Bigger ships have the best schedule reliability, according to new research from a leading international shipping analyst.
Vessels in the greater than 22,500 TEU category on the Asia-North Europe trades had the greatest schedule reliability and this was closely followed by vessels in the 10,000 to 12,499 TEU category, and then by vessels in the 17,500 to 19,999 category, according to analyst Sea-Intelligence.
Another interesting aspect of the research is that ships were largely more reliable in 2019 when compared to the year before.
“There is a sentiment across some cargo owners and industry commentators that larger container vessels lead to poor service quality. The size impact of container vessels has long been a hotly debated topic in the industry… we therefore looked at one aspect of service quality – schedule reliability – to see whether larger vessels are indeed more unreliable than the smaller ones,” said Sea-Intelligence CEO, Alan Murphy.
And the result?
“We can very clearly see that the assumption that larger vessels are unreliable is incorrect,” he concluded.