Amazon has begun shipping products from Chinese merchant partners to its U.S. warehouses via its own ocean freighters.
Amazon used to outsource exclusively.
Question: How long will it be before Amazon has minimal to no staff on self-guided transports?
Supply Chain 247 reports Amazon Enters Trillion Dollar Ocean Freight Business.
Amazon doesn’t want to have to rely on (and pay) third-party delivery companies. It’s already taken control of lorries and planes and now it’s taking control of ships, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Specifically, the Seattle-headquartered ecommerce giant has started handling the shipment of goods from Chinese retailers that sell on its platform to its vast US warehouses.
Previously it left this to global freight-transportation companies.
Since October, Amazon has helped to ship some 150 containers of goods from China to the US, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cites shipping documents collected at ports of entry.
“Amazon has integrated all those services into one basket,” said Steve Ferreira, chief executive of Ocean Audit, in the report.
He noted that, for Amazon, creating this type of shipping service will give it “a lot of strategic value.”
Shipping is a trillion dollar industry, according to MIT Technology Review.
Supply Chain 247 Comment
I appreciate these supply chain articles. In contrast to Bloomberg, Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and essentially all of mainstream media, Supply Chain 247 links to its sources.
If you want to see the MIT review, the link is handy. Much of mainstream media would mention the article but not link to it.
Some of mainstream media would not credit the source at all.
In comparison, Bloomberg Econoday economic reports are a complete joke. Never, and I mean never does Econoday actually link to the BLS, BEA, Commerce, or Census report on which they base their economic commentary.
Question of the Day
With that slam out of the way, here’s my question that once again: How long will it be before Amazon has minimal to no staff on self-guided transports?
Self-guided ships has to be easier than self-driving cars. There will not be collisions. Risk of a cat or a human running out in front of the ship is zero.
There is hijacking risk, much greater than with cars or trucks, simply because help is far away. So, some minimal security crew will be needed, unlike trucking.
Guidance crew and maintenance crew, say goodbye, except perhaps a token person or two.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
You can buy almost anything on Amazon cheaper somewhere else. Haven’t made an Amazon purchase in 6 months.
I’ve noticed this as well and have adjusted shopping patterns accordingly.
Me too. Amazon has become a high cost supplier. They are abusing their market power to their own long-term detriment.
True, and sometimes by a lot. The Amazon has also become a big hassle. Presumably, it might be better for prime customers. Some problems: prices jump up and down almost every day, and partners could be in China making shipment long and unpredictable. Luckily, there are better on-line alternatives for some stuff.
To be fair, they’ve been making a loss for umpteen years and are now trying to re-coup their investment after loss-leading for so long.
Consumers will always seek out the cheapest vendor though, so …
Good luck with that!
Amazon Prime advertises 2 day shipping. The reality is that this advertising is deceptive. Where I live you only get two day shipping if you place your order on Monday, Tuesday. or Wednesday. If you order on any other day you don’t get 2 day shipping.I ordered a product at 6:00 AM on a Thursday. I got it on the following Monday. To me that’s 4 days not two. I tracked the product which was shipped via UPS. It arrived at the local UPS at 5:25PM on Friday. Since UPS doesn’t deliver on Saturday or Sunday it was delivered on Monday. So much for two day delivery.
yes but after you factor in shipping costs and the logo which stands behind the product and their reasonably fast fulfillment, you don’t need Prime, those estimated delivery dates are padded, but even at that what is it you need that you can’t wait a few days? my mail service has gone to hell while the postal workers run around delivering Prime (INCLUDING SUNDAYS),
Bezos got a deal there. and you get product reviews which amount to something by sheer volume. Amazon is catching on to seasonal and other opportunistic sales promotions, instead of 7/24/365 product availability they run products while the price is good and supply ample. as long as the consumer market continues these are the guys.
Ships have the annoying property that with some frequency they need engineering intervention: Fires, unexpected leaks, severe storms leading to damage, etc.
I doubt those items will be obstacles.
