Pulse Insights: Ocean Freight Constraints Are Becoming Supply Chain Constraints

The biggest risk in today’s ocean freight market may not be the disruption itself, but how far its effects extend.  

The ongoing Gulf situation, for example, is impacting route efficiency and container turnaround as shipping lanes reroute, while inconsistent tariff fluctuations from the U.S. have impacted the demand cycle for some commodities and disrupted container flow. Unexpected weather conditions have also left their mark, as we’ve seen recently with the Port of Shanghai and Typhoon Saudel in late August. This has inevitably led to a drop in freight schedule reliability, now hovering at 60–65% for 2026, month-dependent, a 4.7% year-on-year decline. However, we have seen the average delay for delayed vessels improve slightly.  

This ongoing turbulence impacts the underlying economics of shipping, particularly route efficiency and container turnaround. We’ve even seen a record set in August that no one really wanted: the volume of container capacity stranded by port congestion has now reached 4.31 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). This represents 12.6% of the sector’s capacity.  

For supply chain leaders, finding ways to strengthen their supply chains against these ocean freight disruptions is now essential to keeping operations running smoothly.

How Shipping Economics and Supply Chains Intersect

When these disruptions force vessels into longer routes, transit times increase. This has knock-on impacts on the costs of vessel movement, from bunker fuel and crew payroll to port charges and even the depreciation of vessels and equipment, as Emily Zhang, Director, Product Development at APL Logistics notes.  

These increased costs are then passed on, whether by increasing freight rates directly or by adding war risk charges, general rate increases, and peak season surcharges.  

Simultaneously, demand is becoming more dynamic. U.S. tariffs and China+1 sourcing strategies impact where cargo originates and where capacity is needed. Shifting geopolitical tensions require reroutes, sometimes while vessels are underway. This climate leaves carriers repositioning vessels and equipment more frequently, adding further complexity to network planning.  

Furthermore, these pressures extend beyond the ocean leg itself. Vessels taking longer to complete a rotation mean containers take longer to return to the network. Port congestion regularly disrupts inland connections—typically managed by different operators and accountable to different KPIs. Inland networks cannot always absorb the change without consequences if a vessel arrives late.

For businesses, the ultimate result is longer, less predictable lead times. A lack of schedule reliability directly impacts production and inventory planning. Businesses cannot control ocean freight factors, but they can create greater flexibility throughout the supply chain to compensate for them.

Building More Flexible Freight Flows

As Zhang notes, “Resilience isn’t created by carrying more inventory across the board, but rather by making informed and well-targeted decisions. When businesses understand their most critical SKUs and trade lanes, such as through accurate SKU-level forecasting, they can position buffers strategically and where they add the most value. Likewise, having alternative transportation options and other contingency plans offers a buffer to delays, protecting critical supply without broader inventory increases.”  

While product-dependent, having air and land transportation options, or even alternative ocean freight options, reduces reliance on a single route or mode, broadening options when cargo flows are disrupted.  

Unpredictable conditions also emphasize how important data and historical trends are to decision-making. Past performance offers a baseline, while current events can be used in predictive analysis to help both shipping lines and individual businesses assess the potential outcomes of multiple scenarios and make more informed choices.  

Given there’s little sign of these disruptions to global logistics abating, supply chain leaders should be considering the following:

• Strengthening production and inventory planning with SKU-level forecasting
• Reviewing distribution center positioning to soften the impact of delays
• Developing multimodal transportation alternatives with logistics partners for critical products or lanes
• Increasing visibility across all parts of the network, rather than seeing legs in isolation
• Using modeling to plan route and capacity change scenarios and to understand how longer transits or changing demand will impact operations
• Evaluating total logistics costs, not simply ocean freight rates, including the impact of unexpectedly lengthened transit times or additional storage and transportation.

In short, building resilience needs intelligent risk management and supply chain planning, not simple inventory increases.

Preparing for a Future of Disruptions

The knock-on impacts we’re seeing from delays in the current ocean freight environment highlight how logistics constraints rarely remain confined to a single part of the network. Longer vessel transit times affect everything from container availability to the feasibility of rail and truck journeys, while a simple change in geopolitical stance or trade policy can alter demand patterns for entire regions.  

For supply chain leaders, this brings resilience into the spotlight. When supply chains are fortified with strong forecasting and visibility, informed inventory positioning, and sufficient multimodal options to respond when anticipated flows are interrupted, they improve resilience and buffer operations against disruption.  

No company can accurately predict every disruption. But when they have shaped a supply chain flexible enough to keep critical goods moving despite disruption, they can respond proactively to changes in the economics and operations of global freight and keep their bottom line secure.

‍

Disclaimer: This article is issued for general information purposes only. APL Logistics accepts no responsibility for any information contained within this article and disclaims and excludes any liability in respect of the contents or for action taken based on such information.

‍

‍