The Loadstar Diary: Stability, shutdown silence and stirring the pot

Tragic news out of Indonesia opened last week, with a 68-year-old worker at Tanjung Perak Port killed during loading operations of the KM Pacific 88 box ship. As we understand it, container imbalance was at fault, with a video posted on LinkedIn showing the ship rocking and dozens of containers plunging into the sea. Amid the chaos, the worker appears to have been knocked into the water. Questions have raged ever since. The video shows the ship heeling significantly before the containers began to fall. “If there is a problem with the ship’s stability, why are you continuing with the loading?” Quite. 

“Burnishing her credentials” is how one shipping source put it when asked how they felt about Laura DiBella’s appointment as chair of the US Federal Maritime Commission (FMC). Certainly – and perhaps this is in no small part because of the present, partial federal ‘shitdown’ – Ms DiBella has done little on this front. One summation of her agenda was “Trump bootlicking” – “she parroted a very Trumpian phrase about the homeland”. If she wanted to refute this, her LinkedIn activity won’t be helping. “Lookie here what I just received! Too cool not to share and off to the framer I go!!  Thank you again for the honor, President Trump!!!” Ms DiBella wrote, brandishing a copy of the Trump-signed order designating her “chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission”. Wonder what his supporters have to say about that.  

So, Manifest opens today – and we hear a lot about how few women there are in tech. But (based on a rough calculation), one in four Manifest speakers are women, which is one of the highest levels for a logistic events. Shame then, that the event’s air cargo session breaks the trend by having 0% women…

Meanwhile, from the bright lights of The Strip to the battleship-grey skies over Ipswich’s waterfront. The UK east coast port is one of the more maligned places in the country, an early victim of containerisation whose docks became increasingly vacated as Felixstowe’s swelled. However, it is also the home to two very important transport & logistics firms, MSC and, er.. The Loadstar… and the shipping giant has announced its support for Ipswich’s bid to be the “UK City of Culture 2029”.

MSC UK MD Dan Everitt said: “As a long-standing partner of Ipswich Town Football Club, our support for Ipswich extends well beyond business, so we’re pleased to stand behind the town-wide momentum already building through the #BackTheBid campaign, launched in January, and we encourage other organisations across Suffolk to join us in showing visible support.“

For what it’s worth, we’re also right behind it.         

New year, new data. We’re starting to track in-house PR teams on two simple metrics: how fast they respond to direct questions; and how helpful they are when they do. Based on last year – instinctively, since we haven’t crunched the numbers yet – the Danes managed to occupy both the top and bottom of the table. But perhaps that’s changing. 

DSV – the Danish company lurking in the nether regions of helpfulness – replied in under an hour to a request for clarification on a single line from its earnings call. The question: what does “gravitate towards our own solution” actually mean, on the very hot topic of which TMS it plans to choose? Response time: excellent.
Answer: “We have no further comment.”

Straight back to the bottom of the table, but with one big tick in the speed column. Let’s hope that sticks this year.

And on the subject of DSV’s relationship with CargoWise, upon which many eyeballs are focused, in-pings an email following the publication of this article: “Fucking hell…way to stir the pot. Now conference season will be extra fun.” You’re welcome.  

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