Incidents where a large number of containers are lost off a ship happen a few times a year. A small number of containers being lost happens more frequently. The total averages about 1400 containers lost per year, but that’s out of nearly 800 million total shipments, so in total it’s only like 1 out of ever 500,000 containers. Plus, a lot of individual parcels go by air, not by consolidated ocean shipments.
So our personal flashlight orders straight from China should be safe, but distributor shipments could be at some very small risk of washing overboard.
There’s some statistics here:
2013 definitely stands out due to an entire container ship sinking. I think that also might have been the year there were a bunch of bad storms in the north Atlantic. I remembering having a project at work in shipment at the time and wondering when the tracking information stopped being updated for about a month if the past year’s worth of work was sitting at the bottom of the North Sea.
I’m in Australia & I ordered an item from the USA
Ordered on 21 April via eBay - shipped on 22 April, with DHL tracking - now stuck -
26 Apr 2020
2:27am
ARRIVED AT EXPORT FACILITY
Carson, CA 90746
No further tracking info available.
I queried eBay/dealer & got the standard response. Delay due to Covid-19 etc.
so I think the lack of international flights is affecting all shipping.
ONLY 100 miles from me and soon to be in USPS[Pre shipment] hands. :+1:
USPS Premium Tracking™ Available
Status
Pre-Shipment
May 27, 2020
Pre-Shipment Info Sent to USPS, USPS Awaiting Item
2020-05-26 12:42:00 Avenel,NJ / ENCODED
2020-05-26 12:40:00 Avenel,NJ / RECEIVED
2020-05-14 16:45:00 LAX / Arrival of goods at destination airport
2020-05-14 16:45:00 LAX / Arrived at the destination airport
2020-05-13 18:30:00 HKG / shipment departed from airport of origin country
2020-05-11 21:10:00 HKG / Hand over to airline.
2020-05-11 19:10:00 HONGKONG / Arrived at Hong Kong hub.
2020-05-09 23:02:00 Hongqiao,Shanghai,China / Depart from facility to service provider.
2020-05-09 15:56:00 Hongqiao,Shanghai,China / Shipment arrived at facility and measured.
2020-05-09 15:56:00 Hongqiao,Shanghai,China / 4PX picked up shipment.
Got here yesterday. exactly 2 weeks with the “usa priority” shipping upgrade. Actually delivered by fedex.
I chose ocean shipping on the other recent order… but I think this might be a worthy upgrade
I have been waiting for 51 days so far. 10 days ago it finally switched to “CAYVR / Despatched to overseas”. usually that means it should arrive in Canada within a few days but its has been stuck there for a while.
You have been waiting more than Twice as long as I. Mine was in LA for 12 days and now it is stuck in New Jersey[2 hours from me] for the last 6 days.All we can do is wait and try to be patient.
I thought once it got to NJ [next step was USPS] that it would be here in 3 or 4 days. Wrong again.
Hopefully we will both get our items soon.
EDIT: Actually it has been 32 days since I ordered and 23 days since it was shipped.
I noticed a flashlight I have on route is probably coming by train from China.
Route: Sanmenxia > Wuwei > Shankou (China) > Dostyk > Esil (Cazaquistan Kazakhstan) > Oktyabrsk (Russia).
It left on the 25th May and it is in Russia today (12th June). I guess it will take at least a month more to arrive here !
There was a project called “the new silk way”. It supposed new railways and fast transit through borders, rivers, mountains etc. If it was completed, it could make rail transit from China to EU border much faster, like 7-10 days. In reality, part of infrastructure that had to be improved on Russian territory have been never improved. Railway is very limited type of transport, if you have thousands kms of old railway with slow locomotives, there is no ways to use same railway for faster transports, you need new railways, otherwise there is no room for overtake.
Since China had invested in infrastructure a lot and had a choice in this new sink ways (various ways through different counties), there was several test trips using different ways. Non of them get common because they were not faster than water cargo but at least 2x more expensive.
Probably, today problems with other types of delivery is the reason to try this “new sink way” one more time.