The tech will be available to cope and insurance products made available.
Insurance offerings will have to adapt as will the ships.
Even hijacking might not be as easy as at first sight with tracking, homing and disabling systems. Try unloading containers to another vessel in open sea.
Ships in convoy could be more efficient cutting through the water and policing vessels, if needed, along the lanes, could still mean fewer people overall.
The conclusion is that anything in Amazon supply chain that can be commoditised will be so be careful investing in those areas, outside of tech that helps achieve the commoditisation.
I think few hands would be replaceable, but there will be more efficiency in handling cargo, and a reduction of crew workload. Not sure crew costs are that high in the total sum.
“The required crew size will be dictated by a document called the Minimum Safe Manning Certificate. This document dictates the minimum number of personnel necessary to safely navigate and operate the vessel from point A to point B, but often does take into account other things such as company administrative requirements. A vessel will often have more crew than is required by the Minimum Safe Manning Certificate to distribute the work load and allow the crew to get adequate rest and perform all necessary maintenance and administrative tasks.
Typically a vessel will require:
1 Master – Overall in charge of the vessel
1 Chief Officer – In charge of the Deck Department and Cargo Operations; also stands a navigation watch.
1–2 Deck Officers – In charge of navigation watches. The Second Officer will typically be in charge of all bridge administration activities like updating charts and performing routine radio checks. The Third Officer will typically be in charge of all lifesaving and firefighting appliances such as ensuring the lifeboat is properly stocked and working and firefighting suits are properly maintained.
1 Chief Engineer – Overall in charge of the Engine Department and operation of the ship’s engineering plant.
1 Second Engineer – Assists the Chief Engineer with the running the engine department, stands an engineering watch (if necessary) and is in charge of all major auxiliary equipment.
1–2 Engineering Officers – In charge of engineering watches (if necessary), assists with running the engineering plant and auxiliary equipment.
2–6 Deck Ratings – Assist in navigation watches, maintaining deck, lifesaving, and cargo equipment, and running cargo operations.
2–6 Engine Ratings – Assist in engineering watches, maintaining engineering equipment, and running engineering operations
1 Chief Cook – In charge of the galley and stores, cooking meals for the crew, and ensuring stores are ordered as necessary
1 Steward – Assists the Chief Cook with any cooking or work in the galley, including cleaning and maintaining equipment, serves the officers and crew.
Each company and ship operates a little differently. For example, some companies employ a junior officer whose sole responsibility is to handle administrative items. Some vessels have specialized engineering plants where watchstanders are not required, and so the number of Engineering Officers and Ratings is reduced. Further, some ships have such specialized cargo, such Liquefied Natural Gas, that they have a a Cargo Officer or Engineer whose sole responsibility is the operation of the cargo plant. Size is less of a factor than cargo, because vessels must still have the personnel to operate 24×7, regardless of size. That is why you can have an enormous 1000 foot LNG carrier with 22 crew and 500 foot bulk carrier with 27 crew.”
https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-typical-crew-of-a-cargo-ship-composed-of
You are so right! Mish, please ask Lloyds for the insurance rate on an unmanned 8000 TEU container ship?
Rolls Royce have been testing autonomous ships for about a year already and hope to commission a fleet by 2020.
Yes, shipping will be minimal labour content. Even loading/unloading will automate further.
Some of the smart warehouse infrastructure with autonomous trucking is already impressive. Warehouse truck speeds being increased to improve throughput with 3D “smart space” software packages able to track assets down inches from start-end in real-time without needing to have humans log or scan containers.
Rate of change will only accelerate.
Automated tracking and shipping of robot manufactured goods – industry 4.0.
What keeps a small team from robbing self driving trucks. One person to stand in front of the truck to keep it stopped. A few more to go around back and empty the cargo. Also, who refuels these self driving trucks. Hijacking self driving trucks will be the next big thing.
