atlantic coast and the loss is
0.05 to 0.07%
Finally, remember that the REALLY HUGE container ports are in Europe
and Asia and it's easy to envision that 10K figure as only amounting
to 0.01% (or 0.0001x total containers shipped). That's pretty rare
statistically even though it is a lot of potential collision targets.
>From an insurance point of view it's worthwhile to consider that quite
a lot of containerized cargo is "low value" material like unprocessed
fruits and vegetables, unprocessed hides (which sailors hate because
of the stench!), or even livestock (Not a favorite of the longshoremen
who have to clean the containers afterwards). OTOH: My guess is that
if you were to run into a lost container in the middle of the ocean
you wouldn't much care if it was full of potatoes or big screen TV's.
Numerically yours,
Alex
