Supply Chain Action Points
Read this first — the conclusion, and the moves to make:
- By 24 July, obtain the rate card in writing with five fields filled: rate, weight threshold, unit of assessment, basis (VGM or cargo weight), named strings and validity; no card means no quote for sailings after 1 August.
- Rank your top ten SKUs by density in kilograms per cubic metre this week; the three densest go onto the renegotiation list before the August settlement cycle closes.
- Test the 40ft against a 2×20ft split on your densest SKU using your own handling cost, and switch only if the saving exceeds the extra move by 20%.
- Put a separate weight-fee reserve line on every quote issued for post-1 August sailings, with the assumption written next to it so it cannot be read as a straight rate increase.
- For any Gulf Coast routing, identify an alternative port or carrier within ten business days; a restriction has no price to negotiate, so the alternative is the only lever you hold.
Shippabo's July newsletter notes Maersk is introducing a heavy-load surcharge on East Coast strings from 1 July and MSC has added weight restrictions on its Gulf Coast service. Carriers are managing full vessels with weight-based fees as Transpacific eastbound strings run the fullest.
The Analysis
A surcharge with no rate in it is not a price signal. It is a liability with a publication date.
Maersk put a heavy-load surcharge on its East Coast strings from 1 July. MSC put weight restrictions on its Gulf Coast service. Transpacific eastbound strings are running full, and the carriers are managing full ships with weight-based fees. That is the whole published content: a mechanism, a coast, a date, and no number.
So this one cannot be computed. What can be done is deciding in advance what to do when the number shows up, because the invoice will show up whether or not the number was published.
List what was given. A fee exists. It is triggered by weight. It applies to East Coast strings. It took effect on 1 July. Now list what was not given: the rate, the weight threshold, the unit of assessment, the validity window, and which strings exactly. On a normal tariff publication those five items are the content. Here the content is the title.
The mechanism itself is not mysterious. A ship has two ceilings, slots and weight, and they bind at different times. When a string is full by slots, the carrier sells the last space to the highest bidder and price is the right tool. When a string is full by weight, or close enough that the next heavy booking tips it over, the marginal container stops being a slot and becomes a tonne — and price stops working, because the constraint is not the box, it is what is inside it. A general rate increase charges everybody for a slot. A weight fee charges the cargo that creates the problem. Both carriers reaching for weight in the same fortnight is the market telling you which ceiling is binding on the transpacific eastbound, the direction that is running full. Heavy cargo is heavy in a specific way: machinery, tile, bagged material, densified resin, paper. That cargo fills the bottom of the stack long before it fills the top row.
Whether this costs 2% or 20% of the freight bill depends on four answers that were not published. Per container or per tonne: a per-container fee is a fixed tax on the booking, which you can absorb, pass on, or stop shipping; a per-tonne fee scales with the cargo, which changes a completely different decision, namely how densely you pack. Those are not the same business problem. One is a cost line. The other is a design constraint. VGM or cargo weight: VGM is the verified mass of the packed box, box and pallets and dunnage included, while cargo weight is what you sold.
On dense goods the two sit close in percentage and far apart in dollars at the threshold, and that gap decides whether a shipment is inside the fee or outside it. Per bill of lading or per container: consolidate four heavy pallets under one house bill and the answer changes the invoice. And which strings for how long, because East Coast strings is a family, not a route.
Who pays is decided by density, not by size. A shipper of tile, machinery, bagged resin or paper crosses the threshold at a low slot count and pays on nearly every box. A shipper of apparel, foam, flat-pack furniture or packaging fills the slot long before filling the weight and pays nothing — and on a weight-constrained string may find their booking quietly welcome, because light cargo is what helps a carrier balance a heavy ship. That is the redistribution nobody wrote about: a weight fee is a transfer from dense cargo to light cargo, on the same vessel, in the same week.
Trade direction splits it further. Under DDP on the East Coast string, the importer absorbs it with no intermediary. Under FOB, the exporter's price was fixed before the fee existed, so the exporter either eats it or reopens the price, and the reopening is the expensive part. A container-level fee of a few hundred dollars becomes a purchase-order argument worth a season's margin, because by the time it lands on the PO nobody can decompose it back into a freight line.
The clock is the least reported part. Effective 1 July, reported on 12 July, felt on the first invoice — and settlement cycles run thirty to forty-five days. That puts the surprise in the August statement, on shipments booked in early July at rates that did not include it. The gap between the report and the money is where these arguments live, and the party holding the weaker paperwork loses them every time.
The reporting flattened two instruments into one story, and only one of them is a price. A surcharge prices a problem and leaves the decision with you: pay it, pack lighter, split the box, reroute. A restriction refuses the booking and leaves you no decision at all — the cargo has no home on that service, and the substitute is another port, another carrier, another packing, or another week. Maersk sold the weight. MSC would not. That asymmetry is the actual information in the announcement, and it is why the Gulf Coast line matters more than the East Coast one while getting less of the headline.
Go one step further, and mark this as inference rather than fact: a carrier restricts instead of pricing when the binding constraint sits downstream of the vessel — road and rail axle limits behind the port, chassis availability, crane and stack limits at the terminal. None of those respond to money. If the weight had been sellable, MSC would have sold it the way Maersk did. Choosing refusal says the number would not have fixed it.
The second thing missing from the coverage is that a per-container weight fee is a packaging decision wearing a cost label. If the trigger applies per container, two 20ft boxes can carry more total weight than one 40ft without crossing it — at the price of an extra handling move and a worse weight balance for the carrier, which is exactly why the 20ft pair is not automatically cheaper. That comparison cannot be run without the threshold.
Run it anyway with an invented number, labelled as invented. Assume the fee lands at 150 per container; the announcement published nothing, so this is mine. Sixty FEU a month of dense cargo is 9,000 a month, 108,000 a year, on a line that did not exist in the June budget. Now test the 20ft option: the same cargo as 120 TEU, one extra handling move at an assumed 120 per box, costs 14,400 a month more in handling and saves 9,000 in fees. It does not work. Move the assumed fee to 300 and the pair saves 3,600 a month. The decision flips on the fee, and the fee is the one number nobody published. That is the whole problem in a sentence: you are being asked to make a structural decision with a missing variable.
The trap is the declared weight. If the fee is assessed on VGM, the box and the packing count, so the accuracy of your weight declaration stops being a formality and becomes a cost line. If it is assessed on cargo weight, the same shipment may sit on the other side of the threshold. Ask which, in writing, before renegotiating anything. Note the shape of the temptation too: under-declaring to duck a fee is not a saving, it is a safety exposure with a retroactive bill attached, and the retroactive bill always lands after the cargo has sailed.
The dry part is that a surcharge with no published rate is the only kind of increase you can be charged for while nobody can prove it was misapplied. So the lock point here is not a rate level, since there is no level to watch. It is a document. Get the rate card, with the threshold, the unit and the validity, in writing, before quoting anything that sails after 1 August. If your counterparty cannot produce it in five business days, price that lane with a weight-fee reserve of your own and tell the buyer why. You will be closer to right than the one who assumed zero, and you will have a number in the file on the day the argument starts.
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