Not hard to have the trucks monitored by tracking devices on both the truck and the packages and before long to have drones overhead giving a birds eye view. Any hood rats that stop the truck will be filmed and followed by multiple drones until an intercept by police or private security. The trucks can be refueled at the depots when they load up.
Cannot see ships going without at least a small crew, unlike a self driving truck there won’t be a service truck and mechanic only minutes away in the city or an hours away on the open road but days away in the Pacific Ocean.
How does the drone follow hoodrats into the housing project stairwells? What if five kids rob the truck? Which one does the drone follow?
They are coming up with a completely new supply chain to cut costs, but we would like to see Trump make it harder for the Chinese to set up shop on Amazon and ship from China. This is where the real damage is coming from and needs to better controlled. Amazon is using the postal treaty to undercut American retailers by subsidizing their shipping while American retailers must pay the increasing shipping costs.
Amazon already has a problem with cheap Chinese counterfeit products. Amazon has acknowledged the problem, newspapers have reported on it, and customer comments on Amazon are filled with warnings about certain vendors.
The only logical reason for Amazon to take over more of the supply chain — especially money losing parts like container shipping — is if Bezos believes that extra control will allow him to reduce counterfeits and cheap garbage from contaminating the website.
Otherwise, its just money losing Amazon buying money losing container ships.
Yes, this is a huge capital investment for Amazon, assuming it will own the ships. The question is whether owning huge ships is a good use of capital….There are certainly plenty of shipowners who would like to sell theirs, with rates way down.
The article says they won’t n or operate the ships. So basically they are cargo brokering their own space on others ships. I guess it might be step one but I am not sure how radical a move this really is then.
Ships require a minimal crew to operate the ship when the automation goes down or for major equipment malfunction. Maybe shippers will be comfortable with less but underwriters will be much more conservative in their adaptation. We already have ships that are nearly automatic but further development limited as Certification and safety are the USCG domain and I suspect legislation would be required to change the current rules.
There are minimal crew aboard those container ships already. They already use auto-pilot except in harbor, where the harbor pilot (supplied by the port authority) takes the ship out of start harbor / into destination harbor. I seriously doubt Amazon can reduce headcount on any ships.
As I repeated yesterday, Haijan shipping (South Korea) went bankrupt at the end of August 2016… and there were loads of ships being sold for scrap even before that. Amazon just bought into a money losing business.
Sears is just the latest in a long line of brick and mortar stores that got a toe tag… meanwhile Amazon is now expanding into that business as well. Walmart is making a profit, which does not guarantee their victory, but it does make me wonder how Amazon is going to “win” by losing money?
Amazon continues to lose money quarter after quarter, year after year. We keep hearing the dot-com refrain that they must grow market share, they must grow market share. Well unless Amazon is going to be a state sponsored welfare operation, it must show a profit on existing businesses at some point.
Is there reason to believe Amazon can run a shipping business more efficiently than companies that specialize in shipping?
Is there reason to believe Amazon can run a brick and mortar retail store more efficiently than companies that specialize in retail?
Enron was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and lost money regularly. The only difference with Amazon is that they admit in their quarterly filings that they continue to lose money on their on-going operations — but they keep expanding anyway.
I don’t see the difference between Amazon and say United Airlines. UAL loses money, lose money, lose money … then acquire a money losing competitor and repeat. Amazon loses money, loses money, loses money … then acquires Haijan or a retail store and continues to lose money — rinse and repeat.
When the “free money” stopped, Enron and the perrenial money losing airlines stopped. So the big question with this is: when does the free money Amazon gets from the stock market dry up?
Being the biggest fish in a trillion dollar money losing industry (shipping) is not impressive.
“Amazon continues to lose money quarter after quarter, year after year. ”
AMZN was profitable on a GAAP basis in 2013 and 2015. They lost money in 2014, but made money overall in the 2013-2015 period. Total net income during that 3-year period was $629 million.
They don’t report earnings until 2/2 but through the first 9 months of last year, net income was $1.622 billion. Per nasdaq.com the consensus EPS for Q4 is $1.41. They will have been profitable again in 2016.
