Trans-Pacific GRIs Land 15 October and 1 November at $2,000-$3,000 a Box

The Analysis

Twenty general rate increases on one lane in one year. That is the number that stopped me. The round taking effect on 15 October is the twentieth GRI of 2026 on the East Asia to USA trade lane, and the one taking effect on 1 November is the twenty-first. Seventeen days apart. I have sat through cycles where carriers filed every month and collected almost none of it, and I have sat through two or three where every round stuck because the ships simply sailed full. What tells you which one this is has nothing to do with the filing, and everything to do with load factor. But you cannot run a budget on that, so I plan as if it lands and treat whatever does not stick as upside.

The shape of the October round matters more than the headline. Seven carriers filed: CMA CGM, COSCO, Evergreen, Hapag-Lloyd, HMM, Yang Ming and ZIM. Four of them are at $2,000 per 40ft, namely CMA CGM, COSCO, Yang Ming and ZIM. Three are at $3,000, namely Evergreen, Hapag-Lloyd and HMM. Two notes buried in the filing are the ones I actually care about. COSCO's GRI applies only to cargo moving under service contracts, so a spot shipper on COSCO is looking at a completely different number from a contract shipper sitting at the next desk. Evergreen's $3,000 is per 40ft for dry cargo and also $3,000 per reefer container. Every other container size is as per formula, and that phrase deserves its own follow-up email.

For 1 November, Evergreen, HMM, Yang Ming and ZIM have filed again at the same amounts, which makes it the twenty-first of the year. Now put the timing together. Carriers file with the FMC roughly 30 days ahead, while the quotation you are holding runs 7 to 15 days. Anything you signed in August on CIF or DDP terms was priced against a freight assumption that is now two rounds stale by the time the cargo loads. That is the part that turns a tariff filing into a margin problem, and it is why I am writing this on 13 October rather than waiting for the invoice.

Let me start with how a GRI actually reaches you, because plenty of people argue about the headline without knowing the mechanism. A GRI is a tariff filing, not an invoice. Whether you pay it depends on which rate you are moving under. If you are on a service contract with a fixed rate for the term, the carrier cannot simply pass a GRI through unless the contract says so, and a lot of contracts say so in language nobody read at signature. If you are moving on tariff or spot, the new number lands on your next booking. This is why the COSCO note is the most useful line in the whole filing: its GRI applies on service contract cargo only. Two shippers sitting side by side can read the same press table and end up with completely different costs.

The second mechanism problem is the mismatch between filing horizon and quote validity. The carrier has to put the increase in its tariff about 30 days before it takes effect. The quote in your inbox is good for 7 to 15 days. So on 13 October, the quote I am holding probably expires somewhere around 20 to 28 October, the 15 October increase is already sitting in the tariff, and the 1 November increase lands before my next quote cycle even starts. I am being asked to commit volume against a price that will not exist for the whole period I am committing it. That is not a carrier conspiracy, it is just how the mechanics work, and it means the discipline has to come from my side of the desk.

Now the arithmetic, with the assumption stated up front: assume you move 40 x 40ft containers a month eastbound. A $2,000 per 40ft GRI on 40 boxes is $80,000 in a month. A $3,000 GRI is $120,000. If you are with one of the $3,000 filers and both the October and November rounds land on you, that is $6,000 a box, and on 40 boxes a month it is $240,000, assuming your base rate does not move at all in the same period. Base rates do move, which is why I budget the GRI separately from the base and reconcile the two lines once a month rather than mixing them into one number nobody can audit.

The worst version of this is the CIF or DDP deal signed in August, and I have watched more than one customer walk into it. Assume you quoted a CIF price in August with freight modelled at $2,800 per 40ft. If you are shipping on one of the carriers filing at $3,000, and both rounds land, the freight component of that box goes to $8,800, which is $6,000 above what you priced. On 40 boxes a month, that is $240,000 of gross margin gone, with no change in volume, no change in product cost and no change in anything except the date the ship sails. If your contract has a rate adjustment clause, use it this week. If it does not, you are having a commercial conversation with your customer, and it is better to have it on 20 October than on 20 December.

