One of the more novel ideas in shipping surfaces in an article in Singapore's respected shipping portal, Splash 247. It proposes that ocean carriers abandon traditional "static routing" in favour of "dynamic routing" to cope with today's uncertain shipping environment.

"While dynamic routing has been very much used by the road transport sector mainly due to the much needed last-mile flexibility, it can be deployed by other transport modes such as aeroplanes or ships," Splash 247 notes.

"Unlike static routing, which refers to routes and schedules that different vehicles follow when the requested services are known beforehand, as it happens with liner (container) shipping, dynamic routings refer to last-minute routes design and execution for vehicles en route," the article continues.

From a logistics perspective, Splash reasons, dynamic routing means implementing a flexible planning process that is responsive to changes where routes will be created.

"Consequently, dynamic routing becomes a more sustainable long-term operational strategy as it is not constrained by fixed territories, sequences of demand assumptions becoming a game-changer for shipping companies," it concludes.

Advocates say such changes are warranted because of the unique and convulsive conditions imposed on world shipping by extraordinary events such as the Covid crisis, port congestion, massive ships dumping massive amounts of cargo to be cleared by inadequate overland transport facilities, wrongly positioned containers, soaring freight rates, plunging liner reliability etc, etc, etc.

Containerships have become bigger and bigger, In 1968 when the 500-TEU Manchester Concorde - when no one even thought in TEU terms - ship sizes rose until in 1996, the 6,000 TEU Regina Maersk was launched. Today, the world’s largest containership is the 23,964-TEU HMM Algeciras. The mean size of mainline containerships is 10,000 TEU.

The number of ports that can accommodate these ships is reduced due to their inherent physical characteristics. Ports are often constrained either by land or maritime access, which can eventually be overcome if heavy investments in infra- and super-structures are performed.

The rise of 64 feet in the Bayonne Bridge roadway in New York is an example of the investments made in surrounding port infrastructures to allow access to bigger ships.

Then there is congestion to consider - ashore and afloat. According to the Seaexplorer container shipping platform created by Kuehne + Nagel, the number of containerships in July queuing to be served amounted to 328 ships and 116 ports reported challenging issues such as congestion.

As the situation stands, these delays will occur; many terminal yards and inland terminals are at full capacity, and problems related to the repositioning of equipment still exist.

The analysis of both cases highlights the seriousness of the problems associated with the repositioning equipment. While in the first case, there is impossibility of moving containers out of Los Angeles and Long Beach ports to their destination, in the second case, there is an empty container shortage, says Splash 247.

Although they differ, both situations increase containers’ turnaround time from the moment they are loaded until they are repositioned to be loaded with the next cargo, making their management difficult.

The movement of containers is a complex transport problem in freight distribution whose turnaround time is affected by a ship's capacity, its trade route and voyage rotation, and the number of ships employed in the same trade route and voyage rotation.

In general terms, these factors include the time taken to stuff the container at origin, the availability of surface modes to move a container between the origin and loading port, the time waiting to be loaded onboard, the distance travelled by sea and the number of expected transshipments, the time taken to be cleared at discharging port, the availability of surface modes to move the container between the discharging port and the final destination, the time taken to strip the container at the destination, and the distance and time travelled by the empty container until its reposition point.

As far as Splash is concerned, the situation suggests that the current static ship routing has proven unable to deal with the levels of uncertainty plaguing the  industry. This results in production losses, poor customer service while keeping cost control of the operations. The current backlogs also suggest that the traditional fixed, or static, routing has become obsolete in the face of needs of more flexible planning to accommodate unexpected events.

According to London's Drewry Maritime Research, the spot container freight rates have been increasing, close to US$13,000 per FEU on some routes.

Thus, the way forward, says Splash, may well be dynamic route planning, sometimes described as transport modelling. While dynamic routing has been very much used by the road transport sector mainly due to the much needed last-mile flexibility, it can be used by other transport modes such as aircraft or ships.

Unlike static routings, which refer to routes and schedules that the different vehicles follow when the requested services are known beforehand, as it happens with container shipping, dynamic routings refer to last-minute routes design and execution for vehicles en route.

From a logistics perspective, dynamic routing implies implementing a flexible planning process that is responsive to changes where routes will be created, considering all the necessary adjustments to be made.

"Consequently, dynamic routing becomes a more sustainable long-term operational strategy as it is not constrained by fixed territories, sequences of demand assumptions becoming a game-changer for shipping companies. As a result, it increases productivity and, consequently, the overall revenue," says Splash.

The most immediate benefit, it says, is route modification; routes can be modified in real-time based on last-minute changes due to weather constraints, port congestion while ensuring that ad hoc requests and cancellations are considered, the article said.

"It improves customer communication and customer satisfaction. It contributes to resources optimisation and, therefore, to cost savings. Altogether, these issues are an added value when the shipping industry is facing the decarbonisation challenge.

"Moreover, dynamic routing allows shipping companies to work with their actual order volumes and delivery times instead of less reliable forecasts used for static routing, which grants a better utilisation of its capacity because of improved fleet visibility. Improved fleet visibility helps to utilise assets and streamline their operations delivery fully and reduce idle time."

From another point of view, perhaps in defence of the traditional static routing, one is forced to examine the theory's weakness. One must acknowledge that however much success dynamic routing has had in British trucking, its application in a maritime context appears to be less than a perfect fit.

There are storms, road closures, congested terminals, regulatory hurdles and sundry blockages a truck or even a trucking fleet may encounter, but nothing like the variety of things that can go wrong in maritime shipping. Nor can one easily plan to encounter and unexpected event when they are so many and variable and always a surprise.

More than anything, there is the difference of the volumes involved. A truck carries an FEU, maybe a high cube 52-footer. A ship can carry 10,000. The difference is risk is vast. Planning for the unexpected for a fleet trucks is a miniscule challenge compared to what is involved in devising such plan for a single ship, much less a fleet.

Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, one can see a sound application for dynamic routing in premium services, such the China-LA route utilisating smaller faster ships, which are more easily re-routed. But less flexible are mega ships with mega cargoes for which static routing has been long established with the various tradeoffs made to getting cargo going every which way from its destination port to its destination by truck, train and barge.