I’m not a fan of AMZN, its valuation, or investing in low-margin retail in general, but the “AMZN does nothing but lose money” story doesn’t hold up any longer and hasn’t for some time.
“So the big question with this is: when does the free money Amazon gets from the stock market dry up?”
What free money from the stock market? They have issued debt but I am not aware of any secondary offerings.
Then you and Bezos need to get your stories straight, because according to Amazon itself, they do not expense stock options and/or share grants against earnings… and thus the numbers are NOT GAAP COMPLIANT.
In FY2016, Amazon intends to report the value of options / grants by business line… but they still are reporting non-GAAP earnings.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-03/amazon-web-giants-shift-to-reporting-real-cost-of-equity-pay
Your statement about 2013 & 2015 earnings is simply **FALSE**, and had you bothered to check Amazon’s own reports you would have known your statements were false.
Mish,
Please get some data.
How much of the cost of shipping is labor on a ship?
I am guessing 3-5%.
I bet there is no ROI for the extra cost of automation.
Ships also require lots of maintenance.
Small problems become big expensive problems quickly.
Need data.
Some figures
https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch7en/conc7en/daily_operating_costs_teu.html
https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/containeroperatingcosts.html
excellent links! thank you
A background article
https://robertjprince.net/2015/02/23/global-container-shipping-bigger-ships-smaller-crews-a-formula-for-disaster/
The container shipping “experts” at Haijan — and their competition in Greece and Netherlands and Singapore — all have been losing money for YEARS. Long before the media started hating Trump or claiming that US workers should not stand up for themselves.
I doubt Amazon can extract any cost savings from owning the ships directly. If anything, they now will have to cover additional losses.
Maybe Bezos is just another egomaniac who will expand his company into bankruptcy.
The only reason I can imagine that makes this change even remotely logical is if Amazon is trying to control the supply chain to reduce counterfeits and cheap garbage from being shipped to Amazon and/or contaminating Amazon’s website.
The cost of returns — both literal cost and the cost of unhappy customers who start to associate Amazon with cheap cr-p — is already a big big problem. Maybe Bezos thinks he can reduce returns and reduce those costs enough to make up for the added shipping costs.
Its a very risky move
That, or he hopes to build a monopoly by service/time/cost/quality ownership. If he is in control of most of the delivery framework he can shift losses of one part into increased sales, he can trade off the above variables to reach a compromise consumers go for…in theory at least. I don’t follow his venture but have the impression that it already is skirting its limits.
The old joke… “We lose money on every piece of merchandise, but we make up for it in volume!!”
I doubt Bezos can be all things to all people. Whether Amazon owns/leases the ships, I doubt he is going to achieve efficiencies unknown to every other shipper in the world. There are no labor savings: ships already heavily automated, and Coast Guard limits further crew cuts.
Amazon has to make up for the losses somewhere else… and if Amazon is anything like other retailers, the cost of returns is staggering. The costs of counterfeit merchandise, suppliers who were once good but let quality slip, etc.
Can Amazon reduce supplier problems enough to make up for shipping losses? Maybe they can, I don’t know. Its a very high risk strategy
Like you say, better control of retail purchasers’ experience, may be worth it to Amazon. If you control everything between the seller/manufacturer and the end user, you have an easier time justifying making demands on those at both ends.
Another angle, is that collecting reams of data previously unavailable to them, may allow them to optimize efficiencies globally; all the way from the seller/manufacturer, to the end purchaser. Scheduling driven by retail sales optimized specifically for Amazon’s sales etc.
It’s a competitive world out there, and every little edge can help.
Amazon will be losing tens of millions, and it will still be nothing but a middle man between true manufacturers and consumers… automated version of Sears / Kmart is still a money losing operation.
It would be more impressive if Amazon was at least breaking even. Is their underlying business model viable without an overpriced stock funding their so-called expansion?
“Breaking even” has been a no more than a quaint memory for as long as the Fed has been there to fill in for losses.
