News / The Loadstar unboxed 2024    

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As 2024 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on the highlights that defined another remarkable year at The Loadstar.

From breaking news to in-depth analysis, our commitment to delivering the most relevant and timely information to our community is as strong as ever.  

So we’ve broken down the numbers, to showcase the most-read stories and the most-listened to podcasts, and highlight the moments that made 2024 a year to remember for our readers and listeners. 

Between 1 January and 17 December, we published a total of 3,002 articles. This equates to 1,572,595 words, the length of 20 decent-sized novels. We’re not sure how long or how many monkeys randomly typing it would take to replicate this, but for comparison, the complete works of William Shakespeare contain some 900,000 words. 

The stories that garnered the most attention this year reflected the critical challenges and developments shaping the ocean supply chain. Our predominantly shipper and forwarder readership was particularly concerned with the impacts of the Red Sea crisis and the ILA/USMX negotiations. 

Top 3 most-read news stories of 2024:

https://theloadstar.com/box-ships-omitting-singapore-call-as-port-congestion-hits-critical-level/ written in May by Martina Li and read 119,549 times.

https://theloadstar.com/mounting-container-shortages-creating-total-havoc/ written in May by Alex Lennane and read 82,324 times.

https://theloadstar.com/january-strike-at-us-east-and-gulf-coast-ports-now-inevitable-say-forwarders/ written in December by Alexander Whiteman and read 58,609 times.

Top 3 most-read air cargo news stories of 2024:

https://theloadstar.com/foreign-airlines-react-to-sudden-new-us-rule-tightening-air-cargo-security/ written in August by Alexander Whiteman and read 50,031 times.

https://theloadstar.com/transpac-ecommerce-freighters-on-pause-as-us-customs-checks-every-parcel/ written in May by Alex Lennane and read 45,148 times.

https://theloadstar.com/customs-brokers-caught-up-in-us-crackdown-on-chinese-ecommerce-traffic/ written in May by Alex Lennane and read 39,200 times.

Readers this year thought the best way to start their week was by reading The Loadstar, and our website’s most visited day was Monday.  

Clearly, our stories gave you the same buzz as caffeine, as the most popular time of day to read The Loadstar was Europe’s 2pm post-lunch slump and North America’s breakfast (of course, this could be to do with the timing of our daily bulletin, which you can sign up to here). 

With demand for The Loadstar’s spoken-word content increasing, we launched the weekly News in Brief Podcast in May. Year on year, this means The Loadstar has more than doubled its podcast output, but this has not hindered listener growth, with the 49 episodes published so far in 2024 averaging 4,842 listens each. 

Top 3 most listened-to podcasts of 2024:

https://theloadstar.com/news-podcast-may-2024-hapag-lloyds-strategy-2030-planning-amid-global-turmoil-with-seko-logistics/in published in May and listened to 20,196 times.

https://theloadstar.com/news-in-brief-podcast-week-21-2024-rates-tariffs-rules-and-ai-fun/  published in May and listened to 15,523 times.

https://theloadstar.com/news-in-brief-podcast-week-37-2024-alliance-rumours-ecommerce-and-db-schenker-bid/ published in September and listened to 11,090 times.

Oh, and of course, The Loadstar‘s journalists won three gongs at this year’s Seahorse Freight Association awards night.

In January, keep your eyes peeled for links to a new monthly Air Cargo Podcast, which will focus on demystifying the air freight market and help to determine whether it’s the right mode for our listeners’ money. 

The most searched terms that brought you to our website this year were: Loadstar; news logistics; The Loadstar; MSC Alliance; Alliance MSC; Hapag Alliance, Does IDS takeover need approval?; Japan earthquake; A340 freighter; AI tool news; Hyundai Marine bankrupt; What is going on with Yodel?; Containership explosion China.

We hope you found what you were looking for.  

After Google, the second most popular way to get to our stories was via LinkedIn. Our LinkedIn followers grew by 9,578 over the last 365 days and now total 29,056 – the capacity of a medium-sized sports stadium, or the population of Auburn, Alabama!  

Barring any major news, we are taking a short break until 2 January, to rest-up before the inevitable chaos of 2025, but will continue serving you with timely, relevant and insightful content upon our return.  As ever, please do get in touch to tell us what you’d like to read about; any issues that you are currently facing; or stories you’d like us to investigate.

Thank you for being part of our journey this year, and we look forward to having you with us for more reporting excellence in 2025.