[Nancy]

Originally Posted by DementedReality

as a senior person in the shipping industry with many ties to China, I can tell you that shipping may have dropped off, but those #'s are ridiculas.

the company i work for is owned by the 5th largets vessel operator in the world, so i speak with some knowledge.

if the market rate to charter a vessel was only $2800, then they would simply stop operating. think about it. a vessel not only requires a crew and fuel, but also ground operators to load and unload the cargo. 2800 wouldnt even pay for the captains time, never mind everything else.

that being said, the shipping lines are hungry. a 20' container from Shanghai to Vancouver would cost about $2000.00 usd all things considered.

The numbers didn't make sense to me either, but here is a quote from another source...

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbi...ound+the+globe

Last week, you and your friends could have rented one of those ships for a weekend bachelor party and football game for less than $4,000, according to data collected by the London-based Baltic Exchange.

Low Shipping Costs

What happened? And what does it mean for the world economy? Not good news. Let's start with shipping rates. They are the lowest they have been in six years, as measured by a relatively obscure indicator called the Baltic Dry Index. The index, which measures the cost of shipping most commodities other than oil, has been in free fall since the middle of the year, down 93% from its peak of 11,793 in May 2008. As a result, daily rates for chartering a merchant ship are still down by as much as 98% from just six months ago.