Yeah it sounds like a boring and useless topic but I recently decided (Daughters classroom project) to detail some basic costs associated with bringing goods across the pacific. And the details are a bit sobering. The cost of shipping a 20ft container is about $1000. Doesnt matter its contents as long as its legal goods. Average container ship carries about 8,400 20ft containers. The latest big boys can actually carry about 11,000! So you do the math. Essentialy thats $8 million bux for the shipper/trip. Fuel costs are about $99,000 a day, crew wages about $18,000 a day. I rounded off the ships crews costs (food, water, etc) to $1000 a day. Now I used the average trip from China to Long Beach, Ca as my guide. Thats a 12 day trip on average. Add all that up and you get a one way trip cost of $1,416,000. I didnt add some of the obvious other costs, like insurance (approx. $400,000) and Maint/Repair because I couldnt get accurate numbers, but it still offsets the profits.
That boils down to more then $6 million dollars of profit per trip. What that means is these $100 million dollar ships pay for themselves very fast. I wonder how much the owners pocket and how much they reinvest in the company?
John
That boils down to more then $6 million dollars of profit per trip. What that means is these $100 million dollar ships pay for themselves very fast. I wonder how much the owners pocket and how much they reinvest in the company?
John
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