Rate is one half of this. Space is the other, and in a tight market the two move together: carriers file increases because they expect full ships, and the expectation is usually right in the weeks right after a filing. So the practical question is not only whether the GRI sticks, it is whether you can get a booking at all in the second half of October and the first half of November. That is an argument for booking earlier and for placing November volume before the end of this month rather than waiting to see what happens. The cost of an earlier booking is inventory carrying cost, and the cost of a missed booking is a missed selling season.

Let me do that pull-forward calculation properly, because it is the decision some of you are making today. Assume you can pull 20 boxes forward so they load before 15 October and escape the round. Each box avoids $2,000, so that is $40,000 avoided. Now the cost side: assume each box holds $200,000 of goods, your cost of capital is 10% a year, and you are pulling the goods forward by 10 days. Carrying cost works out at roughly $548 per box, or about $11,000 across 20 boxes. Against $40,000 avoided, pulling forward clearly wins. It stops winning if the cargo has nowhere to go at the destination, if the consignee's warehouse is full, or if the goods have a shelf life. Check those three things before you move a single box.

So here is what I am doing, with dates. Today and tomorrow, 13 and 14 October, anything that can physically make gate-in and be loaded before 15 October gets pulled forward. But before I move it, I ask one question in writing: what event does the GRI attach to? Booking date, cargo receiving date, vessel loading date or bill of lading date? Carriers write this into the tariff rule, and the rule is what governs, not the sales representative's recollection on the phone. I ask for the rule text. A box that I thought beat the increase by six hours and did not is a very expensive lesson, and I have paid for it before.

By Wednesday 14 October I want an all-in quote from each carrier and NVOCC I use, valid through 15 November, with the GRI treatment stated explicitly in writing: included, excluded, or included only above a certain threshold. A quote that is silent on the GRI is not a quote I can plan with. I also want the surcharge line itemised separately from the base, because a GRI that lands inside a bundled number is impossible to audit later, and I intend to audit it.

On 15 October itself, I reconcile. Which of my carriers filed $2,000 and which filed $3,000, and how much of my volume sits with each? The difference between the two groups is $1,000 a box. On 40 boxes a month, moving volume from a $3,000 filer to a $2,000 filer is worth $40,000 a round, and there are two rounds in seventeen days. That is worth a real conversation with your forwarder about allocation, and it is worth checking whether service levels and transit times are comparable on the strings you would be switching between. Rate is not the only variable, but $1,000 a box is a lot of variable.

By Tuesday 20 October, every customer holding a CIF or DDP price from me that extends past 30 November gets a written notice. I put a number in it: this is the per-box exposure, this is the effective date, this is what we propose. Some will accept a surcharge pass-through, some will want to renegotiate the whole price, and a few will argue. What none of them can say later is that they were not told. Silence on a rate move is what turns a freight problem into a relationship problem, and I have learned that the hard way.

By Friday 23 October I want the November decision made and the bookings placed, not discussed. The 1 November filings are already public, so there is no informational reason to wait, and there is a real cost to waiting: space. I would rather commit November volume at a known number on 23 October than discover on 28 October that the string I wanted is full and the alternative is with a $3,000 filer. Then on Friday 30 October I go back and check what actually happened. Which carriers collected the October GRI in full, which discounted it, which quietly did not apply it to certain accounts. That is the single best forward indicator you have for 1 November, and it is sitting in your own invoice file.

On responsibility, I split it three ways. Contracts and pricing own the customer notices and any rate adjustment clause, and they have until 20 October. Logistics owns the booking calendar, the gate-in dates and the carrier allocation question, and they have until 23 October. Finance owns the landed cost variance, reported monthly against a freight plan that lists base and GRI as separate lines. When those three reports disagree, which they will, the disagreement is the useful part, and I want it on the table in the last week of October rather than buried in a quarter-end reconciliation.