In a proper economy (Gold or Bitcoin, no Fed, no backstops nor bailouts, no to minimal taxes or “regulations” and other lobbyists’ levers over others’ lives), if you don’t break even, you run out of cash and go out of business. But you also have a growing middle class customer base to sell things to.
In our financialized dystopia, the Fed has stolen, and continue to steal, all the formerly middle class’ productivity gains and then some. Then hand it to a gaggle of banksters and other well connecteds, comprising a 1-5 and declining percentage of the population.
The latter primarily buy stocks and bonds, not Chinese goods. So, Amazon, like all successful companies stuck in financialized, dystopian “Ownership Societies”, needs to be in the business of selling hype to those few well connecteds who are on the receiving side of all the Fed loot, hence have any meaningful money to spend.
If generating this hype, depends on selling at below cost, so that they can show top line sales growth to the asset stripped,destitute masses, then that’s just the cost of doing business in Dystopia. After all, Bezos is in the business of increasing Amazon’s share price, not of “breaking even.” And Amazon’s share price is ultimately determined by demand for Amazon shares, not on nominally breaking even on the goods Amazon sells.
And what does Amazon know about shipping?
Lots of space to draw a big logo.
Hijacking a robo ship can be rendered a fools errand pretty easily. Once the man machine interface is eliminated what’s a pirate gonna do? Hold a gun to the computer? Disable, yes. Hijack not so much. Same for robo trucks and for that matter robo cars. Sure takes the fun and profit out of piracy. Arrrrgh!
Easy peezy
http://www.sriremotetoys.co.uk/images/2210200.jpg
Without a crew, hijacking is essentially impossible, since there is nobody to threaten. Should be easy to electrify a fence around the deck, making boarding impossible. All that would be left is attacking the hull or getting yourself run over by getting out in front. Of course you could use helicopters, but that would make the pirates into a kind of navy (that needs taking out). Could mount a goal-keeper radar guided defense to fire 70 30mm rounds per second.
Without a crew, hijacking is essentially impossible, since there is nobody to threaten. Should be easy to electrify a fence around the deck, making boarding impossible. All that would be left is attacking the hull or getting yourself run over by getting out in front. Of course you could use helicopters, but that would make the pirates into a kind of navy (that needs taking out). Could mount a goal-keeper radar guided defense to fire 70 30mm rounds per second.
Can think of ways, not posting them.
The roboships will likely still ultimately be controlled by a rudder, and a big two stroke diesel direct driving a prop. The rudder is “easy” to take control over. Modern ship diesels are pretty darned conceptually simply as well, although not necessarily standardized enough for a completely off-the-shelf controller market to develop.
More realistically, China-US is not exactly easy waters for pirates. Pirates need to be able to get to shore, where they mix with local populations, or they are just sitting ducks. Doubly so if there is not even a live crew onboard that renders military operations against the hijacked vessel risky.
Might not it be easier for Amazon to create automated factories (or require their Chinese vendors to do so) near Amazon’s USA warehouses, thereby reducing shipping costs to near zero? If the shipping industry is chartering ships below cost, then Amazon buying new automated ships does not make economic sense. No doubt Amazon is in this because the shipping industry is so depressed that they can buy used ships for a song. Fuel, insurance, administration, drydocking, maintenance, regulatory compliance, etc. collectively are much larger costs than shipboard labor (perhaps 15%). Also, don’t forget that after delivering the China cargo to the USA, Amazon will likely have a costly return voyage back to China with no cargo. But for a rich company like Amazon, they can have some tax-deductible fun with this.
Iran hijacked a USA/CIA drone, so really just a technological computer hacking problem. High-tech piracy should be a new growth industry, and more profitable than the boring factory jobs the USA is so obsessed about regaining. If I was going back to college I would major in High-Tech Piracy, with a minor in Fencing Stolen Goods.
Mish has no idea how automated ships already are. The revolution he dreams about Amazon bringing to the shipping industry has already happened.
