Supply Chain Action Points
Read this first — the conclusion, and the moves to make:
- By 3 July 2026, pull every trans-Pacific booking already confirmed for July and August and check which service each one is actually on. Owner is your ocean freight manager, target is a named string for every booking, not a carrier name.
- By 8 July 2026, ask each of your trans-Pacific carriers for the post-July 6 rotation on the services you use, in writing, including port of discharge and cut-off. Anything answered vaguely gets treated as changed.
- By 17 July 2026, add one alternative string per critical lane so no lane depends on a single service, and confirm space allocation rather than assuming it.
- By 31 July 2026, reprice your tariff and quote model at the current spot level rather than the mid-May base, and set a rate trigger above which you lock a fixed-fee contract for the next two quarters.
- By 15 August 2026, add three days of buffer to transit commitments for any lane affected by the service exits, and tell customers before they find out from a delay notice.
Asia-to-US West Coast spot rates have climbed 120% since mid-May and East Coast rates 85%, though they appear to be plateauing. In a network change, Ocean Network Express ended slot agreements with CMA CGM, OOCL and Evergreen across four Far East-US West Coast services (CP1-CP4) after the final CP1 sailing on July 6, prompting shippers to review routing.
The Analysis
Asia to US West Coast spot rates are up 120 percent since mid-May, East Coast up 85 percent, and the trade is now calling it a plateau. In the same window Ocean Network Express ended its slot agreements with CMA CGM, OOCL and Evergreen across four Far East to US West Coast services, CP1 through CP4, after the last CP1 sailing on July 6. Shippers are being told to review routing. The rate number gets the attention. The routing change is the one that will actually move your cargo.
I do not treat those as two separate stories. When a carrier takes its slots back, the space does not vanish into thin air, it gets reshuffled onto different strings with different rotations, and your confirmed booking can end up on a vessel you never chose. Add a rate curve that went vertical and is now only leveling off, and you have a quarter where the price and the path both move under you.
A plateau is not a fall. That distinction is the whole game right now.
Sit with the two hard numbers first. West Coast spot up 120 percent since mid-May, East Coast up 85 percent, both described as plateauing rather than softening. On the network side, four services, CP1 to CP4, lose the ONE slots after the final CP1 sailing on July 6, and the partners on the other side are CMA CGM, OOCL and Evergreen. Four strings is not a rounding error on a lane this big. It is a real slice of the weekly capacity that used to be sold as a combined product.
Why this is happening now. Two forces met. Demand into the US pulled hard enough that space and equipment tightened and rates ran, which is why the curve looks like it does. At the same time the big carriers are rearranging their own networks, and when a line decides it would rather run its own services than keep buying slots from partners, the first thing that changes is not the ship, it is who controls the booking. Rate moves are visible and loud. Network moves are quiet and structural. The quiet one lasts longer.
Who feels this first. Shippers who built their contracts around those specific services, because a contract naming a string is a contract naming a rotation, a port pair and a cut-off, and all three just became negotiable. Midsize shippers with only two or three carriers in their book feel it next, since losing one option is a much bigger deal when you only had three. Big shippers with dedicated space and their own contracting team will feel it least, because they can absorb a rebooking. A shipper moving nothing across the Pacific feels none of it. As always, the split is not size, it is how many doors you have.
Timing runs on two clocks and they do not match. The rate clock is fast: spot has already moved, so anything you tender this week pays today's number, and a contract you signed months ago is honored at the old price only until the carrier decides it is not. The routing clock is slower and sneakier. The service change bites at the sailing date, but the space decision was made weeks earlier and your forwarder already knows before you do. I would give a routing reworked by a service exit two to four weeks to show up as a longer transit or a port change on your dashboard, and I would assume your next few bookings are being quietly re-planned right now.
Here is what the rate headline leaves out. A plateau at 120 percent above mid-May is still 120 percent above mid-May. The word plateau makes people wait for a drop that was never promised. Leveling off at a high number is a different risk than falling from it, and planning as if it is the second one is how a budget gets broken. The second thing the headline leaves out is that when ONE pulls its slots, the services on the other side lose a partner too, so the space does not simply relocate, some of it evaporates, and what is left gets offered to whoever accepts the higher rate or the longer commitment. That is how a network change turns into a space problem without ever showing up as a headline about space.
Run a small number, and take the assumptions as mine. Assume your mid-May all-in cost was about 2,000 dollars per FEU on the West Coast lane, and that the 120 percent is measured off that kind of base, which puts you near 4,400 dollars now. Assume you move 40 FEU a month. The increment is 2,400 dollars per box, which is 96,000 dollars a month, roughly 288,000 dollars over a quarter. Now layer the routing: if the service change adds three days of transit and one extra inland handling move per box, at 150 dollars per move you are adding 6,000 dollars a month on top, and the slower transit eats into how fast you can turn inventory. The rate line is the loud cost. The routing line is the one that gets missed in the budget meeting.
What would flip this. If new capacity arrives on the lane and demand cools, space loosens and the plateau turns into a real cut, and the service change becomes a footnote. If the carriers simply reshuffle and each replaced string is backfilled by another, your options return and the routing worry fades. But if the network change is structural, if the big lines are done sharing space on this lane, then the option you lost does not come back, and the practical answer is not to wait for a lower rate but to secure space on strings you can actually see.
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