THE SHIPPING INDUSTRY FACTS

AVERAGE COST OF SHIPPING

To give you an example of how much it costs to ship something,

a bicycle would be roughly 10 dollars while a soda can would

be less than a penny.

HUGE SOURCE OF REVENUE

Economically speaking, the shipping industry is enormous.

In the United Kingdom, it accounts for more of the GDP than

restaurants, takeaway food, and civil engineering combined.

90 PERCENT

Shipping is so big in fact that it constitutes roughly 90 percent of

the world’s trade.

A LOT OF CONTAINERS

If you were to line up the containers on just one ship they would easily

stretch nearly halfway around the planet. If you stacked them up

and they would reach to nearly 7,500 Eiffel Towers and if you

unloaded their cargo onto trucks the traffic would stretch for 60 miles.

A SAFETY ORIENTED INDUSTRY

Shipping is one of the first industries to adopt widely implemented

international safety standards.

IT’S NECESSITY

In 2011 the 360 commercial ports in the United States received goods

from abroad worth $1.73 trillion. The U.S. relies on shipping to

bring in two-thirds of its oil supply.

TYPES OF MERCHANT SHIPS

In the global fleet there are six types of ships: General cargo ships,

bulk carriers, fishing vessels, container ships, passenger ships

and tankers.

CHEAP FILLETS

Shipping is cheap. It’s so cheap in fact, that rather than fillet its own fish,

Scotland can send its cod 10,000 miles across the ocean to China

to be filleted, and then sent back for less than the price of doing

it themselves.