The next revolution, driven by Amazon like direct sales from manufacturers/sellers in China (or elsewhere) to end customers in the US, is to push container handling like automation/standardization down to sub container sized boxes suitable for drone or Uber delivery all the way from China to Peoria.
The current shipping infrastructure, is still very much built around the end customer dealing with an aggregating distributor/retailer pretty close to the end of the package’s travel. Introducing inefficiencies that ultimately limit effective choice at the customer level.
Things are this way, because the aggregation that distributors, shippers, retailers etc. provide, have enabled them to benefit from economies of scale not available to end users. Dirt cheap computing power, networks and sensors are allowing most of those scale economies to be pushed out to the periphery.
Enabling what Amazon is trying to do: Be a shopping mall where everyone in the world with something to sell, can efficiently connect with a buyer anywhere in the world. No need to deal with any middleman (aside from Amazon, I guess) or worry about geography at all.
Retuers also doe snot generally link to articles it pirates from. I complained to them via their support organization but although I received an acknowledgment of receipt, never actually got an answer as to why Reuters did not give proper credit to the sources they use.
So don’t worry about stealing from others to further your own value. If the big guys can do it, then they set the example to follow, right?
I’ve seen some robotic sentries that are downright scary…http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2756847/Who-goes-Samsung-reveals-robot-sentry-set-eye-North-Korea.html
So Jack Ma buys a few freighter airlines and is able to ship direct to his new US aliexpress distribution warehouse. Production and orders handled in China something Amazon does not have. Thus Ma undercuts Amazon which is stuck shipping inventory by sea.
Ships are already highly automated. Large container ships with a crew of 11. You need some bodies aboard to fight fires.
Don’t look at what is happening in the next 12 months but the next 10 years.
A major source of pollution is shipping. It will be forced to reduce via fuel cell and battery. This can have major benefits on maintenance and fire hazards as well as oil leakage to sea.
I fully expect close to 100% autonomous shipping to be a reality. Obstacles will be sources of innovation for new products and services.
Looking at all the reasons why it won’t happen just throws up areas to innovate in and problems to overcome. ProbleMs and barriers that will be overcome.
minimal labor savings available from further ship automation and amzn doesn’t own or insure the ships.most piracy is along east coast of africa not open ocean trans pacific. we don’t import consumer products from africa.
my guess is that amzn is looking to accelerate port and paperwork activities in the short term and develop a highly automated Port Amazon on the west coast with a shuttle system from port to airport, a number of left coast port developments have been blocked politically, Seattle based amzn can use it’s clout to get these things thru. Maybe team up with us commodity firms to export to china and fill the dead end,I’m sure Team Trump would support coal exports to china.
Long term use drones and satellites to map ice conditions and commercialize seasonal use of Northwest passage.
How is this going to add to Amazon’s profits? The advantages of outsourcing are often pretty clear, aren’t they? Are they arguing that shipping is so central to their business that they must control it themselves?
Does this sound like business management or megalomania?
May we assume that Amazon will soon open its own shipyards?
Perhaps they envisage needing to extract every last 0.1% of margin out of the value chain in future as margins are peared to the bone. Become more integrated?
Some were not convinced about Amazon move to offering cloud services. They now offer cloud services to all and sundry. It might be the same for shipping.
Are you trying to say that Bezos might be a tad narcissistic? Inconceivable!
it does not add to profits, it adds to losses (Amazon continues to have losses if they reported GAAP earnings, including the cost of stock options / grants).
Gee if Amazon moves into healthcare they can keep more people alive more cheaply to ensure a larger final consumer base for the Chinese made products they are shipping over more cheaply.
It’s a virtuous hurricane.
You might be onto something.
Man, if only they could ship Chinese made medical equipment and drugs and doctors to the US, bypassing our home grown extractive rackets, that would be truly revolutionary.
Still haven’t figured a way for the unemployed meat serfs to have money to buy the crap. Or are we going to develop consumer robots and cut the humans out of the picture completely.
