As far as a delivered cost, or total transportation spend, shippers didn't do as well. The industry found that bunker surcharges easily offset the reductions in the base rates. Paul Bingham, principal of global trade and transportation practice for Global Insight Inc., says that the steamship lines are trying very hard to change perceptions of oversupply.

“We're cargo demand analysts, and we're echoing some partners of ours, mostly in London,” says Bingham. They believe the overall slot capacity—the biggest, crudest measure of overall container shipping capacity—is being added to at a greater rate than the growth we're projecting in trade this year. “What that really means is that the fundamentals are there for the steamship lines to continue to face this pricing pressure situation, much to the benefit of the shippers.”

That doesn't mean carriers aren't doing anything about this situation. Bingham believes carriers are being creative about reworking their vessel service streams; and he has seen anecdotal reports that to save on fuel costs and take up additional vessel capacity the carriers have been “slow steaming,” the practice of not running vessels at designated sea speeds. By cutting back several knots of speed they can save fuel and therefore achieve the same delivered capacity at a lower fuel cost.

“However on the longer haul routes, especially East-West routes that requires the addition of newer ships into a string of vessels to maintain a weekly service frequency,” Bingham adds. “From a shipper perspective, therefore, they see no increase in service on a particular trade route from a particular carrier or consortium, yet the number of vessels getting used is soaking up some of that capacity.”

These new ships are bigger, and not all ports can handle their size. Even more limiting is the time it takes to work the longer shifts and finding the landside capacity to handle the cargo coming off these larger ships. Even the equipment used at many ports isn't sized to the task. As these ships get wider rather than longer or deeper, the cranes don't have sufficient outreach to service them. Bingham says that can be a crippling situation.

“The ports are trying to be proactive, but as those cranes get larger they get more expensive, and you can't afford to replace all your cranes overnight,” he explains. It becomes a limitation in terms of how much you can grow or how fast you can add a number of vessel strings that have the largest vessels.

In the year ahead, says Bingham, fundamentals still point to a strong position for shippers. “Trade is not growing as fast as it was in prior years and these order books keep relentlessly supplying more vessels into the world's fleet,” he adds. “The greatest downside risk is fuel cost, with bunker fuel adjustments. Any fuel price increases will get passed right back to the shippers, and they'll have to deal with them separate from the base rates.”

Shippers may get more for their money, however, if you judge by the added services. New all water services are being added through the Suez Canal from Asia. This will give shippers new opportunities to fine tune their inbound shipments across a greater variety of vessel services than in prior years.

However, Gary Klestadt, president of Trans-World Shipping Corp., a New York City-based freight forwarder, sends out a word of warning. He says that as ocean shipping has gone from common carriage to contract, the greatest difficulty for small firms is monitoring the contracts. “Today I sign a contract on January 1, and I really have no clue whether those rates will be valid two months later,” says Klestadt.

Caveat emptor.