News / Carriers 'dumping cargo anywhere' and 'dumping the charges on us', claim forwarders

Carriers’ “safe port” practices, provoked by the US/Israel war on Iran, have left forwarders pulling their hair out amid claims that shipping lines have “revoked to type”, despite promises post-Covid of a less-hostile relationship with customers.

Multiple forwarders have told The Loadstar they are seeing their boxes “dumped anywhere” as container lines look to deal with the fallout of the latest conflict in the Middle East.

One forwarder said: “Carriers are literally pulling into any port and offloading cargo, with it left up to us to work out how to get the cargo to its final destination. This is resulting in loads of additional costs being dumped on us too.

“There is the fee we are charged for the unloading, then they are also hitting us with storage charges. They can drop these boxes anywhere they want, and are, and they are offering us no support – often not even telling us until the container has been unloaded.”

The Loadstar has been made aware of instances of boxes bound for Dubai having been left at Qingdao Port in China – at the start of the vessel’s journey; carriers including Maersk and MSC having been highlighted for the practice.

An end-of-voyage advisory – which kickstarts the process of carriers searching for a safe port – sent out by MSC, seen by The Loadstar, informed customers that they would be charged $800 ‘per box unloaded’, with further charges applied for storage.

Another forwarder told The Loadstar: “We understand what is happening in the Gulf and along the Strait of Hormuz. We are not ignorant of that, and we are not looking for the shipping lines to ignore it and carry on as before. What we are asking for is for carriers to communicate with us and give us advance warning and options on how we can resolve the disruption for our customers.

“What we don’t want is this reflex they have, which is penalise us and take advantage of us at every opportunity.”

Other forwarders echoed the claims, one suggesting it felt very much like carriers had a “don’t care mentality”, as far as customers were concerned, while another asked: “What am I supposed to do when this happens?”

Yet another said while, they were having issues, the carriers they were dealing with at least seemed to be getting cargo comparatively close to final destination, saying: “We had a Saudi-destined box left in Egypt,” but adding that they had “a lot of support from other forwarders”.

As this issue was going to press, Maersk had yet to respond to requests for comment, but CEO Vincent Clerc noted that the Danish liner had 10 containerships trapped in the Gulf as attacks against commercial shipping intensified.

During an interview with CNN last night, Mr Clerc added: “And we’ve numerous ships that are on their way to the region, for which we have had to have contingencies about where they’re going to drop cargo.

“They are not going to wait for the strait to reopen. We will stage the cargo either in Oman or in Jeddah, or in other places, in ports where we have access, and then the ship will go on its way to the next assignment.”

One European forwarder told The Loadstar Oman was increasingly becoming a staging post for their shipments into the other Gulf countries, and there was growing chaos at warehouses across the world that were filling up with Gulf-bound shipments.

The forwarder said they were organising, with the shipping lines, to use Oman ports as discharge points from where they would load goods onto trucks for onward transport to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

“We are global transport architects. We have to find a solution and we are finding solutions. There are issues – not least dealing with unexpected customs bureaucracy. It’s not as simple as ‘pick another country’, but we are making it work,” they said.