On alternatives, the obvious one is the service contract route. A properly built contract with a rate that holds for the term, and language that says what happens on a GRI, removes this whole exercise from your month. The catch is that contracts are negotiated when the market is soft, and right now it is not, so what you can get is probably a shorter term and a higher number than you would like. I would still ask, because a three-month fixed rate at a number I dislike beats a floating number I cannot forecast. I would also ask my NVOCC for a fixed all-in through 30 November; their rates follow the underlying cost, but plenty of them will hold a number for volume.

Splitting shipments is the other lever. If part of your volume can load before 15 October and part has to go after, split it and price each part on its own terms rather than averaging. Averaging hides the exposure and makes the customer conversation harder. And if you have flexibility on service strings, ask whether the GRI applies across all the coastal groupings in your tariff or only some, because filings are not always uniform. Ask for the rule, in writing, before you assume it is the same everywhere.

Now the traps, which are where most of the money actually goes. As per formula is the first one. The published table is per 40ft. If you ship 20ft, 40ft hi-cube, 45ft or reefer, you do not have a number, you have a formula, and the formula output is not necessarily proportional. A 20ft is not automatically half of a 40ft. Get every size you ship priced individually, in writing, before the effective date, because that is the line item that turns up wrong on the invoice and takes three weeks to fix.

The applicability date is the second trap, and it is the one I have personally been burned by. Does the increase attach to the date you booked, the date the cargo was gated in, the date the vessel loaded, or the bill of lading date? Each carrier writes its own rule, and the difference can be worth a full round of increase on a single shipment. Read the rule, save the rule, and put the date you are relying on into the booking instruction so there is a record if it is disputed later.

The third trap is assuming a filing is a collection. GRIs fail all the time when the market does not support them. But the discipline I use is to budget the full amount and book any shortfall as upside, never the other way round, because a plan built on the GRI failing is a plan that blows up in one month. The 7 to 15 day quote validity makes this worse: the quote you are working from can expire before the increase it ignores even takes effect.

There is one more thing in the same set of headlines that I would not skip, because it is about money you can actually get back. The FMC has issued an order directing COSCO Shipping Lines to show why it should not be fined $16.7 million over a demurrage reparation paid 223 days late. The underlying reparation was $24,328, and the FMC found the demurrage invoices at issue did not comply with the Shipping Act and FMC regulations. The current daily penalty is $14,988, rising to $74,943 if violations are found willful, and the total sought is $16,712,289. COSCO has until 1 December 2026 to respond. The lesson for any importer: a demurrage or detention invoice is contestable, the invoice has to meet the rules on its face, and you need the dates, the free time basis and the paperwork saved before you argue, not after. Read every one of them this month.

Pulling cargo forward to beat a rate increase has a trap of its own, and it sits at the destination. If the consignee was not ready for it, or the warehouse is full, or the appointment system cannot absorb it, you have converted a $2,000 freight saving into a demurrage and detention bill that can be larger than the saving. Coordinate the arrival with the receiving side before you pull anything forward, and get the free time confirmed in writing at the destination as well as at origin. I have seen that trade go wrong more times than I want to admit.

I also set a trigger threshold rather than guessing, because guessing is what got people hurt in previous cycles. Here is mine: if the 15 October GRI shows up in full on more than 70% of my November-loading invoices, I assume the 1 November round lands in full as well and I price December cargo accordingly, including any new round that gets filed for later in the month. If it shows up on fewer than half, I treat the filings as negotiating positions and push back hard on the November bookings instead of absorbing them. Either way, the decision is made on 30 October from my own invoice file, not from a headline, and not from a forwarder's opinion about what the market will bear.

My honest read on this pair of filings is that the fifteen days between them is the real story, not the amounts. Carriers do not file twice in seventeen days unless they believe the market will take it, and the way you find out whether they are right is by watching what actually gets collected in the second half of October. I am budgeting both rounds in full, pulling forward what can physically make the 15 October cut, asking for the tariff rule on applicability in writing, re-quoting every CIF and DDP deal that runs past 30 November, and reading every demurrage invoice that crosses my desk. If half of it sticks, I am covered. If none of it sticks, I have had a cheap quarter.

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— By Leo