The cost of ocean shipping almost never depends on transport demand. It depends on how unstable the world is at any given moment.
A war in a distant region, a canal becoming impassable, a truce falling through: these events seem to have nothing to do with your business, yet within a few days, they turn into a higher figure on your freight quote. And in recent years, this has happened with unprecedented frequency.
To understand today's situation, we need to go back to 2020. With the pandemic, for the first time in decades, global markets experienced profound supply chain uncertainty: canceled services, unavailable ships, and quota-restricted cargo space. During that period, the cost of shipping a container exceeded $10,000, compared to around $1,500 before the pandemic. It took years to return to a relative sense of normality.
However, that normality was short-lived. First came the drought at the Panama Canal, which in 2023 forced authorities to reduce daily transits from the usual 36 down to 24, and then to 18 by early 2024—the most severe operational disruption in the canal's history. Then, geopolitical tensions hit first the Suez Canal, with the Red Sea crisis, and currently the Strait of Hormuz.
The message for planners is clear: we are not going through a single passing crisis, but rather a continuous sequence of shocks succeeding one another without giving the market time to stabilize. This is also why making medium- and long-term forecasts has become so difficult.
The mechanism is simple. When a route becomes dangerous, ships are forced to divert and take longer paths. With the Red Sea crisis, thousands of ships stopped passing through the Suez Canal and began sailing around Africa, adding 10 to 14 days to every trip between Asia and Europe. According to the United Nations, in 2024, ships traveled 17% more kilometers for the exact same amount of cargo moved.
The key point is this: the same fleet, forced into longer journeys, manages to move less cargo in the same amount of time. Available capacity drops even without a single ship being removed from the market. And when available space decreases, prices rise.
The numbers confirm it. When military tensions in the Gulf were added to the difficulties in the Red Sea, the cost of a container from Asia to the United States more than doubled in just a few weeks. At the height of the crisis, shipping a single container cost up to five times more than it had just a few months prior.
There is a counterintuitive aspect that catches those who only look at price trends off guard.
Today, on paper, there are too many ships. So many are being built that between 2023 and 2027, global capacity will grow by about a third—much faster than the volume of goods to be transported. Logic would dictate: falling prices.
Yet, with every new tension, prices spike upward again. In June 2026 alone, the average cost of a container first rose by 23%, and then continued climbing, surpassing $4,000 in a matter of weeks.
The lesson for decision-makers isn't "transportation is expensive" or "it is cheap." It is something else: the real problem isn't the price—it is its unpredictability. In a market with too many ships but zero certainty, the risk isn't paying a high price; it's not knowing what you will pay six weeks from now, right as you are signing quotes for your customers.
Faced with this rollercoaster, companies fall into three levels. We call it the Readiness Scale: it immediately shows who suffers the shock and who controls it.
Level 1: Those who suffer. A single shipping method, everything bought at the last minute, no backup plan. The company only discovers the cost when the invoice arrives and absorbs every price increase in full. This is the most common approach and, in the long run, the most expensive.
Level 2: Those who hedge. They combine long-term contracts with short-term purchases, keep some extra inventory—often decided by gut feeling rather than calculated metrics—and monitor market trends. They feel the shock, but it weighs less.
Level 3: Those who decide in advance. They have stopped considering "how I ship" a default choice. They categorize goods by priority and value, knowing beforehand what stays at sea and what, if a route is blocked, shifts to air freight without having to improvise. The rule was defined during calm times, not in an emergency.
This is where the real strategic question comes in. Air freight isn't meant to replace ocean freight—it is far too expensive for that. It serves to protect the portion of goods that cannot afford to wait weeks.
This isn't theoretical. During the Red Sea crisis, several major corporations—including the automotive group Stellantis—shifted a portion of their cargo to air freight to avoid a 20–25% increase in transit times. Those who had already planned for this option activated it clear-headedly; others scrambled for it at the last minute, paying a premium price.
| Ocean Freight | Air Freight | |
| Cost | Low | High |
| Lead Time | Weeks | Days |
| Impact of Crises | High | Lower, and in a different way |
| Ideal For | High volumes, non-urgent goods | High-value, urgent, critical goods |
| Strategic Role | Core transport baseline | Risk hedge / Buffer |
Changing transportation modes isn't the only answer, though. There is a second, often less expensive option: keeping enough stock on hand to cover the delay.
The entire difference lies in how it's done. Almost every company holds inventory; few have sized it for a crisis scenario. If your reorder point is calibrated for 30-day transits and the route adds 14 days, your safety stock no longer protects you—it's an outdated number. Recalculating it means knowing which SKUs would actually stall a delivery, which routes you are exposed to, and how many days of delay you are willing to absorb.
The comparison must be made holistically: holding inventory incurs warehousing costs and tied-up capital, but it is a known, predictable cost. An emergency air shipment costs significantly more, but only when needed. In practice, these two levers work together: safety stock absorbs predictable delays, while air freight covers the exceptions. Those relying solely on inventory end up with slow, overflowing warehouses; those relying solely on air freight pay top rate for every unexpected hiccup.
The point isn't to pick a side. It's to decide in advance, with a clear head, which portion of your goods changes course when the seas get rough.
If you looked at your business through the eyes of an external consultant, how many of your shipments today travel via a single mode simply because "that's how it's always been done"?
The real question isn't how much it costs to prepare before the next crisis hits. It's how much it will cost you to find out on the day the route closes, with your goods stranded and an angry customer on the line.
