OCEN FREIGHT VIS

OCEN FREIGHT VIS

Ocean Freight vis-à-vis Air Freight: 4 Factors to Take into Consideration

Your life is all about making choices. In this context, if you’ve to transship a parcel overseas, you’ve many alternatives .i.e. you can choose to transport the package by air or by sea. Now, regardless of whether you’re involved in a business where shipping packages to international destinations is your bread or butter or someone who is emigrating, choosing one out of the two modes is crucial. Considering the following 4 factors will go a long way in helping you to take a decision.

1. 1. Speed Makes a Big Difference
Timing is everything when it comes to transshipping and delivering the packages or consignments to their final destinations-after all your business survives and thrives on transporting the shipments to customers at the nick of time. In this respect, air freight has a distinct edge over seafaring vessels, as you’re able to transport your parcels much faster with the former. But the advantage comes at a cost-you have to pay much more when you book consignments through air freight, which ultimately eats into your profit margins.
Alternatively, international shipping is safer when you need to shift your household goods to an overseas location-you receive almost everything in shipshape condition. Moreover, these days, some shipping firms can send consignments to a far-flung destination within a week.
2. Reliability or Steadfastness
Talking about reliability, air freight again edges out ocean stowage, though the latter has been in existence much longer than the former. More often than not, a flight may be cancelled due to inclement weather or some other unavoidable factors but then the consignment can be parceled out by the next flight. But ocean liners are sometimes held up for weeks at a port which could adversely affect your trade.
3. The Impact on Environment
Whether ocean freight is more polluting than air freight or vice versa from the standpoint of environment is still debatable. Definitely, air transport causes higher carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide emissions compared to sea freight. But you also need to consider the aspect of marine waters getting polluted owing to oil spills and leakages from cargo ships and vessels.
4. Rates or Expenses Matters the Most
You’ll surely pay much less when you’re transporting a parcel weighing 5kgs with a volume of cm3 via a ship compared to airplane. But the unit cost for both the modes of transportation is calculated differently. So, sometimes transshipping by sea can work out to be costlier than air freight. You also need to take into account the time factor-time after all is money.

Merchant shipping is by and large, conducted in two distinct ways:-

• Ocean liners and large cargo vessels usually ply on fixed or regular routes and follow stipulated schedules. Standard tariffs apply while booking consignments on these types of vessels. The vessel types that move on regular routes mainly include cargo ships, roll on/roll off vessels, and container ships.
• Besides the liner vessels and cargo vessels, there are ‘chartered vessels’ that exclusively furnish chartered services. In other words, these vessels are specially chartered or hired by the customer or transportation company for moving special or sensitive items like inflammable oils or medicines. The charter or contract lists the loading and disembarking ports, and the haulage rates (that varies depending upon the demand and supply conditions). Bulk carriers and oil tankers are mostly used for chartered services.