The progressives developed consumer robots a long, long time ago.
With Amazon forming a one-stop-shop system, it is setting itself up for the government identifying it as a monopoly. This happened with United Aircraft in the 1930’s, Bell Telephone, IBM, Microsoft, and Google. The government is already stepping in to block mergers in the health insurance industry it feels would lead to monopolies. Anti-monopoly actions by governments happen during negative social mood. The deeper the mood, the more break-ups of companies. I expect Amazon to be another victim of the government.
Lockheed is also on my list of monopolies the government will break up. The Sikorsky purchase from United Technologies made Lockheed both of the top contenders of a military helicopter bid.
Hope the internet never hits an iceberg. Otherwise, Amazon sinks hard…
I thought Trump was going to change all this cheap Chinese importation. Is America not going to be made great?
What’s next Bezos? Build Amazon’s own port?
There would not be a need for security to prevent a hijack if the manual controls were inactive and could only be activated by a code transmitted from HQ.
Talk about getting the basic facts wrong on Amazon. What Amazon did was bring the freight forwarding function in-house for a tiny sliver of their product line. They are still using 3rd party shipping lines for the ocean transport. In short, for these shipments Amazon is acting as a NVOCC which stands for Non Vessel Common Carrier. It allows me them to book directly with a ship line and negotiate rates and services directly. Relax. Thousands of companies do this every day!
read this, doubters:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/marine/forget-autonomous-cars-autonomous-ships-are-almost-here
why do people keep talking about owning or operating ships??
Why would they take that risk if others are willing to won and lease? There is a glut of capacity to be taken advantage of.
Amazon has stated they will get into Freight BROKERAGE, I don’t see much risk there. Quite sensible and after hiring expert elsewhere, with their logistics and IT clout/expertise they will nail it within a few years. With regards to automation, I believe the savings at port by automatic were the biggest to be made and this is largely already done. The few employees on ships are insignificant and , although there maybe some cutback possible, on the whole these skeleton crews will be required/needed for a long time to come.
I think there’s something to your question, however I think people on ships as guidance are not replaceable. Why? Shipping lanes are complicated unchoreographed dances where people need to communicate to steer ships large and small. Often times in complicated ports and lanes one capital will call another on the VHF and ensure they each know what’s going on, who is to be passing how, etc. This would be impossible with self-driving ships and the like. To assume Auto pilot in such cases would invite disaster, and to assume right of way by virtue of having a giant cargo ship would invite law suits. People are required to make judgement calls, fluid situations demand such.
The Loadstar reports that the evil monster is being sued by a Guatemalan company for botching a load of 500,000 boxes of mangoes in 2014.
Today’s good news.
No, it will never be unmanned. Unlike a taxi, the cost of the crew on an ocean crossing is insignificant to the capital invested. There is not much to be saved, and a lot to be put at greater risk, with an unmanned vessel.
These ships will have robot guards and drones being driven from a remote location with live guns to kill any pirates.
I don’t feel secure with a full shipload of cargo and not worry about the potential of pirates somehow boarding a non-manned vessel . Accidents can happen with other ships where lives are at stake, hence litigation at high cost. The idea is wonderful, but look at the whole picture. Docking fees, discharge and loading fees customs, union personal : then add distribution centers, and on and on. The idea is not ready for the present time, possibly by 2050.
2030 is a certainty. 2025 or even 2022 quite possible.
By the way, “you” are not the one who needs to feel secure, it is the shippers.
I suspect this will not be a huge job destroyer though. There may well be a token few left on board, and this is not like trucking at all.
Truck driving is a huge employer.
Mish
Here’s another article on the subject:
==========
Forget Autonomous Cars—Autonomous Ships Are Almost Here
If Rolls-Royce has its way, commercial vessels will soon have no crew on board
By Oskar Levander
Posted 28 Jan 2017 | 17:00 GMT
http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/marine/forget-autonomous-cars-autonomous-ships-are-almost-here
Amazon is into everything! http://www.escapeamazon.com