Blog

The shipping industry, 10 facts

Thursday 14 December 2017,

The shipping industry, 10 facts

Take a look around. Every chair you are sitting on, to the mango you’re eating, it’s mostly made possible by the shipping industry. Shipping is one of the oldest industries in the world. Today, however, it plays as important a role as ever. The shipping industry is complex and there might be a few things you didn’t know yet.

Thanks to Rose George’s book Ninety Percent of Everything we have 10 fun facts about the shipping industry.

1. No Service

Around two-thirds of ship crews in the world have no means of communication while they are on the open sea. Only about 1 in 10 will have freely available Internet.

2. Expensive ships

The largest ships can cost over 200 million dollars to build.

3. Banana

The largest ships can store 745 million bananas in nearly 15,000 containers. That’s about one for every person in Europe and North America.

4. Seafarers

Around 1.5 million seafarers are employed by the global shipping industry

5. Boats

There are approximately 55,000 merchant ships carrying cargo around the world.

6. Inspections

Worldwide, only around 2% to 10% of containers are actually inspected. U.S. ports normally inspect roughly 5% of the 17 million containers arriving at the border every year.

7. Power

A container ship engine has about 1,000 times more power than a family car.

8. Average cost of shipping

To give you an example of how much it costs to ship something, a bicycle would be roughly 10 dollars while a soda can would be less than a penny.

9. 90 percent

Shipping is so big in fact that it constitutes roughly 90 percent of the world’s trade.

10. Type of ships

In the global fleet there are six types of ships: General cargo ships, bulk carriers, fishing vessels, container ships, passenger ships, and tankers.

Interested in more facts? Take a look the book of Rose George.

Back to overview

Read more blogposts

We’re Moving!

Wednesday 11 December 2019

From December 16th you can find us at Kralingseweg 215, 3062 CE Rotterdam            

Read more

We’re Moving!

Wednesday 11 December 2019

Vanaf 16 december kunnen jullie ons vinden aan de Kralingseweg 215, 3062 CE in Rotterdam.

Read more

Vacature bij East Total

Tuesday 16 October 2018

Wij zoeken een: logistiek administratief medewerker/assistent expediteur (32-40 uur per week) Als logistiek administratief medewerker/assistent expediteur binnen ons internationaal opererend bedrijf ben je met een klein team verantwoordelijk voor het logistieke proces. Je ondersteunt hierbij de operationele afdeling. Naast voorraadbeheer, aanmaken en archiveren van dossiers zal er ook ruimte zijn voor het organiseren van transporten […]

Read more