CARGO · CUSTOMS · CAPITAL
Every 14 seconds, a forty-foot box is lifted off a hull at Long Beach. Every 22 seconds, another is hoisted onto a railhead bound for Chicago. The choreography is invisible, the cost ledger is not. supplychain.watch documents the freight of global capitalism, one bill of lading at a time.
since 00:00 UTC, all U.S. west coast ports
DEPARTCN-SHA 03/04 18:00
ARRIVENL-RTM 04/02 06:30
VESSELEVER ACME / 9863HK
TEU23,964
FREIGHT
IS
POLITICS
Every container is a vote, every tariff is a vote, every blocked strait is a vote. We track the ballots that ship in steel.
Forty-six tankers, AIS dark, parked at anchor for 312 consecutive days. The crews rotate by junk boat. The bunker arrives by night. The cargo manifests, when they exist at all, list "fuel oil, miscellaneous." We followed one box for nine months. This is what we found.
MSC6.42M TEU
MAERSK4.31M TEU
CMA CGM3.84M TEU
COSCO3.10M TEU
LA-LB 14 boxes · counterfeit auto parts · HS 8708.99
RTM 02 boxes · undeclared lithium · HS 8507.60
JEA 31 boxes · sanctioned electronics
ANT 09 boxes · ivory, raw · CITES-I
SHA 17 boxes · misdeclared HFC-23
USA WESTNEGOTIATION
USA EASTCONTRACTED
DE-HAMWORK-TO-RULE
FR-HAVWALKOUT
AU-FRECONTRACTED
CA-VANNEGOTIATION
The container ship arrived on schedule. The crane unloaded it on schedule. Then the boxes sat at the marine terminal for nineteen days because there were no chassis to put them on. Welcome to the chassis crisis — the most boring infrastructure failure in the world, and the reason your hardware store ran out of nails.
SHA-LAX$2,340 ↓ 4.2%
SHA-NYC$3,610 ↓ 2.8%
SHA-RTM$2,990 ↑ 1.1%
SHA-GEN$2,705 ↑ 0.6%
NYC-RTM$1,840 ↓ 6.1%
Drewry WCI · updated 2026-03-18 · not investment advice
Friday mornings, one email. Five stories from the global cargo beat that the trade press will not file and the consumer press will not understand. No tracking pixels. No paywall.
EDITORM. KOWALCZYK
DESKJ. AKSOY
DESKR. ESPINOSA
DATAT. NAKAMURA
PORTD. AL-FAYED